The Lion in Love (fable)

A lion falls in love with a peasant's daughter and asks the father's permission to marry her. Unwilling to refuse outright, the man sets the condition that the animal should first have its claws clipped and its teeth filed. When the lion complies, the man clubs it to death, or in milder accounts simply drives it away, since it now can no longer defend itself.

Though the story was included in early collections of Aesop's fables, including those of Babrius and Aphthonius of Antioch, its earliest relation is as part of a war leader's speech in the 1st century BCE Bibliotheca historica of Diodorus Siculus, where it is described without ascription as an "old story".G. J. Van Dijk, Ainoi, Logoi, Mythoi, Brill 1997 [https://books.google.com/books?id=QKQFJduPIdcC&q=lion&pg=PA280 pp. 280–283] Significantly, the fable is interpreted there as a warning against ever letting down one's guard where an enemy is concerned and Aphthonius too comments that "If you follow the advice of your enemies, you will run into danger".

By the time the fable reappeared in Europe after the Renaissance it was being reinterpreted as a caution against being led astray by passion. The Neo-Latin poem Leo procus of Hieronymus Osius ends with the reflection "By love the cleverest, sometimes, / are led astray, the strongest tamed".Phryx Aesopus, [http://mythfolklore.net/aesopica/osius/216.htm fable 216] A century later, Francis Barlow's illustration of what he titles Leo Amatorius is summed up in the couplet "Love asailes with powerfull charmes, / and both our Prudence and our strength disarmes".{{cite web|url=http://mythfolklore.net/aesopica/barlow/109.htm|title=109. Leo amatorius (1687), illustrated by Francis Barlow|work=mythfolklore.net}} La Fontaine titled his poem Le lion amoureux and ended with the sentiment "O love, O love, mastered by you, / prudence we well may bid adieu" (IV.1).{{cite web|url=http://www.la-fontaine-ch-thierry.net/fourliongarden.htm|title=the Lion in love, the Shepherd and the sea, the Fly and Ant, the Gardener and his Lord|work=la-fontaine-ch-thierry.net}}

One of the factors influencing this interpretation was the development of the Renaissance emblem associated with the Latin sentiment Amor vincit omnia (Love conquers all). In a medal struck in 1444, Pisanello pictures a lion fawning on winged Cupid.{{cite web|url=https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O93542/leonello-deste-medal-pisanello|title=Leonello d'Este|work=vam.ac.uk}} This was reprised in the Emblemata amatoria (1607/8) of Daniël Heinsius as a Cupid astride a rampant lion,{{cite web|url=http://emblems.let.uu.nl/he1608001.html#folio_pbB2b|title=EPU – Daniël Heinsius, Emblemata amatoria (1607/8) – Omnia vincit amor [1]|work=uu.nl}} accompanied in one edition by a poem in French in which Love boasts that "the lion is conquered by my taming arrow".Wikimedia The interpretation is that even the fiercest nature can be tamed by love, but the reference to a lion inevitably brings to mind the well known instance of his fatal subjection to love in the fable. In illustrations during the following centuries, the lion fawns on his lady love in the same attitude as in Pisanello's medal, as for instance on the plate from the La Fontaine series of Keller & Guerin at the Luneville potteries.{{cite web|url=http://www.delcampe.net/page/item/id,74598615,var,DEUX-ASSIETTES--ANCIENNES-LUNEVILLE-KELLER-ET-GUERIN,language,F.html|title=Deux Assiettes Anciennes Luneville Keller et Guerin |work=delcampe.net}}

Illustrations of the fable were rare before the 19th century. In the 18th, it was the subject of an Aubusson tapestry to a design of Jean-Baptiste Oudry,Wikimedia and in England it was painted during the 1790s by James Northcote.{{cite web|url=https://fotki.yandex.ru/next/users/ngasanova70/album/158514/view/453733|title=Яндекс.Фотки}}

File:Roqueplan.lion.in.love.wallace.coll.bbc.jpg's dark interpretation of the fable in the Wallace Collection]]

