tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post8858222608645644400..comments2024-03-10T20:46:19.274-04:00Comments on In the Middle: The Child Gives Himself to the WolfCord J. Whitakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06224143153295429986noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-37120284414175589542007-02-28T22:15:00.000-05:002007-02-28T22:15:00.000-05:00A little late to this...as usual... but I thought ...A little late to this...as usual... but I thought I'd just add that I felt sorry for the wolf because he reminded me of Wiley waiting for us to give him our leftovers. Poor wolfie/Wiley. But really, then, the moral should be: dogs, don't trust those humans -- they're just big teasers. (Yes, I followed your link, Karl.)<BR/><BR/>On a more serious note, maybe the lesson is not an ethical one but a hermeneutic one. The wolf takes the woman literally and waits for food that's never intended as food. Had he known about hyperbole he wouldn't still be hungry. And thus, the young readers of Latin learn something about interpretation. But then I think the moral of every piece of literature is "Don't be a bad reader!"Dr. Viragohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03960384082670286328noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-91269609360575658352007-02-27T13:42:00.000-05:002007-02-27T13:42:00.000-05:00Some scattered thoughts on narrative identificatio...Some scattered thoughts on narrative identification with animals, in terms of the ages of the readers: I wonder, is there by any chance a line that can be drawn according to the ages of the animals? It seems to me that many fabular animals represent "adults": they are full grown, not baby animals; the ox as laborer is (presumably) an adult servant; the wolf (presumably) an adult wolf capable of carrying off a naughty human child; they are animals that represent adult behaviors/characters, to model behavior for adults and/or children. So in a way, fabular animals represent to children a kind of middle point, not-quite-adult because not-quite-human, but representing behaviors to aspire to or avoid in adulthood. This happens in a lot of contemporary children's lit: Mrs. Frisby, the Rescuers, and so forth are all adult animals. Wilbur's an exception, as a piglet. This reminds me of your work on the Testamentum Porcelli: the character with whom we're invited to identify is a "piglet," yet its participation in legal business--and crime--seems rather adult (whether "piglet" is a scornful diminutive or a representation of animal's maturity isn't something I know about). You were doing some thinking about the Testamentum and the 3 clerks, and the attractiveness of children for anthropophagy.... For a child reading the Testamentum (do you not say that St. Jerome condemned its popularity among schoolchildren?), the pig with whom s/he's invited to identify is not only a little piglet, but an adult with adult rights. This complicates a child's identification with the pig even further, with the threat of execution/eating being paired with the privileges and pitfalls of being an adult legal entity.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-88030347078447187842007-02-26T06:13:00.000-05:002007-02-26T06:13:00.000-05:00On the pedagogical burden of animals the necessity...On the pedagogical burden of animals the necessity of identification to make education work properly:<BR/><BR/>You're right, of course, there is no narrative as <EM>straightforwardly</EM> instructive as a fable. BUT it is also true that many (most?) other types of medieval narratives carry with them implicit lessons, and use identification to impart morals. I'm pointing this obvious point our because when I listed some work on multiplicity of identification I omitted the most obvious: E. Jane Burns, <EM>Bodytalk: When Women Speak in Old French Literature</EM>. Burns argues for sideways/askew identifications that can defeat the prevailing moral (ie, a woman might actually speak, and say something challenging, even when that woman is a misogynistic creation).<BR/><BR/>That's still not close to what you were asking for, I realize, but you've raised an interesting question about how the wolf fable works as a little machine.<BR/><BR/>RE: juvenalization of animals and periodicity, I should venture into territory that remains incognita for me. But I am going to guess that animal bodies move back and forth across the adult/child narrative line with some regularity. What we need is a children's lit expert.Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-12902808679814846362007-02-25T16:14:00.000-05:002007-02-25T16:14:00.000-05:00It does seem that this assumed immaturity has some...<I>It does seem that this assumed immaturity has something to do with the animal's pedagogical burden, but when that line became firm is tough to say.</I><BR/><BR/>Hate to keep talking to myself on this, but it just came to me that this angle doesn't work. Let's assume that fables become central in pedagogy c. 800. Yet adults continue telling animal stories to each other for, oh, another 700 years (at least). There doesn't seem to be any perceived puerility in telling animal stories (or am I wrong on this? Am I forgetting something key? I'd have to check the openings of the various works I mentioned above + the Speculum Stultorum, which I'd forgotten). Given my irritation with periodicity, I hate to think I've stumbled across an actual discursive difference between the Middle Ages and now: but I think I might have.Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-41308564162223601322007-02-25T11:28:00.000-05:002007-02-25T11:28:00.000-05:00first he's a rusticaThat would be a neat trick. Ru...<I>first he's a rustica</I><BR/><BR/>That would be a neat trick. Rusticus. <BR/><BR/>Back to work.Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-26481166267835770192007-02-25T09:35:00.000-05:002007-02-25T09:35:00.000-05:00Note: this doesn't always work.For example, the fa...<I>Note: this doesn't always work.</I><BR/><BR/>For example, the fable <A HREF="http://mythfolklore.net/aesopica/romang/63.htm" REL="nofollow">"de rustico et bove"</A> (a rare one, but it appears in Marie), in which an overworked, sweaty ox complains about being compelled to take its own dung (out of its barn?). The peasant points out that since the ox is responsible for its own shit, it shouldn't pain him to carry it out ("Respondit Homo : Interrogo te quis istum fimum congessit. Bos ait : Congessi ego, ego illum pedibus conculcavi. Propterea, inquit Dominus, quia fetiditatem congessisti, non te pigeat eam laboriose extrahere."). The moral is one against wicked servants blaming their masters for their suffering. I have no idea how to take this (although I do think it interesting to track the identifications of the peasant: first he's a rustica, then dominus, homo, then finally dominus again)Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-81219317926804435972007-02-25T09:20:00.000-05:002007-02-25T09:20:00.000-05:00Has anyone ever painted anything with subtler mela...<I>Has anyone ever painted anything with subtler melancholy?</I><BR/><BR/>Nice work, that Ibatoulline. Well, there's <A HREF="http://www.tamsquare.net/thumbnail/R/Albert-Pinkham-Ryder-Toilers-of-the-Sea-.jpg" REL="nofollow">Albert Pinkham Ryder,</A> although lately he seems to be working <A HREF="http://joshreads.com/?p=962" REL="nofollow">on cute flower paintings.</A><BR/><BR/><I>both at least begin to move beyond the assumption that identification is necessarily singular, stable, or pedagogical</I><BR/><BR/>Harh, I get your point. But Avianus isn't a slasher film or pornography. Unlike these other kinds of work (which includes, well, just about every fiction that isn't a fable), not only the genre but also the location of the fable in the Avianus collection demands (insists on? asks for?) pedagogical, moral identification. It has a moral, it's an introduction to a set of works that, similarly (although perhaps less jarringly), have morals, and it's meant to teach. It's meant to be useful for teaching likely because children so readily identify <I>with animals,</I> which means, I think, we have to assume that in a fable with animals that the identification with animals is primary.* Finally, given its essential role in language instruction from the Carolingian era on, it a work that likely numbers among, say, the top 10-most read works in the Middle Ages. In other words, it's essential that I <I>get it</I>: but I don't.<BR/><BR/>* Note: this doesn't always work. I have some other fables in mind, but I'm going to go off and think about them for a bit.Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-2729753689182239892007-02-24T21:15:00.000-05:002007-02-24T21:15:00.000-05:00PS As to when animal stories became juvenalized .....PS As to when animal stories became juvenalized ... you've got me. It does seem that this assumed immaturity has something to do with the animal's pedagogical burden, but when that line became firm is tough to say.Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-30507390227679307272007-02-24T21:13:00.000-05:002007-02-24T21:13:00.000-05:00Yes, why do kids get all the great animal stories?...Yes, why do kids get all the great animal stories? I think you and I devoured very similar titles as kids, Karl. Now, having children of my own, I get to read even more in the ever-growing genre. Just finished a real weeper: Kate DiCamillo's <EM>The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane </EM>. If the Kubrick/Spielberg film <EM>A.I.: Artificial Intelligence</EM> had been a good story rather than a merely sadistic one, it would be this DiCamillo fable about a porcelain bunny that finds the ability to love to be a curse that makes him ache through loss after loss. The book does interesting things with time and gender, to top it all off. Plus check out the cover painting by <A HREF="http://www.candlewick.com/cat.asp?mode=book&isbn=0763625892&browse=Title" REL="nofollow">Bagram Ibatoulline</A>. Has anyone ever painted anything with subtler melancholy?<BR/><BR/>Your query about identification and the wolf in the fable reminded me of two references to multiplicity of identification in narratives. Neither of these books is especially deep, but they do at least acknowledge the shiftiness of identification and enjoyment in story: Carol Clover, <EM>Men, Women, and Chainsaws</EM> (on how adolescent male viewers of slasher films identify with both the imperiled heroine ["Last Girl"] and the killer, though not simultaneously); and Marjorie Garber, <EM> Vice Versa</EM>, where she interviews Jonathan Dollimore and they speak about multiple simultaneous identifications while viewing pornography. Neither of those is exactly on topic, but both at least begin to move beyond the assumption that identification is necessarily singular, stable, or pedagogical.Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.com