D’Orient en Occident: Les recueils de fables enchâssées avant les ‘Mille et une Nuits’ de Galland (Barlaam et Josaphat, Calila et Dimna, Disciplina clericalis, Roman des Sept Sages) ed. by Marion Uhlig and Yasmina Foehr-Janssens (review)

This book contains a valuable collection of scholarly articles, and will be quite indispensable in its area. It is the outcome of an international conference at the University of Geneva in 2010 concerned with medieval fables enchâssées, collections of stories within a framing story. It looks back occasionally to the origins of the genre in pre-medieval times, and looks ahead to Antoine Galland’s compilation of the Mille et une Nuits between 1704 and 1717, its chronological limit. Oriental framework collections were among the most widely read books in the Middle Ages, and were frequently translated into other languages. D’Orient en Occident is especially concerned with the transmission of fables enchâssées from the East to the West. The four framework collections that the book focuses on are Barlaam et Josaphat, Calila et Dimna, Disciplina Clericalis, and Le Roman des Sept Sages.

The book comes from a project initially proposed by Marion Uhlig, who edits the collection in conjunction with colleague Yasmine Foehr-Janssens. They collaborated also on the Introduction. The editing is careful, even painstaking, but the Introduction, whether in French or its accompanying English translation, is written in an obscure style heavy with abstract nouns, adjectives, and verbs, making it somewhat difficult to read and understand.

There are twenty-one essays in the collection, two-thirds of them in French, the others in English (four), Spanish (two), and German (one), the last a particularly attractive contribution by Constanza Cordoni. After scholarly research into the origins of the story of Barlaam and Josaphat, Cordoni humanely acknowledges that it is in any case an anthropological constant, a pattern in father – son relationships (son’s rebellion, estrangement, reconciliation) that repeats itself from generation to generation in all societies. The essays overall are arranged in five groups, with headings intended to characterise and distinguish them – ‘D’Orient en Occident’, ‘Les recueils de fables enchâssées, une tradition occidentale’, ‘Les fables et leurs métamorphoses’, ‘Manuscrits et enchâssements’, ‘A l’aube des Mille et une Nuits’ – but which are actually rather imprecise and unclear. The five groups would benefit from brief separate introductions to clarify their specific place within the total collection of essays. The most helpful outline of the contents and function of the book is provided in the Foreword by Hans Runte. I translate: ‘The following pages will examine in careful detail what happened to the texts in their movements and the consequent variety of interpretations to which they lend themselves. The essays are notably concerned with such questions as the origins of the collections, their migration, their transmission (from Indian Buddhism, for instance, to Zoroastrianism, to Islam, from there to the Christian world), and their diffusion. They are likewise concerned with interpretations of the collections, constantly renewed under the influence of political imperatives or particular didactics. The body of erudite knowledge here establishes connections with areas of interest to today’s academic readers, revealing links between the cultures that are often centuries old.’

It is hard to pick out outstanding essays in this assemblage of exceptional quality. Partly from their position as opening and final essays, Barry Taylor’s and Olivier Azam’s contributions are likely to remain in one’s mind. Taylor establishes a broad East – West perspective at the beginning, and sensibly maintains that scholars who know Arabic and Hebrew are the most likely to discern genetic connections between Eastern and Western literatures. Azam’s essay traces the long history of Barlaam and...