It was not until the 19th century that artists confronted the questionable morality of the human actors in the fable and treated the woman as more than a passive bystander. The change in attitude is evident in Camille Roqueplan's painting of 1836 which makes the lion's love-object the one who clips its claws (see left), a detail absent from the text. Its iconography is reminiscent of the story of Delilah's betrayal of Samson and especially those paintings in which Samson's head rests on her lap while she crops his hair and attackers lurk in the background.{{cite web|url=http://www.wallacecollection.org/ms/learn/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/Wallace_Teachers_Notes_MythsandLegends_Final.pdf|title=Wallace Teaches Notes Myths and Legends|page=4|website=wallacecollection.org}} Another treatment of the theme is the 1851 statue by Guillaume Geefs in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, although in this case the lady is sitting on the lion's back as she works with her scissors.[http://worldvisitguide.com/oeuvre/photo_ME0000087576.html World Visit Guide]

The subject also lends itself to satirical interpretation and was chosen for this purpose by the Japanese caricaturist Kawanabe Kyōsai for his Isoho Monogotari series (1870–80).{{cite web|url=http://yajifun.tumblr.com/post/25229563478/yamtai-gurafiku-japanese-ukiyo-e-the-lion|title=yajifun貼交帳 (yamtai: gurafiku: Japanese Ukiyo-e: The lion...)|author=Peter Vidani|work=tumblr.com}} More recently Diane Victor has used it in her lithograph "The lion who loved the lady" (2011) to comment on the relationship between China and Africa.{{cite web|url=http://edgie.een.nl/2012/11/the-lion-who-loved-the-lady-by-diane-victor|title=edgie.een.nl|work=een.nl}}{{cite web|url=http://www.art.co.za/dianevictor/2011_46.htm|title=art.co.za – Art in South Africa|work=art.co.za}} In other depictions too, as in paintings by Gustave Moreau,{{cite web|url=http://www.photo.rmn.fr/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&IID=2C6NU00VZ49C|title=Réunion des Musées Nationaux-Grand Palais |work=rmn.fr}} Adolphe Weisz (1838 – after 1900)[https://www.mutualart.com/Artwork/Le-Lion-Amoureux/DE530C248F18517A Mutual Art] and Henri Courcelles-Dumont (1856–1918),{{cite web|url=http://www.photo-arago.fr/Archive/27MQ2J2WE0U5/10/Le-lion-amoureux--2C6NU0XKTRYQ.html|title=Le lion amoureux|work=photo-arago.fr}} the woman flaunts her naked body in a show of power over the beast.

There were other sculptural treatments of the fable, including the statue by Hippolyte Maindron in the Parc de Blossac, Poitiers, erected in 1883, although the original plaster model was shown at the 1869 Salon.Detailed photos are at [http://vdujardin.com/blog/article-le-lion-amoureux-de-maindron-2-59063542 Vdujardin] Smaller replicas of Geefs' statue were made for sale after it appeared at The Great Exhibition and the Exposition Universelle (1855),An example is in the [http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/egallery/object.asp?maker=13360&object=12537&row=1&detail=about Royal Collection] and in 1885 Mintons issued a similar Parian ware figure of its own.{{cite web|url=https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/11508/lot/15|title=Bonhams|work=bonhams.com}} Spode had already used an illustration of the fable on its Aesop series of table china, dating from 1830,{{cite web|url=http://spodeabc.blogspot.co.uk/p/a_14.html|title=Spode ABC: A|work=spodeabc.blogspot.co.uk}} and from 1900 the Zanesville Tile Company reproduced the Walter Crane illustration from Baby's Own Aesop (1887) on its product.{{cite web|url=http://www.rubylane.com/item/1224924-221490713619/Antique-Mosaic-Tile-Company-Tile-Lion|title=Antique Mosaic Tile Company Tile The Lion in Love Zanesville Oh Aesops from easternshoreantiques on Ruby Lane|work=Ruby Lane}}

In the world of music, the fable was twice made the subject of a ballet under its French title. Karol Rathaus' version (Op. 42b) was first performed by the Ballet Russe in 1937{{cite web|url=http://archives.qc.cuny.edu/finding_aids/KarolRathausPapers|title=Karol Rathaus Papers|work=cuny.edu}} and in 1942 Francis Poulenc made it an episode in his ballet suite Les Animaux modèles (FP 111).The music from the orchestral suite is on [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_FQDvb1uqA You Tube] It is also one of the 'short operas' in Ned Rorem's Fables (1971).{{cite web|url=https://www.boosey.com/pages/opera/moreDetails.asp?musicID=4966|title=Ned Rorem – Fables – Opera|work=boosey.com}}

