Gualterus Anglicus (

Medieval Latin Medieval Latin was the form of Literary Latin used in Roman Catholic Church, Roman Catholic Western Europe during the Middle Ages. It was also the administrative language in the former Western Roman Empire, Roman Provinces of Mauretania, Numidi ...

for Walter the Englishman) was an Anglo-Norman poet and scribe who produced a seminal version of ''

Aesop's Fables Aesop's Fables, or the Aesopica, is a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a Slavery in ancient Greece, slave and storyteller who lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 564 Before the Common Era, BCE. Of varied and unclear origins, the stor ...

'' (in

distich In poetry, a couplet ( ) or distich ( ) is a pair of successive Line (poetry), lines that rhyme and have the same Metre (poetry), metre. A couplet may be formal (closed) or run-on (open). In a formal (closed) couplet, each of the two lines is en ...

s) around the year 1175.

Identification of the author

This author was earlier called the ''Anonymus Neveleti'', referring to attribution in the seventeenth-century ''Mythologia Aesopica'' of Isaac Nicholas Nevelet. The name Walter (Latin Gualterus) was produced by Léopold Hervieux, on the basis of manuscript evidence, and he went on to identify the author as Walter of the Mill,

archbishop of Palermo The Metropolitan Archdiocese of Palermo () is a Latin diocese of the Catholic Church. It was founded as the Diocese of Palermo in the first century and raised to the status of archdiocese in the 11th century.elegiac couplet The elegiac couplet or elegiac distich is a poetic form used by Greek lyric poets for a variety of themes usually of smaller scale than the epic. Roman poets, particularly Catullus, Propertius, Tibullus, and Ovid, adopted the same form in L ...

s). Given the uncertainty over the authorship, these terms are used in scholarly works. There is an earlier prose version of ''

Romulus Romulus (, ) was the legendary founder and first king of Rome. Various traditions attribute the establishment of many of Rome's oldest legal, political, religious, and social institutions to Romulus and his contemporaries. Although many of th ...

'', also; it has been dated as early as the tenth century, or the sixth century. It is adapted from Phaedrus; the initial fable "The Cock and the Jewel", supposedly the reply of Phaedrus to his critics, marks out fable collections originating from this source. Walter changed the "jewel" from a

pearl A pearl is a hard, glistening object produced within the soft tissue (specifically the mantle (mollusc), mantle) of a living Exoskeleton, shelled mollusk or another animal, such as fossil conulariids. Just like the shell of a mollusk, a pear ...

jasper Jasper, an aggregate of microgranular quartz and/or cryptocrystalline chalcedony and other mineral phases, is an opaque, impure variety of silica, usually red, yellow, brown or green in color; and rarely blue. The common red color is due to ...

. The verse ''Romulus'' formed the mainstream versions of medieval 'Aesop'. It is thought to be the version used by

Dante Dante Alighieri (; most likely baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri; – September 14, 1321), widely known mononymously as Dante, was an Italian Italian poetry, poet, writer, and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', originally called ...

. It with

Ovid Publius Ovidius Naso (; 20 March 43 BC – AD 17/18), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Augustan literature (ancient Rome), Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a younger contemporary of Virgil and Horace, with whom he i ...

influenced the ''Doligamus'' of . When

John Lydgate John Lydgate of Bury () was an English monk and poet, born in Lidgate, near Haverhill, Suffolk, Haverhill, Suffolk, England. Lydgate's poetic output is prodigious, amounting, at a conservative count, to about 145,000 lines. He explored and estab ...

produced ''Isopes Fabules'', the first fable collection written in English, the verse ''Romulus'' was a major source. Particularly sophisticated use of this fable tradition is made later in the 15th century in

Robert Henryson Robert Henryson (Middle Scots: Robert Henrysoun) was a poet who flourished in Scotland in the period c. 1460–1500. Counted among the Scots language, Scots ''makars'', he lived in the royal burgh of Dunfermline and is a distinctive voice in th ...

's '' Morall Fabillis'', written in Scots. Early printed editions appeared under the title ''Aesopus moralisatus'', around 1500.

References

*Julia Bastin (editor) (1929–30), ''Recueil général des Isopets'' (two volumes) *Sandro Boldrini (1994), ''Uomini e bestie: le favole dell Aesopus latinus'' *Aaron E. Wright (editor) (1997), ''The Fables of "Walter of England", Edited from Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Codex Guelferbytanus 185 Helmstadiensis'' *Paola Busdraghi (editor) (2005), ''L'Esopus. attribuito a Gualtiero Anglico'' * Rebekka Nöcker: ''Volkssprachiges Proverbium in der Gelehrtenkultur : ein lateinischer Fabelkommentar des 15. Jahrhunderts mit deutschen Reimpaarepimythien; Untersuchung und Edition'', Berlin .a.: De Gruyter, 2015,

Notes

External links

mythfolklore.net online textsAlim online texts
*{{in lang, fr}

12th-century English poets English male poets 12th-century English writers 12th-century writers in Latin