Medieval Fables

«Una raccolta della studiosa genovese Caterina Mordeglia.
amava Dositeo ed era un grammatico greco del IV secolo. O forse l'autore di 17 favolette redatte in prosa, sia latina che greca, per fare imparare la lingua agli studenti nelle scuole era un altro, un anonimo con il gusto delle favolette di animali. Senza di lui comunque, non avremmo la favola della formica previdente e della [...] Uno splendido esempio arriva da Animali sui banchi di scuola. Le favole dello pseudo Dositeo edite nella prestigiosa serie Micrologus Library [...]
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The book, examining Berechiah ben Natronai ha-Naqdan’s work and its later reception, contains two key introductions and nine chapters grouped into four parts.  The book is opened by Tamás Visi, who critically summarises Berechiah’s writings and offers a historical as well as intellectual context of his life and works. Berechiah was probably born in Northern France in the 1120s, 1130s or 1140s, and he was interested in natural sciences and philosophy. He was familiar with the biblical commentaries of Abraham Ibn Ezra. Sometimes, perhaps after 1161, he migrated to Provence and became connected with Meshullam ben Jacob’s circle in Lunel. There he read Judah Ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew translations of Judeo-Arabic literature, as well as a work by Abraham ben David of Posquierres, and possibly Joseph Qimḥi’s commentary on Job. He composed Musar and Matzref in Provence. Berechiah also mastered the “metric” poetry of the Andalusians in Provence and may have been exposed to further cultural and linguistic influences coming from the Andalusian refugees recently settled in Provence. Afterwards, he returned to Normandy, where he composed the Mishlei Shu‘alim during the 1180s or 1190s. He passed away perhaps by 1200, certainly by ca. 1215 the latest.
The second introduction by Tovi  Bibring  highlights  the  relationship  between  Berechiah and  medieval  Christian  fable  writers and offers a profound literary analysis of his masterpiece, the Mishlei Shuʻalim (Fox Fables). Through a thematic and linguistic comparative reading of Aesopic fable “The Mouse and the Frog”, Bibring shows universal common places which connect the works of Berechiah with Marie de France. Simultaneously, she points out culturally conditioned details which are characteristic for either Christian or Jewish communities. The translations and adaptations into different languages and the diffusion (written and oral) of different versions of the fables attest to the vigour of the exchanges that took place in medieval literature.
The first part of the book continues with a discussion concerning the milestones in Berechiah’s life and focuses on the Mishlei Shuʻalim. The first chapter by Revital Refael-Vivante discusses the value of charity in the Mishlei Shu’alim and asks whether there a situation could arise in which a poor person would be denied charity and how far the giving of charity is dependent upon the circumstances of the beggar’s poverty. These questions are answered through the analysis of the fable “The Wasp and the Ant”, where Berechiah condemned the pretenders who exploit the institution of charity. Mishlei Shu’alim seems to have been influenced by philosophical moral texts written by Judeo-Arabic intellectuals, possibly Maimonides and his Mishneh Torah. A comparison of Maimonides' ideas of charity helps us understand Berechiah's aggressive and controversial tone about this topic.  In the second chapter, Cyril Aslanov suggests that Berechiah, who spent most of his life in Normandy within the Ashkenazi tradition, was exposed to literary influences from Sephardic Jews or even from the Orient. Berechiah’s collection of fables contains rhetoric and poetic techniques of Al-Andalus, and, thus, it opens up the question about Berechiah’s geographical origin and cultural background. Berechiah, who is usually associated with Northern French or Anglo-Norman Jewry, seems to be influenced by Arabic-speaking Jewries or Jewries outside the cultural area of Al-Andalus, specifically Babylonia. 
The following part of the book is devoted to Berechiah’s scientific works. The third chapter, by Tamás Visi, deals with Jewish as well as Christian sources and predecessors of Berechiah’s scientific writings. Although the dominant rabbinic tradition of Northern French Jews did not value the study of natural sciences and learning from Christians, Berechiah draws from Latin scientific text, namely Adelard of Bath’s Questions on Nature. Berechiah was probably encouraged by earlier Hebrew scientific literature: the Hebrew medical encyclopaedia Book of Remedies, attributed to Asaf, the Sefer Hakhmoni by Shabbatai Donnolo, and the work of Abraham Ibn Ezra. These works prepared the local Jewish audience to take an interest in scientific themes and texts. Moreover, a new interest in natural history emerged within the context of rabbinic culture itself during the twelfth century. In the fourth chapter, Hagar Kahana-Smilansky continues with the exploration of Berechiah’s sources and shows that Berechiah’s Book of Questions, popularly known by the title Dodi ve-Nekhdi, was inspired by Adelard of Bath’s Questions on Nature, and that Berechiah had better knowledge of Aristotelian zoological ideas than Adelard himself in some respects. This chapter, exploring the discrepancies between the three extant manuscript versions of Dodi ve-Nekhdi, focuses on two Questions, examining their indebtedness to certain works, including the collections of Latin Salernitan questions.
The impact Berechiah’s works had on medieval readers is the topic of the third part. In the fifth chapter, Rella Kuschelevsky describes the imprint Mishlei Shu'alim had on Hebrew prose in the Middle Ages. The more general socio-literary issue of its reception is illustrated by Sefer ha-ma’asim, a remarkable collection of tales in northern France in the 13th century. The chapter examines two of its tales, which are relevant to a comparative study. Read against the broader background of the general editorial strategies in Sefer ha-ma'asim, and in the socio-literary context of the Jews' response to the French literature that flourished in their surroundings, the small sample of these two tales acquires significance and is revealed as indicative and promising for further studies on the poetics of reception of Berechiah's fox fables and its function to mediate Marie de France' fables to his Jewish audience. The sixth chapter, by Andreas Lenhardt, introduces an unknown poetical composition, which is, in fact, a typical maqama, written on a recently discovered Askenazi Hebrew binding fragment preserved in the Cathedral Library of Freising. Some stylistic features are reminiscent of compositions from Berechiah, but none of his texts are identical. The moral of the four meshalim seems to be best understood on the background of the situation of Jewish communities in Ashkenaz at the beginning of the 15th century. Perhaps the author of this unique composition was a certain Avraham ben Ya‛aqov from Regensburg, who might have been inspired by Berechiah.
The concluding part of the book takes us to the early modern and modern afterlife of the Mishlei Shuʻalim. The seventh chapter, by Magdalena Jánošíková, traces early modern Jewish readership and explores the transformation of Berechiah’s fox fables as a printed medium between 1557 and 1818. In this period, the fables became the subject of adaptations and translations. Mishlei Shu’alim thus reached new audiences in their Yiddish or Latin version. Although a male Hebrew-educated Jew was no longer the book’s only target reader, Jánošíková suggests that this collection of fables remained primarily a Hebrew book read by Jewish men with a good command of Hebrew. A new circle of readers, including Christian intellectuals, is the topic of the eighth chapter, by Daniel Soukup. He focuses on contextual analysis of Parabolae vulpium (Prague 1661), the Latin translation of the Mishlei Shu’alim, introduces its editor, Jesuit Melchior Hanel, and presents his work as a minor but integral part of an early modern network, the so-called Republic of letters. Hanel’s mentor and teacher of Hebrew, the famous polymath Athanasius Kircher, encouraged him to translate Mishlei Shu’alim into Latin and publish this book as a pedagogical tool for young Jesuits studying biblical languages. Ellen Frankel, in the last chapter, focuses on modern translations of Misheli Shu’alim. When the Jewish American scholar Moses Hadas translated Berechiah’s fables into English in his 1967 book, Fables of a Jewish Aesop, he chose to render them in an archaic style, characterised by outmoded verb endings, mannered vocabulary, inverted syntax and overly formal diction. The result, though quaint and maybe even true to Berechiah’s aesthetic sensibility, is almost unreadable today. On the other hand, Frankel, who translated some of the tales, chose to emphasise their orality over their literariness, sacrificing rhyme, wordiness and archaism in favour of felicitous storytelling and a concise ethical message. The chapter discusses this method of translation on the example of a specific fable and its interpretation.

