SOURCE: Von Kreisler, Nicolai. “Henryson's Visionary Fable: Tradition and Craftsmanship In The Lyoun and the Mous.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language XV no. 3 (fall 1973): 391-403.

In the essay that follows, von Kreisler discusses the dream setting of “The Lyoun and the Mous” and also comments on the political context of the fable.

Among the thirteen lively narratives that comprise the Morall Fabillis, the rendition of the familiar story that Henryson entitles “The Taill of the Lyoun and the Mous” stands out as most innovative. To begin this poem of the royal beast who escapes the hunters' net with the aid of his least subject, Henryson relates in a separate prologue how he met his authority, Aesop, in a dream, and then he records the fable, which is the subject of his dream-vision, as if in Aesop's own words. Both the dream framework and Aesopic narration of his...