Hybridity, monstrosity, humanity: Marie de France & Renard the Fox

• transition from last week: metamorphosis, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, translation (narrow and broad senses), translatio studii et imperii; Reynard / Renart / Renard as an exemplary case
• an Ovid example: BNF Arsenal 5069
• approaching foxes and Renard : histoire des mentalités; the plurality of histories and of literary, intellectual, and imaginative histories; cultural studies, folklore, myth, anthropology
  • some names: Prosper Mérimée, Jules Michelet, the Brothers Grimm, Jacques Le Goff
• obvious foxes and common ground across space and time:
  • exemplary Twitter thread (Colin J. Carlson)
  • 21st-century anthropomorphism (Swedish Spaceman)
• bestiaries:
  • Video via Erik Kwakkel
  • News about the digitisation of the Aberdeen Bestiary, from Open Culture
  • The Aberdeen Bestiary
  • The Medieval Bestiary – Bestiary.ca
• expect the unexpected, unexpect the expected: canon law, psalters, books of hours and marginalia; including some Renard retold in the margins; names and word-play (ex. R’s name: “hard counsel” / “pure of heart”):
  • in a liturgical work (via Erik Kwakkel)
  • About books of hours (AbeBooks)
  • A book of hours (Morgan 754)
  • About the Gorleston Psalter (British Library manuscripts blog), BL Add MS 49622
  • BL Stowe MS 17
  • BL Royal MS 10 E IV