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The Lion in Love is a cautionary tale of Greek origin which was counted among Aesop's Fables and is numbered 140 in the Perry Index. [1] Its present title is a translation of the one given by Jean de la Fontaine after he retold it in his fables. Since then it has been treated frequently by artists. It has also acquired idiomatic force and as such has been used as the title of several literary works.
A lion falls in love with a peasant's daughter and asks the father's permission to marry her. Unwilling to refuse outright, the man sets the condition that the animal should first have its claws clipped and its teeth filed. When the lion complies, the man clubs it to death, or in milder accounts simply drives it away, since it now can no longer defend itself.
Though the story was included in early collections of Aesop's fables, including those of Babrius and Aphthonius of Antioch, its earliest relation is as part of a war leader's speech in the 1st century BCE Bibliotheca historica of Diodorus Siculus, where it is described without ascription as an "old story". [2] Significantly, the fable is interpreted there as a warning against ever letting down one's guard where an enemy is concerned and Aphthonius too comments that "If you follow the advice of your enemies, you will run into danger".
By the time the fable reappeared in Europe after the Renaissance it was being reinterpreted as a caution against being led astray by passion. The Neo-Latin poem Leo procus of Hieronymus Osius ends with the reflection "By love the cleverest, sometimes, / are led astray, the strongest tamed". [3] A century later, Francis Barlow's illustration of what he titles Leo Amatorius is summed up in the couplet "Love asailes with powerfull charmes, / and both our Prudence and our strength disarmes". [4] La Fontaine titled his poem Le lion amoureux and ended with the sentiment "O love, O love, mastered by you, / prudence we well may bid adieu" (IV.1). [5]
One of the factors influencing this interpretation was the development of the Renaissance emblem associated with the Latin sentiment Amor vincit omnia (Love conquers all). In a medal struck in 1444, Pisanello pictures a lion fawning on winged Cupid. [6] This was reprised in the Emblemata amatoria (1607/8) of Daniël Heinsius as a Cupid astride a rampant lion, [7] accompanied in one edition by a poem in French in which Love boasts that "the lion is conquered by my taming arrow". [8] The interpretation is that even the fiercest nature can be tamed by love, but the reference to a lion inevitably brings to mind the well known instance of his fatal subjection to love in the fable. In illustrations during the following centuries, the lion fawns on his lady love in the same attitude as in Pisanello's medal, as for instance on the plate from the La Fontaine series of Keller & Guerin at the Luneville potteries. [9]
Illustrations of the fable were rare before the 19th century. In the 18th, it was the subject of an Aubusson tapestry to a design of Jean-Baptiste Oudry, [10] and in England it was painted during the 1790s by James Northcote. [11]
It was not until the 19th century that artists confronted the questionable morality of the human actors in the fable and treated the woman as more than a passive bystander. The change in attitude is evident in Camille Roqueplan's painting of 1836 which makes the lion's love-object the one who clips its claws (see left), a detail absent from the text. Its iconography is reminiscent of the story of Delilah's betrayal of Samson and especially those paintings in which Samson's head rests on her lap while she crops his hair and attackers lurk in the background. [12] Another treatment of the theme is the 1851 statue by Guillaume Geefs in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, although in this case the lady is sitting on the lion's back as she works with her scissors. [13]
The subject also lends itself to satirical interpretation and was chosen for this purpose by the Japanese caricaturist Kawanabe Kyōsai for his Isoho Monogotari series (1870–80). [14] More recently Diane Victor has used it in her lithograph "The lion who loved the lady" (2011) to comment on the relationship between China and Africa. [15] [16] In other depictions too, as in paintings by Gustave Moreau, [17] Adolphe Weisz (1838 – after 1900) [18] and Henri Courcelles-Dumont (1856–1918), [19] the woman flaunts her naked body in a show of power over the beast.
