Mastering Aesop: Medieval Education, Chaucer, and His Followers

Abstract

It is hard to believe that I have had this book eleven years! Even now I can give only an overview. Wheatley challenges readers early: we must be able to imagine an era during which fable was taken seriously as a vehicle for social, political, and religious communication (3). Wheatley's first three chapters give a broad overview of the attitudes and practices surrounding the reception and appropriation of the verse Romulus collection as a Latin curricular text (4). One great caution: All-encompassing formal definitions tell us more about our own desires to master fable than medieval reception of the literary form (5). He considers fable not as a literary genre but as a mode of discourse. Another caution: To belive that a fable is best interpreted in one particular way suggests an entrenched dogmatism which the later Middle Ages did not espouse (6). The second half of the book brings the material from the first half to bear upon the translated fables written by three medieval British vernacular writers: Chaucer, Lydgate, and Henryson. The first appendix gives selected fables in their versions by the three authors. Further appendices give Latin medieval fable texts.

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