Ouvrage collectif (248 p. in-fol.) composé pour partie des actes du séminaire 2014-2015 de l’équipe Fabula numerica et pour partie de contributions inédites, édité dans la livraison n° 26 (2015) de la revue Le Fablier.
Contributions éditées par A.Biscéré, C.Bohnert, D.Fortin, T.Rolland, avec l'aide de J.Bardot.

The purpose of the workshop is to explore the works and reception history of a twelfth-century Jewish intellectual, Berechiah ben Natronai ha-Naqdan, one of the first Jewish writers who drew extensively from Christian (Latin and Old French) sources. Papers and discussions will focus on Berechiah’s writings as cultural innovations in the context of twelfth-century Jewish culture as well as the fate of his writings among medieval and early modern Jews and Christians.

A cura di Caterina Mordeglia.
Il rapporto tra uomo e animale è cruciale per tutte le culture.
Il mondo antico ha attuato un’identificazione, per antitesi o similarità,
della figura umana con quella animale, attraverso una polisemica rete di simboli e allegorie. Richiamandosi all’uguaglianza creaturale propria della concezione biblica, il Medioevo tenderà a cristallizzare un immaginario collettivo simbolico legato al mondo animale destinato a perdurare fino al mondo moderno.
Questo volume raccoglie i contributi di studiosi e rappresentanti
del mondo della cultura, dalla letteratura alla storia dell’arte, e dello
spettacolo in una prospettiva multidisciplinare. Partendo dall’Antichità
classica si giunge, attraverso il Medioevo latino e il Rinascimento,
alla letteratura fiabesca e romanzesca europea tra Sei e Novecento,
al melodramma e alla canzone italiana e straniera, in un
dialogo ininterrotto con topi, lupi, uccelli e altri animali “parlanti”.