From Aesop to Reynard Beast Literature in Medieval Britain [Hardcover]

What do stories about animals have to tell us about human beings? This book analyzes the shrewd perceptions about human life - and especially human language - that emerge from narratives in which the main figures are 'talking animals'. Its guiding question is not 'what' but 'how' animals mean. Using this question to draw a clear distinction between beast fable and beast epic, it goes on to examine the complex variations of these forms that are to be found in the literature of medieval Britain, in English, French, Latin, and Scots. The range, variety, and brilliant inventiveness of this tradition are demonstrated in chapters on the fables of Marie de France, theSpeculum stultorumof Nigel of Longchamp (the comic adventures of a donkey), the debate poemThe Owl and the Nightingale, Chaucer'sParliament of Fowlsand the tales of the Squire, Manciple and Nun's Priest, the Reynardian tale ofThe Fox and the Wolf,and theMoral Fabillisof Robert Henryson. English translations provided for all quotations make the works discussed accessible to the modern reader.

This book stimulates thought at every turn...As scholars of the next generation turn to the fable tradition armed with their own, surely very different, questions about it, they will be indebted to Mann's rigorous organization of the vast literary habitat in which medieval British animals have found their abode. --Speculum

From Aesop to Reynardis an outstanding contribution to the study of both the fable and the beast epic. although Mann focuses on English authors, she is careful to set these writers in their European context, and thus scholars of the beast fable and epic in other medieval European languages will want to read this book as well. It is a finely written and presented study that will stand for some time astheguide to medieval English beast literature. --Journal of Folklore Research

An impeccably resl3.