III. La zorra y el cuervo
« », , « , , , . , . . , , . , . , . , . , ».
A B1 retelling of medieval Spanish tales
Count Lucanor El conde Lucanor
Don Juan Manuel
This is a retelling of Don Juan Manuel’s El conde Lucanor in modern Spanish, not the original medieval text: a MovaReader adaptation for readers who are working through all the tenses and want a classic of Spanish prose they can read to the end. In the catalog it is B1: about 15,600 words, 12 words per sentence on average. After a short chapter on how the book of 1335 came about, 13 chapters retell 13 of its best-known exemplos, from the fox and the crow to the dean of Santiago and Saladin, each with the count’s question, Patronio’s story and the moral as a short rhymed couplet.
- B1
- 15 617 words
- 3-4 hours
Will this text hold?
A2
Earlier
At A2 the grammar will stop you more than the stories: sentences of 12 words instead of the 9-10 of the A2 shelf, Patronio’s polite advice in the subjunctive (No arriesgue nada que le duela perder), conditions such as si la olla no se hubiera roto, and long conversations retold in reported speech.
A2B1
This text
Right for B1: every tense you are learning in sentences of 12 words, a whole story in each chapter that reads in one sitting, and old words such as deán, alguacil or juglar explained by the text itself.
Check this passageB2
With room to spare
At B2 the retelling reads almost without translation, in 3-4 hours or less. After it come the complete Spanish texts of the B2 shelf, where long words are almost twice as frequent: one in fourteen in Unamuno’s Mist.
Start readingThe average sentence has 12 words, against 9-10 in the Spanish A2 adaptations: 10 in Don Quixote, 9 in Alice in Wonderland. A word of 9 letters or more comes up about once in 27 words, more often than in those two retellings (once in 36 and once in 32), yet only half as often as in Unamuno’s Mist, a complete B2 text with 13 words per sentence and a long word in every fourteen. Many of the long words belong to the stories themselves: vergüenza, respuesta, arzobispo, caballero. This is the first step of the catalog where a MovaReader retelling uses every tense at close to the pace of an original: Patronio advises in the polite subjunctive (No arriesgue nada que le duela perder), the characters weigh what would have happened (si la olla no se hubiera roto), and the count’s talks with his counsellor are often retold in reported speech. The difficulty is even: each of the 14 chapters has 11-13 words per sentence. The Spanish of 1335 itself is far above this level, which is why the book is retold rather than given in full. Hence B1. This is the catalog’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 15 617
- words
- 12
- words in an average sentence
- 3-4
- hours of reading
MovaReader. Wikimedia Commons
What it is about, without the ending
Count Lucanor, a great lord with lands, vassals and endless worries, brings every doubt to his old counsellor Patronio, who seldom gives an order and almost always tells a story instead. A father and his son walk to market with a donkey and try to please everyone they meet on the road. A fox finds a crow with a piece of cheese and starts to praise him. Doña Truhana carries a jar of honey to market and grows rich in her imagination on the way. A dean from Santiago travels to Toledo to learn magic from don Illán and promises him anything once he rises in the Church. Three tricksters offer a king a cloth that, they say, only a true son can see. A young man agrees to marry the fiercest bride in town. A ruined man accepts help from a friend called don Martín, and Saladin travels the world in disguise to answer one woman’s question. How each story ends, and what Patronio advises, is not revealed here.
Compare two places
El conde Lucanor
VI. El deán de Santiago y don Illán, el mago de Toledo
, .
« », . « ».
. . . , . . .
Choose an underlined word.
Flattery built from true facts
The fox says nothing false: the crow’s feathers really are black and glossy. She simply turns every fact into praise. Pero se equivocan mucho: “but they are quite wrong”, the fox’s move from what people say to what she wants the crow to believe. Es lo mejor que pueden ser unos ojos: “it is the best thing eyes can be”. Se alaban is an impersonal se, “are praised” with no one named. Patronio’s warning comes a few lines later: the most dangerous tricks are told with true words.
