El libro de Calila e Dimna (1251). Edición nueva de los dos manuscritos castellanos, con una introducción intercultural y un análisis lexicográfico árabe-español

Calila e Digna is one of the most famous and most important books of the world history of literature. By the end of the Middle Ages, it had been translated into more than forty languages. Calila e Digna is a mirror of princes which traveled in a very complex way from India towards the West where it was translated from Arabic into Old Spanish in 1251 by the later king Alfono X. The first part of the present study deals with the history of this collection of fables considering first and foremost all versions relevant for the Old Spansish translation. In this context, the Iberian branch of translations is the most important one. The two existing Old Spanish manuscripts receive special attention as far as the date of their composition and the mutual relations are concerned. The second part of the study comprises a new edition of these two Old Spanish manuscripts of Calila e Digna. The edition is presented in two columns, facilitating thus the comparison between the two manuscripts. Three Arabic, one Hebrew and one Latin version help us to solve the philological problems of the text, the dark passages and the variants. The last part consists of a semantic analysis of a part of the vocabulary. The words selected are compared with the Arabic model and, in some cases, with the above mentioned Hebrew and Latin versions. The information obtained by this comparison helps us to widen our understanding of Old Spanish semantics. All arabisms and all animal names have been taken into account in this analysis.