There were other sculptural treatments of the fable, including the statue by Hippolyte Maindron in the Parc de Blossac, Poitiers, erected in 1883, although the original plaster model was shown at the 1869 Salon. [20] Smaller replicas of Geefs' statue were made for sale after it appeared at The Great Exhibition and the Exposition Universelle (1855), [21] and in 1885 Mintons issued a similar Parian ware figure of its own. [22] Spode had already used an illustration of the fable on its Aesop series of table china, dating from 1830, [23] and from 1900 the Zanesville Tile Company reproduced the Walter Crane illustration from Baby's Own Aesop (1887) on its product. [24]
In the world of music, the fable was twice made the subject of a ballet under its French title. Karol Rathaus' version (Op. 42b) was first performed by the Ballet Russe in 1937 [25] and in 1942 Francis Poulenc made it an episode in his ballet suite Les Animaux modèles (FP 111). [26] It is also one of the 'short operas' in Ned Rorem's Fables (1971). [27]
The title of the fable, both in English and French, was eventually to have an almost idiomatic force in reference to the pacification by love of the dominant male nature. As such it was given to two paintings which showed a soldier helping a young woman with her needlework. Abraham Solomon's, exhibited at the Royal Academy summer exhibition of 1858, depicted a grey-haired warrior in uniform trying to thread the needle of a lady seated beside him on a sofa, [28] while the one by Emile Pierre Metzmacher (1815–1905), exhibited at the Exposition Universelle (1889), was a period piece in which a younger soldier tries his hand at tapestry. [29]
In literature the title was used for depiction of the emotional relationships of social lions. The novella by Frédéric Soulié (1839) [30] is a comedy of manners that depicts the unequal love of a well-born dandy and its tragic outcome. [31] Eugène Scribe's contemporary light-hearted comedy of 1840 [32] is set in England, where a lord falls in love with his servant and, after attempting seduction and force, agrees to marry her. [33] The verse drama by François Ponsard, first staged in 1866, [34] was set in 1796, in the period following the Reign of Terror in France. A hero of the armies of the Revolution falls in love with a Royalist aristocrat whose father is plotting against the Republic and there is a struggle between duty and love on both sides. Its subtle dynamics encompass far more than 'trimming the hero's claws and filing his teeth', as a contemporary reviewer noted. [35] Later examples of the title's use in English include the play by Shelagh Delaney (1960), about the marriage between a frustrated man and an aggressive woman, and a romance by Elizabeth Lapthorne (2004). [36]
The method for pacifying the lion also gave rise in the 19th century to the allied English idioms of 'to draw someone's teeth' [37] and 'to cut, clip or pare someone's claws'. Their association with the fable is demonstrated by both being used together in a news report of 1831. [38] Both have the meaning of rendering someone harmless.
Aesop's Fables, or the Aesopica, is a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and storyteller who lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 564 BCE. Of varied and unclear origins, the stories associated with his name have descended to modern times through a number of sources and continue to be reinterpreted in different verbal registers and in popular as well as artistic media.
"The Tortoise and the Hare" is one of Aesop's Fables and is numbered 226 in the Perry Index. The account of a race between unequal partners has attracted conflicting interpretations. The fable itself is a variant of a common folktale theme in which ingenuity and trickery are employed to overcome a stronger opponent.
The Fox and the Grapes is one of Aesop's Fables, numbered 15 in the Perry Index. The narration is concise and subsequent retellings have often been equally so. The story concerns a fox that tries to eat grapes from a vine but cannot reach them. Rather than admit defeat, he states they are undesirable. The expression "sour grapes" originated from this fable.
The story and metaphor of The Dog in the Manger derives from an old Greek fable which has been transmitted in several different versions. Interpreted variously over the centuries, the metaphor is now used to speak of one who spitefully prevents others from having something for which one has no use. Although the story was ascribed to Aesop's Fables in the 15th century, there is no ancient source that does so.
