"It is often said that the medieval Spanish Bestiary has been lost: no Latin manuscripts of the Physiologus or the Bestiary have so far been found, and there are no surviving manuscripts of any version in Castilian. ... [The] famous encyclopedic work of Brunetto Latini, [is] the Livres dou tresor, written in French in the last half of the thirteenth century. The Tresors contains a comprehensive Bestiary, complete in its makeup, and characterized by considerable textual fidelity (with this important exception: it is practically devoid of the Christian moralization to which so much of the usual Bestiary is dedicated). Brunetto's magnum opus was extremely popular in medieval Spain, with many surviving Castilian mss; therefore we do, in fact, have a medieval Spanish Bestiary, the text of which is reproduced here. For the moment, it is the medieval Castilian Bestiary; its importance in literary and cultural history is obvious, and the text itself contains readings which would suggest a number of improvements in the text of the original French, as we see it in the extant editions. Neither of these matters do I wish to pursue here; rather, it is my purpose to appraise the animal lore seen in the Tresors and its Spanish translation, and place it within the textual history of the Bestiary." - Baldwin

Includes a complete edition of the bestiary portion of the Tresors.

23 pp. introduction, 69 pp. edition, list of animals and plants, glossary.

Language: English / Spanish

ISBN: 0-85989-193-3; LCCN: 84111938; LC: PQ1489.L24L5181982