A small order to remember
Don Illán’s order to the servant looks like a household detail, but keep it in mind. Ten preparadas unas perdices: tener + participle, “have some partridges ready”; the participle agrees with perdices. Hasta que yo te lo mande: after hasta que about the future Spanish uses the subjunctive, “until I tell you”. Parecía que el río Tajo pasaba por encima: imperfect for a picture that lasts. Con qué libros comenzarían: the conditional as the future seen from the past, “which books they would start with”.
Chapters
- IEl conde Lucanor y su consejero Patronio
- IIEl hombre bueno, su hijo y el asno
- IIILa zorra y el cuervo
- IVDoña Truhana y la olla de miel
- VLos dos hombres que comían altramuces
- VIEl deán de Santiago y don Illán, el mago de Toledo
- VIIEl rey y el falso alquimista
- VIIIEl rey moro y sus tres hijos
- IXEl rey de Sevilla y Romaiquía
- XEl rey y los tres pícaros que tejían el paño
- XIEl joven que se casó con una mujer muy brava
- XIIEl hombre que se hizo amigo del diablo
- XIIIEl hombre que puso a prueba a sus amigos
- XIVSaladino y la buena mujer
Translation while you read
The book stays free on every plan. Reader, €1 a month, removes the daily limit on words and sentences.
Reader
€1 a month
Reader translates whole sentences, and here that helps most in Patronio’s advice, where one sentence carries the lesson of a story, as after the fox and the crow: Y tenga por cierto que los engaños más peligrosos son siempre los que se hacen con verdades engañosas.
ReaderIf this book is not the one
All books at this levelBefore you read
Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
A learner adaptation, not the original: MovaReader retold in modern Spanish Don Juan Manuel’s El conde Lucanor (Libro de los ejemplos del conde Lucanor y de Patronio), a book of Castilian prose finished in 1335. Its medieval Spanish is far above B1. The retelling follows the text of the edition by Hermann Knust and Adolf Birch-Hirschfeld (Leipzig, 1900) and keeps 13 of the 51 exemplos of the first part: II, V, VII, X, XI, XX, XXIV, XXX, XXXII, XXXV, XLV, XLVIII and L, after an opening chapter drawn from Don Juan Manuel’s prologue. Each keeps the count’s question, Patronio’s story and his advice, and the moral verses that close every exemplo are rendered as simple modern rhymed couplets. The other 38 exemplos and the later parts of the book, with their proverbs and their short treatise, are left out. The complete text is not in the catalog in any language.
Is there an audiobook?
There is no audio version of this adaptation: MovaReader gives you the text, not a recording. Tap an unfamiliar word and its translation appears next to it; here that will often be a word of the medieval court and church, such as arzobispo, alguacil or juglar.
Can I translate a whole sentence?
The Reader plan translates whole sentences. Here they average 12 words, so you will need it mainly where Patronio sums up his advice in the polite subjunctive, like No se esfuerce ni se arriesgue demasiado por él, and in the rhymed couplets, where the word order bends for the rhyme: Si ayudas mucho a quien no te lo agradece, menos te ayudará cuando en honra crece. The free plan also translates single words, up to a daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
The whole adaptation takes 3-4 hours at the pace of someone who still translates new words. A chapter averages about 1,100 words, or 11-19 minutes of reading; the shortest, about doña Truhana and the bitter lupins, have some 500 words, and the longest, about Saladin, about 2,300. Each chapter is a complete story, so one story a sitting works well.
Where does the text get easier?
The difficulty is even: each of the 14 chapters averages 11-13 words per sentence, so there is no easier stretch. Only long words vary noticeably: in chapter II, about the man, his son and the donkey, one word in 36 has 9 letters or more, while in the opening chapter and in the last one, XIV, about Saladin, it is about one in 18-19, most often vergüenza.
Will my place in the book be saved?
Yes, once you sign in: the reader keeps your last place and the words you opened, so next time you carry on from there. The contents on this page also take you straight to any story, say VI, “El deán de Santiago y don Illán, el mago de Toledo”, the tale of the magician from Toledo.