The Miser and his Gold is one of Aesop's Fables that deals directly with human weaknesses, in this case the wrong use of possessions. Since this is a story dealing only with humans, it allows the point to be made directly through the medium of speech rather than be surmised from the situation. It is numbered 225 in the Perry Index.
The North Wind and the Sun is one of Aesop's Fables. It is type 298 in the Aarne–Thompson folktale classification. The moral it teaches about the superiority of persuasion over force has made the story widely known. It has also become a chosen text for phonetic transcriptions.
The lion's share is an idiomatic expression which now refers to the major share of something. The phrase derives from the plot of a number of fables ascribed to Aesop and is used here as their generic title. There are two main types of story, which exist in several different versions. Other fables exist in the East that feature division of prey in such a way that the divider gains the greater part - or even the whole. In English the phrase used in the sense of nearly all only appeared at the end of the 18th century; the French equivalent, le partage du lion, is recorded from the start of that century, following La Fontaine's version of the fable.
The Farmer and the Stork is one of Aesop's Fables which appears in Greek in the collections of both Babrius and Aphthonius and has differed little in the telling over the centuries. The story relates how a farmer plants traps in his field to catch the cranes and geese that are stealing the seeds he has sown. When he checks the traps, he finds among the other birds a stork, who pleads to be spared because it is harmless and has taken no part in the theft. The farmer replies that since it has been caught in the company of thieves, it must suffer the same fate. The moral of the story, which is announced beforehand in the oldest texts, is that associating with bad companions will lead to bad consequences.
The Lion, the Bear and the Fox is one of Aesop's Fables that is numbered 147 in the Perry Index. There are similar story types of both eastern and western origin in which two disputants lose the object of their dispute to a third.
The Cock, the Dog and the Fox is one of Aesop's Fables and appears as number 252 in the Perry Index. Although it has similarities with other fables where a predator flatters a bird, such as The Fox and the Crow and Chanticleer and the Fox, in this one the cock is the victor rather than victim. There are also Eastern variants of this story.
The Two Pots is one of Aesop's Fables and numbered 378 in the Perry Index. The fable may stem from proverbial sources.
Speaking of The Snake and the Crab in Ancient Greece was the equivalent of the modern idiom, 'Pot calling the kettle black'. A fable attributed to Aesop was eventually created about the two creatures and later still yet another fable concerning a crab and its offspring was developed to make the same point.
The Man with Two Mistresses is one of Aesop's Fables that deals directly with human foibles. It is numbered 31 in the Perry Index.
The Fox and the Woodman is a cautionary story against hypocrisy included among Aesop's Fables and is numbered 22 in the Perry Index. Although the same basic plot recurs, different versions have included a variety of participants.
The Ass Carrying an Image is one of Aesop's Fables and is numbered 182 in the Perry Index. It is directed against human conceit but at one period was also used to illustrate the argument in Canon Law that the sacramental act is not diminished by the priest's unworthiness.
The classical legend that the swan sings at death was incorporated into one of Aesop's Fables, numbered 399 in the Perry Index. The fable also introduces the proverbial antithesis between the swan and the goose that gave rise to such sayings as ‘Every man thinks his own geese are swans’, in reference to blind partiality, and 'All his swans are turned to geese', referring to a reverse of fortune.
"The Lion Grown Old" is counted among Aesop's Fables and is numbered 481 in the Perry Index. It is used in illustration of the insults given those who have fallen from power and has a similar moral to the fable of The dogs and the lion's skin. Parallel proverbs of similar meaning were later associated with it.
The Fly and the Ant is one of Aesop's Fables that appears in the form of a debate between the two insects. It is numbered 521 in the Perry Index.
The man and the lion (disputing) is one of Aesop's Fables and is numbered 284 in the Perry Index. An alternative title is The lion and the statue. The story's moral is that the source of evidence should be examined before it is accepted.
The Lion in Love is an 1836 oil on canvas painting in the Academic-Romantic style by Camille Roqueplan (1800–1855) now in the Wallace Collection in London.
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