This workshop offers a comparative perspective between Kalīla and Dimna in its various manifestations and the medieval French fox novel Roman de Renart.

The first session sees Jodie Miller presenting findings of her research on the Roman de Renart (late-twelfth to mid-thirteenth century CE), and notably the fox’s trial, a frequently repeated narrative unit in the Old French cycle. An overview of the trial scene’s transmission and examples of its variations in the Old French cycle is rounded up by a short discussion of its changes in translations from the late-twelfth century onwards. Jodie Miller is a Ph.D. Candidate in French and Francophone Studies at the University of California-Los Angeles. Her dissertation focuses on the Roman de Renart and the philosophical underpinnings of trickery and considers convergences with the Kalila and Dimna fables.

In correspondence to the French “Fox at Court” example, the second session focusses on the chapter “The Investigation of Dimna’s Case,” which among all the chapters of Kalīla and Dimna is considered the most obvious insertion by Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ in his translation of the work. The chapter is a sequel of the intrigue committed by the jackal protagonist Dimna in the first chapter “The Lion and the Ox.” The Dimna chapter deals extensively with historical legal practices and dynamics of legal and moral reasoning.

Johannes Stephan shows how the Dimna chapter was used by Arabic readers between the third/ninth and the seventh/thirteenth century by means of a selection of transmitted quotes and their contexts.

Beatrice Gruendler presents the range of variation within the textual transmission of the Dimna chapter, notably regarding its moral teachings and the stories embedded – which serves as an ideal example for the openness of the book’s textual tradition.

Theodore S. Beers examines Naṣr Allāh Munshī’s adaptation of the Arabic workfrom the sixth/twelfth century, which can be regarded as one of the founding texts of Persian artistic prose, and therefore focus on the trial chapter as a case study of Naṣr Allāh’s style.

For online attendance please contact Dr. J. Stephan for the WebEx link: johannes.stephan@fu-berlin.de