Ysengrimus is a Latin fabliau and mock epic, an anthropomorphic series of fables written in
1148 or 1149, possibly by the poet Nivardus. Its chief character is Isengrin the Wolf, and it describes how his
various schemes are overcome by the trickster figure Reynard the Fox.
The author
Little is known of the author. All
that can be said of him with any certainty is that he lived in the twelfth
century, and was closely connected to Ghent. The text is anonymous in the manuscripts
containing the whole poem. Florilegia and medieval catalogues give the author's
name variously as "Magister Nivardus", "Balduinus Cecus" (
The poem
The Ysengrimus draws on
earlier traditions of beast
fable in Latin,
such as the eleventh century Ecbasis captivi; in the Ecbasis, the now
traditional opposition of wolf and fox appears. The Ysengrimus is the
most extensive anthropomorphic beast fable extant in Latin, and it marks the
first appearance in Latin literature of the traditional names
"Reinardus" and "Ysengrimus". The poem runs to 6,574 lines
of elegiac
couplets. The Ysengrimus
is divided into seven books, which contain twelve or fourteen tales; opinions
differ on how to divide them. Other beast fables were written by other medieval
Latin authors, including Odo of Cheriton; the Ysengrimus is the most
extensive collection of this material either in Latin or in any vernacular.
The poem mixes medieval and classical Latin imitations and parts of it are
written in a curious, difficult style featuring obscure verb forms such as deponent imperatives. These stylistic curiosities
reflect neither deliberate obscurantism nor lack of poetic talent: they are,
instead, means of characterization. The poet places them on the lips
of the trickster Reinardus, who is intended to be deceptive, and whose
statements contain deliberate ambiguity. Ysengrimus is made to speak in a similar
style when he is lying. But when he has been deceived into a predicament, he
speaks plainly.
In the opening episode of Ysengrimus,
the wolf manages to successfully deceive the fox by one of his schemes; this is
Ysengrimus's only triumph, and throughout the remaining episodes Ysengrimus is
constantly being tricked or humiliated by Reinardus. The poem contains the well
known story in which Reinardus deceives Ysengrimus to go ice fishing using his tail as a net, only to get it frozen into the lake.
When Reinardus mockingly urges Ysengrimus to get up quickly, Ysengrimus is made
to say:
Captus ad hec captor: "Nescis quid, perfide,
dicas. Clunibus impendet
(The prisoner said this to his captor: "You don't
know what you're saying, deceiver. I have all of
Ysengrimus is usually held to be an allegory for the corrupt monks of the Roman
Catholic Church.
His greed is what typically causes him to be led astray. He is made to make
statements such as "commit whatever sins you please; you will be absolved if you can pay." He comes to a grisly end
in the ending of the poem: stripped of his skin and thrown to the swine.
Reinardus, by contrast, represents the poor and the lowly; he triumphs over
Ysengrimus by his wits.
Nivardus deals with a subject that
got extensive treatments in European popular culture during the Middle Ages and the
early modern period. The characters Ysengrimus and Reinardus were clearly well
developed by the time he wrote his epic; later treatments, however, usually
featured Reynardus and relegated Ysengrimus the wolf to the menagerie of stock characters that served as Reynardus's
supporting cast. They went on to appear in most Western European vernaculars, including
French, Dutch, and English. A version of the Reynard stories was one of
the first English printed books, made by William Caxton.
References
1. Full discussion of authorship
at Mann, 1987, 156-81.
· Voigt, Ernst, Ysengrimus
(
· Mann, Jill,
"Beast epic and fable"; in Medieval Latin, an Introduction and
Bibliographical Guide, Frank A. C. Mantello and Arthur G. Rigg, editors. (Catholic
University of America, 1996) ISBN 0-8132-0842-4
· Mann, Jill. Ysengrimus:
Text with Translation, Commentary, and Introduction (Univ. Leiden, 1987) ISBN 90-04-08103-8
· Harrington, K.P.,
and Pucci, Joseph. Medieval Latin (2d. edition, Univ. Chicago, 1997) ISBN 0-226-31713-7
· J. M. Ziolkowski, Talking
Animals: Medieval Latin Beast Poetry 750-1150, University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1993.
External
links
· Ernst Voigt's 1884 edition of Ysengrimus
·
Jill Mann's 1987 translation of Ysengrimus
·
A Wolf at School by Ayers Bagley
·
The History of Reynard the Fox by Henry Morley, 1889.
·
Comprehensive
bibliography on Arlima (Archives de littérature du Moyen Âge)
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