The title of the fable, both in English and French, was eventually to have an almost idiomatic force in reference to the pacification by love of the dominant male nature. As such it was given to two paintings which showed a soldier helping a young woman with her needlework. Abraham Solomon's, exhibited at the Royal Academy summer exhibition of 1858, depicted a grey-haired warrior in uniform trying to thread the needle of a lady seated beside him on a sofa,{{cite web|url=https://fotki.yandex.ru/next/users/ngasanova70/album/158514/view/453732|title=Яндекс.Фотки}} while the one by Emile Pierre Metzmacher (1815–1905), exhibited at the Exposition Universelle (1889), was a period piece in which a younger soldier tries his hand at tapestry.[http://www.pixel-pinxit.com/photos/2014/MD42/r/Copie%20de%2019.jpg Pixel-pinxit]

In literature the title was used for depiction of the emotional relationships of social lions. The novella by Frédéric Soulié (1839){{cite web|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CBpUAAAAYAAJ|title=Le lion amoureux|work=google.co.uk|last1=Soulié|first1=Frédéric|year=1872}} is a comedy of manners that depicts the unequal love of a well-born dandy and its tragic outcome.Walter Scott et la roman frénétique, Paris 1928, [https://books.google.com/books?id=LQlwNSkmQ8sC&dq=%22Lion+amoureux%22+Souli%C3%A9&pg=PA238 pp. 237–238] Eugène Scribe's contemporary light-hearted comedy of 1840{{cite web|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ts4IgfUiNhgC|title=Cicily, ou le lion amoureux|work=google.co.uk|last1=Scribe|first1=Eugène|year=1840}} is set in England, where a lord falls in love with his servant and, after attempting seduction and force, agrees to marry her.Revue de Paris vol. 24, [https://books.google.com/books?id=1bs7AQAAMAAJ&dq=%22Lion+amoureux%22++Scribe&pg=RA2-PA206 pp. 206–207] The verse drama by François Ponsard, first staged in 1866,{{cite web|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=y_1TAAAAYAAJ|title=Le lion amoureux|work=google.co.uk|last1=Ponsard|first1=François|year=1866}} was set in 1796, in the period following the Reign of Terror in France. A hero of the armies of the Revolution falls in love with a Royalist aristocrat whose father is plotting against the Republic and there is a struggle between duty and love on both sides. Its subtle dynamics encompass far more than 'trimming the hero's claws and filing his teeth', as a contemporary reviewer noted.Review by Saint-René Taillandier in the Revue des Deux Mondes, 1866, vol. 61 [https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Th%C3%A9%C3%A2tre-Fran%C3%A7ais_-_Le_Lion_amoureux,_de_M._Ponsard pp. 791–803] Later examples of the title's use in English include the play by Shelagh Delaney (1960), about the marriage between a frustrated man and an aggressive woman, and a romance by Elizabeth Lapthorne (2004).{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YDCoJK8d9o4C|title=Lion in Love|isbn=9781843607595|last1=Lapthorne|first1=Elizabeth|year=2004}}

The method for pacifying the lion also gave rise in the 19th century to the allied English idioms of 'to draw someone's teeth'E. Cobham Brewer 1810–1897. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1898, [http://www.bartleby.com/81/16307.html His teeth are drawn] and 'to cut, clip or pare someone's claws'. Their association with the fable is demonstrated by both being used together in a news report of 1831.London & Paris Observer, [https://books.google.com/books?id=BjVNAAAAcAAJ&dq=%22pare+his+claws%22+idiom&pg=PA257 #575, 24 April, 1836] Both have the meaning of rendering someone harmless.

{{reflist|2}}

• [https://www.flickr.com/search/?sort=relevance&text=leo%20amatorius Illustrations from books from the 17th–19th centuries]
• [http://ysopet.free.fr/galerie_fables.php?ch_titre=04#1 Gustave Doré prints]

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Category:Aesop's Fables

Category:La Fontaine's Fables

Category:Lions in literature