Monday 21 November 2016

Since We Have Had The Kittens,

I often look at kitten/cat subjects on the Internet,


and found this decidedly odd cat in a copy of a book featuring Reynard the Fox who was medieval Europe's trickster figure, a nasty but charismatic character who was always in trouble but always able to talk his way out of any retribution, the Reynard stories were (and are) available in several languages and with many variations, this version was translated to English by William Caxton in the late 15th century, Caxton printed his translation himself on his own printing press, one of the first in England, in editing this edition in 1889, Morley modernised the spelling of words still in common use in his day, but did not attempt to modernise the style of the text, back to the cat, his eyes are crossed, and his tongue hangs out and like John and Julie’s cat in the UK is obviously polydactyl to an absurd degree, hopefully our kittens when they grow older will not look anything like this one!


No comments: