Konstantin V. Dushenko, PhD in History, Senior Researcher, Institute of Scientific Information for Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Nakhimovsky Avenue, 51/21, 117418, Moscow, Russia. ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7708-1505
The ass painted green first appeared in the Neo-Latin prose fable “On the Widow and the Green Ass” by the Italian humanist Abstemius (1495). Its plot goes back to an early Renaissance novella about a skinned horse. From the 16 th to the 19 th centuries, prose and verse adaptations of the Green Ass story appeared in at least ten languages, including Russian. The greatest number of these were produced in Germany, Italy, and France. Adaptations of Abstemius’s fable form two main groups. In the first, the principal characters, apart from the ass, are a widow and her adviser (a maid, neighbour, friend, or godmother). In the second group, there is one main character, namely the ass’s owner, who is sometimes portrayed as a carnival jester and sometimes as a mercenary charlatan. This plot was enriched with new motifs in another anonymous Italian novella, “The Wedding Serenade Interrupted by the Green Ass” (presumably first half of the 17 th century). A rough music in front of the newlyweds’ house plays an important role here, followed by a comic debate about the green ass. The same motifs appeared in a number of fables of the 18 th – early 19 th centuries. In Germany and Russia, one could learn about the green ass not only from fables in the native language, but also from school textbooks, which included the Neo-Latin fable “The Green Ass” of F.-J. Desbillons (1754). On occasion, the “green ass” appeared as a metaphor or nickname, meaning “rarity, curiosity” as well as “complete / learned fool.” The Appendix presents the novella “The Wedding Serenade…” and eight others adaptations of the plot of the Green Ass translated from six languages.
Renaissance novella; charivari; Abstemius; B. Valdis; C. Gellert; I.I. Khemnitzer; F. von Hagedorn.
15.08.2025
10.09.2025
Dushenko, K.V. “The Green Ass in European Fable and Novella (15 th – 19 th Centuries)”. Literaturovedcheskii zhurnal, no. 4(70), 2025, pp. 147–188. (In Russ.)
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