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David
Marsh, trans.
Renaissance Fables:
Aesopic Prose by Leon Battista Alberti, Bartolomeo Scala, Leonardo Da
Vinci, Bernardino Baldi.
Arizona: MRTS, 2004.
MR 260.
376pp.
Hardback.
ISBN 866983031,.
Publisher's
recommended price $35/£30
An important genre of
Renaissance literature was the philosophical Aesopic fable, a tradition
initiated by Leon Battista Alberti, whose Apologi centum, a pithy collection
written in just nine days (16-24 December 1437), spawned numerous
imitations. Alberti’s model was imitated in the Latin "centuries" of
Bartolomeo Scala's Apologi centum
(1481) and Apologorum liber secundus
(1488-92), and of Lorenzo Astemio's two Hecatomythia (1495, 1505). Alberti
also inspired apologues written in Italian prose: Leonardo da Vinci's
scattered favole (ca.
1485-95) and Bernardino Baldi's 1582 Cento
apologhi (first published in 1590).
Based on recent critical editions, Renaissance
Fables offers the first English versions of fables by Alberti,
Scala, and Baldi, as well as a new translation of Leonardo's fables. While the fables themselves
are often epigrammatically short, they engage large issues of human
society and morality by means of symbols and situations borrowed from
the world of nature. Extensive textual notes identify the authors;
literary and scientific sources and provide cross-references that aid
in our understanding of these often enigmatic works. Readers with an
interest in Renaissance allegory, emblems, and philosophy, or in
artists like Alberti and Leonardo, will find fascinating connections
with their own disciplines.
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