Tales of the Monks from the Gesta Romanorum
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Authors
Komroff, Manuel
Issue Date
1947
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Book, Whole
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Abstract
This remains a curious book of 181 stories. I knew it in the version of 1876/1959 by Charles Swan, revised and corrected by Wynnard Hooper. See my comments on that edition. During this reading, I have been struck by how frequently stories are either romantic or rhetorical. The latter feature speech and clever counter-speech. The former involve many kings with beautiful daughters. Many knights defend helpless princesses. Many stories start by referring to Roman kings and are often about them and their families, especially their beautiful daughters. One story, #153, spins out into a novella, 38 pages long. Unusual but engaging are the long stories of the birth and life of Pope Gregory (#81) and of Placidus, who later becomes Eustacius (#110). He has a wild Job-like life, spiced up with elements from the story of Androcles and also with a fiery furnace like Nebuchadnezzar's. Story #28, with its clever ploy of the weeping dog, is strong; it is repeated later in literature, perhaps in the Heptameron. The curiosities also include several stories based on alphabet word-games (e.g. #42). Story #56, The Envying Merchant and the Prince, is a tour-de-force of macabre exemplification. The most strongly Aesopic stories here are Do Not Drive Away the Flies (#51); Three Truths (#58); Three Crowing Cocks (#68);The Blind and the Lame (#71);The Donkey and the Lapdog (#79); AL (#104, but Androcles is a knight turned brigand, and years pass before the story's second phase); The Ungrateful Steward (#119); The Secret Black Crow (#125), which includes a strange new ending; The Serpent and the Man Once Wronged (#141); The Archer and the Nightingale (#167); and The Frozen Serpent (#174). Tales with Aesopic touches, background, or a history of inclusion among fables include #44, 83, 85, 91, 93, 99, and 171. Komroff removes the morals to let the stories stand on their own as literary pieces. In fact, I am surprised at how many are not very good stories. I graded them on this trip through, and there were few grades of A. This edition of Komroff has typos on 52, line 7 aslas: 54, line 1 dewlt; and 88, line 2 befoe.
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Tudor Publishing Company
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Identifier
5063 (Access ID)