The Pig War (original Latin title: Pugna Porcorum) is a Latin poem written by John Placentius (Jan Leo Struyven), a Flemish Dominican friar, under the pseudonym Publius Porcius.
— John Placentius, epigraph to The Pig WarThe Pig War started out as a satire of student life in Leuven and was initially meant for a local audience in Catholic Belgium but, soon after being published, it also achieved popularity in Germany and elsewhere.
In the late 19th century, English literary journals periodically rediscovered The Pig War, and it is possible that, in the 20th century, George Orwell knew or knew of it when he set out to write Animal Farm, an allegorical novella with many similarities with The Pig War.
[1] A new edition of The Pig War by Michael Fontaine appeared in 2019, published by the Paideia Institute Press and accompanied by an English translation.
[3] In 2021, the Dutch writer Gerard Stout adapted The Pig War into a chapter of his novel Joseph: boetprediker: E.J.