Il punto sul titolo e le morali finali del Libro de los gatos

Abstract

The article first presents the state of the art regarding the hypotheses on the debated title of the Libro de los gatos in as much detail as possible, grouping them into different categories: arbitrary title and isolated hypothesis, figurative hypothesis, hypothesis of a Latin derivation, of a palaeographical error, of Semitic languages, of an Indian derivation and, finally, hypothesis that, in our opinion and at the moment, seems to be the most likely. In the second part, it concentrates on the expansions of the final moralizations of the collection, present in numerous exempla throughout the text and considered by most critics to be originals of the Spanish translator, illustrating how some final moralizations, on the contrary, are abbreviated with respect to his Latin source, in particular with respect to the ms. Corpus Christi 441 of Cambridge, considered the closest in order and content to the Libro de los gatos. In this way, the analysis hopes to contribute to the hypothesis that the Spanish text we possess (ms. 1182 of the "Biblioteca Nacional" in Madrid) is in fact only a copy of a translation derived from an older manuscript of Odo of Cheriton, in which these variants may already have been present.