This essay takes into consideration some of the literary intertexts of the medieval fairy tale-like poem 'Asinarius' in order to arrive at a comic-parodic reading. Among these are Simon Aurea Capra's 'Ylias', Vergil's 'Aeneid', Nigel of Longchamp's 'Speculum stultorum'', as well as a series of textual and iconographic variations on the proverbial theme of the 'ass and the lyre'
