From Aesop to Reynard: Beast Literature in Medieval Britain by Jill Mann (review)

REVIEWS 271 this, in which the poignancy of the plight of both the mentally impaired and of their communities comes to the fore. One particularly haunting example from the end of Trenchard-Smith’s essay comes from two saints’ lives, which mention the chaining of mad and possessed people in the Church of Saint Anastasia in Constantinople, “[suggesting] that although canonically the mentally afflicted might be disqualified from full participation in the life of the church, there was confidence in the automatic, beneficial effect of the liturgy of their blameless, powerless souls” (55). The image and soundscape this evokes, in which afflicted people strain against their bonds and add their cries to the intonation of the liturgy, is moving. It also is a reminder that, at its best, historical scholarship helps us to understand how much and in what ways the people of the past differ from us while also making those people both present and sympathetic to us. ANDREA F. JONES, English, UCLA Jill Mann, From Aesop to Reynard: Beast Literature in Medieval Britain (Oxford University Press 2009) 380 pp. Jill Mann has written an impeccably researched and wonderfully clever survey on beast literature spanning from the time of the beast fable to the beast epic, the bestiary, the animal debate, the romance, the sermon, and the eastern animal tale, with a special emphasis on the homegrown blend of beast literature found in Britain. As she elaborates, there are fundamental differences in the way an animal’s fictional world translates into meaning for humans. The structure of the tale certainly influences the interpretation it can offer the reader. Mann explores the beast literature of medieval Britain to illustrate this most functional of dichotomies. She analyzes the most prominent works of the period , including Marie de France’s Fables; Nigel of Longchamp’s Speculum stultorum; The Owl and the Nightingale; The Vox and the Wolf; Chaucer’s Parliament of Fowls; the tales of the Squire, Nun’s Priest, and Manciple in the Canterbury Tales; and Henryson’s Morall Fabillis. We are taken on a tour de force from Marie de France’s beast fable to Nigel of Longchamp’s beast epic, to animal debate in The Owl and the Nightingale, to individual animal tale in The Vox and the Wolf, and back to a fable collection with the Morall Fabillis. These texts illustrate a continuity of influence in the world of British beast literature . The Owl and the Nightingale relies on Marie’s Fables, Chaucer cites the Speculum stultorum, and Henryson follows Chaucerian themes. Nevertheless , all these writers remain inventive and original in their own right. Prior to embarking on her analysis of the Anglo-Scottish tradition, Mann discusses the history of medieval beast literature in Western Europe to illustrate the link between the continental tradition and the evolution of beast literature elsewhere. Mann starts her account with a discussion of the Fables of Aesop. Ironically, no surviving fable collection has been authenticated to the time Aesop was alive, which is believed to have been in the sixth century BC. Later, Phaedrus, in the first century AD, and the Romulus vulgaris follow the chronology of the beast fable. In the ninth century, animal poems flourished at the Carolingian court. In the eleventh century, the beast fable is used as a teaching tool by such luminaries as Ademar of Chabannes (988–1034). Odo of Cheriton and Jacques de Vitry, both clerics, also utilized fables in their sermons. In the REVIEWS 272 twelfth century, the Fables of Marie de France continue the vernacular of the Latin fable collections. The beast epic makes its appearance in the eleventh century with the Ecbasis captivi, the Ysengrimus, and later with Roman de Renart in the twelfth century. The Renart is of note in that it represents a departure from the Latin tradition. Eastern wisdom literature comes to the Latin West in the twelfth century by way of a Spanish Jew named, Petrus Alfonsi, who wrote the Disciplina clericalis in the manner of eastern wisdom literature. Mann starts the analysis of this material in her first chapter “How Animals Mean” by providing a theoretical framework for looking at the differences between beast fable (as represented by...