The Morall Fabillis of Esope the Phrygian is a work of Northern Renaissance literature composed in Middle Scots by the fifteenth century Scottish makar, Robert Henryson. It is a cycle of thirteen connected narrative poems based on fables from the European tradition. The drama of the cycle exploits a set of complex moral dilemmas through the figure of animals representing a full range of human psychology. As the work progresses, the stories and situations become increasingly dark.
The overall structure of the Morall Fabillis is symmetrical, with seven stories modelled on fables from Aesop (from the elegiac Romulus manuscripts, medieval Europe's standard fable text, written in Latin), interspersed by six others in two groups of three drawn from the more profane beast epic tradition. All the expansions are rich, wry and highly developed. The central poem of the cycle takes the form of a dream vision in which the narrator meets Aesop in person. Aesop tells the fable The Lion and the Mouse within the dream, and the structure of the poem is contrived so that this fable occupies the precise central position of the work.
Five of the six poems in the two 'beast epic' sections of the cycle feature the Reynardian trickster figure of the fox. Henryson styles the fox – in Scots the tod – as Lowrence. The two 'beast epic' sections of the poem (one in each half) also explore a developing relationship between Lowrence and the figure of the wolf. The wolf features in a number of different guises, including that of a Friar, and similarly appears in five out of the six stories. The wolf then makes a sixth and final appearance towards the end, stepping out of the 'beast epic' section to intrude most brutally in the penultimate poem of the 'Aesopic' sections.
The subtle and ambiguous way in which Henryson adapted and juxtaposed material from a diversity of sources in the tradition and exploited anthropomorphic conventions to blend human characteristics with animal observation both worked within, and pushed the bounds of, standard practice in the common medieval art of fable re-telling. Henryson fully exploited the fluid aspects of the tradition to produce an unusually sophisticated moral narrative, unique of its kind, making high art of an otherwise conventional genre.[1]
Internal evidence might suggest that the work was composed in or around the 1480s.
- ^ A general analysis of the literature in its historical context can be found in Edward Wheatley, Mastering Aesop: Medieval Education, Chaucer, and his Followers, University Press of Florida, 2000. He argues that license to interpret and adapt fable texts was generally accepted practice for medieval writers and readers, and that strict adherence to those sources was not necessarily expected.