Foal Language: Animals in the 'Roman de Fauvel'

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm (1945)

These are remarkable times indeed. If George Orwell could see some of the unfortunate events transpiring in the world today, he might facepalm before rolling over in his grave. Interestingly, there appears to be something persistently animalistic about politics. 

Consider, for instance, the plethora of references to animals in public discourse. Last year, Hillary Clinton called Donald Trump the “donkey of the decade”.​ People have commented on Theresa May’s supposed resemblance to certain characters from Jungle Book; and the right-wing National Front party of France has been equated to vultures by some. Although these allegations are obviously ‘fake news’, they show just how salient this repertoire of animalistic language is in politics.

Comic by Adin Dingwall

However, this is not the first time that politics has become so ‘beastly’. I’d like to draw your attention to a remarkable manuscript from the early fourteenth century, the Roman de Fauvel (1316). The volume satirises the French king Philip IV ‘the Fair’, and it serves as an admonishment to king Philip V who inherited the Crown in 1317. In the first book of Fauvel, Lady Fortune decides to take the horse Fauvel (whose name is an acronym referring to the Vices Flattery, Avarice, Vileness, Variability, Envy, and Laxity) from his stable, and she places him in charge of the royal palace, similar to how the Roman emperor Caligula supposedly made his horse a minister. Unlike Caligula’s horse, Fauvel uses this power to upend the balance of the nation, heralding even the very Apocalypse. Yet the people who have the power to stop him (such as royalty, nobility, the clergy, etc.) want nothing more than to… pet him? For, as the story goes, “there was not a person who was not preparing to gently curry Fauvel" (N'i a nul qui ne s'appareille / De torchier Fauvel doucement).

Fortune removes Fauvel from the stables (Fauvel, f. 1r).

As if the events from the first book weren’t tragically hilarious enough, the story continues in a second book in which Fauvel asks for Lady Fortune’s hand in marriage so he can rule forever. However, being the strong independent woman that she is, Lady Fortune rejects his proposal and sends him home with Lady Vain Glory as his ‘consolation bride’ instead. While this infernal marriage spawns more inhuman offspring, a tournament happens in which the Virtues defeat the Vices, implying that order can finally return to the disordered world.

Ultimately, the story seems to carry a potent source of reassurance: Lady Fortune is fickle; she may elevate someone incompetent to a high position one day, and drag them down the next. This simple wisdom that every leader, however incompetent, must inevitably leave the political stage at some point could have been a modicum of reassurance in the turbulent France of the early fourteenth-century. Perhaps it may even instil a fragile sense of hope in many of us now.

Sven Gins

Would you like Sven Gins to reveal more about his ongoing research into the curious manuscript that is the Roman de Fauvel? Please register here to secure your seat. ​