Aesop's Fables Research Articles

Grand Allusions: Vergil in Phaedrus

This article focuses on two allusions to Vergil in the opening of the third book of Phaedrus’ Aesopic fables (3.Prol.) and suggests that Vergilian poetry plays a surprisingly central role in Phaedrus’ reflections on the nature and purpose of his poetic project. By linking his own avowedly humble poetry to the Aeneid and Eclogues, Phaedrus draws attention to some unexpected points of contact with Vergil; but he also quite clearly presents himself as a relatively unimportant poet who has had a particularly difficult time finding acceptance in Rome. The engagements with Vergil thus provide contexts for Phaedrus to highlight a crucial dimension of his poetic identity: the Roman fabulist expressed grand ambition but insisted that his inventiveness and sophistication would ultimately do nothing to improve his position on the margins of Roman literary culture.

The Research of Narrative Characteristic of Aesop's Fables in The Child's Paper

The Research of Narrative Characteristic of Aesop's Fables in The Child's Paper

Plato's animals: gadflies, horses, swans, and other philosophical beasts

Editors' Introduction: Plato's Menagerie Part I. The Animal of Fable and Myth 1. Making Music with Aesop's Fables in the Phaedo / Heidi Northwood 2. Talk to the Animals: On the Myth of Cronos in the Statesman / David Farrell Krell Part II. Socrates as muops and nark 3. American Gadfly: Plato and the Problem of Metaphor / Michael Naas 4. Till Human Voices Wake Us and We Drown: The Aporia-fish in the Meno / Thomas Thorp Part III. The Socratic Animal as Truth-Teller and Provocateur 5. We the Bird-Catchers: Receiving the Truth in the Phaedo and the Apology / S. Montgomery Ewegen 6. The Dog on the Fly / H. Peter Steeves Part IV. The Political Animal 7. Taming Horses and Desires: Plato's Politics of Care / Jeremy Bell 8. Who Let the Dogs Out? Tracking the Philosophical Life among the Wolves and Dogs of the Republic / Christopher Long Part V. The (En)gendered Animal 9. The City of Sows and Sexual Differentiation in the Republic / Marina McCoy 10. Animality and Sexual Difference in the Timaeus / Sara Brill Part VI. The Philosophical Animal 11. Animal Sacrifice in Plato's Later Methodology / Holly Moore 12. The Animals That Therefore We Were? Aristophanes's Double-Creatures and the Question of Origins / Drew A. Hyland Part VII. Animals and the Afterlife 13. Animals and Angels: The Myth of Life as a Whole in Republic 10 / Claudia Baracchi 14. Of Beasts and Heroes: The Promiscuity of Humans and Animals in the Myth of Er / Francisco J. Gonzalez List of Contributors Plato's Animals Index Name and Subject Index

Children's understanding of Aesop's fables: relations to reading comprehension and theory of mind.

Two studies examined children’s developing understanding of Aesop’s fables in relation to reading comprehension and to theory of mind. Study 1 included 172 children from Junior Kindergarten through Grade 6 in a school-wide examination of the relation between reading comprehension skills and understanding of Aesop’s fables told orally. Study 2 examined the relation between theory of mind and fables understanding among 186 Junior (4-year-old) and Senior (5-year-old) Kindergarten children. Study 1 results showed a developmental progression in fables understanding with children’s responses becoming increasingly decontextualized as they were able to extract the life lesson. After general vocabulary, passage comprehension predicted fables understanding. Study 2 results showed a relation between young children’s theory of mind development and their understanding of fables. After general vocabulary, second-order theory of mind predicted children’s fables understanding. Findings point to the importance of developing mental state awareness in children’s ability to judge characters’ intentions and to understand the deeper message embedded in fables.

From the Pages of Aesop's Fables.

The article discusses research published in the journal "Proceedings of the Royal Society B" which suggests that the Australian birds known as brown thornbills use their hawk alarm calls and mimic those of other species in order to discourage the predator bird known as the pied currawong from attacking brown thornbill nestlings. According to biologist Branislav Igic, the mimicked calls may help to persuade the currawongs that a hawk is really present.

Investigating animal cognition with the Aesop's Fable paradigm: Current understanding and future directions

The Aesop's Fable paradigm – in which subjects drop stones into tubes of water to obtain floating out-of-reach rewards – has been used to assess causal understanding in rooks, crows, jays and human children. To date, the performance of corvids suggests that they can recognize the functional properties of a variety of objects including size, weight and solidity, and they seem to be more capable of learning from causal information than arbitrary information. However, 2 alternative explanations for their performance have yet to be ruled out. The perceptual-motor feedback hypothesis suggests that subjects may attend solely to the movement of the reward, repeating actions which bring the reward closer, while the object-bias hypothesis suggests that subjects could pass certain tasks by preferring to handle objects that resemble natural stones. Here we review our current understanding of performance on the Aesop's Fable tasks, and suggest that studies controlling for feedback and object preferences will help us determine exactly what animals understand about the cause and effect of water displacement.

Contributions to Anatolian History and Numismatics 11. Eagle omens: Foundations of Cities and Cults at the behest of Zeus

Bu makale, hem antik kaynaklarda hem de sikkeler uzerindeki betimlemelerde sikca karsilastigimiz bir mitologem (mitoloji icindeki temel bir motif) ile ilgilidir. Ne yazik ki bu mitologemin sikkeler uzerindeki betimlemeleri genellikle ustunkoru gecilmis, tanimlanamamis ya da hatali yorumlanmistir. Bu yuzden bu yazi numizmatlar icin oldugu kadar tarihcilerin de dikkatlerini bu sikkelere vermelerine yardimci olabilir. Soz konusu mitologem kentlerin kurulusu ile ilgilidir: Zeus tarafindan gonderilen bir kartal gokyuzunden asagi suzulur, bir altar uzerinde yakilan bazi kurban etlerini ve kemiklerini kapar ve bunlari Zeus'un o kurban sunusunu yapan kisi tarafindan kent kurulmasini istedigi bir yere goturur. Kurban eti calan kartal betimlemesi oldukca eskidir ve eldeki veriler, bilgisini kokeni kismen Yakindogu geleneklerine uzanan Aisopos (Ezop) masallarindan edinen Yunan sairi Arkhilokhos'a kadar geri gitmektedir. Bununla birlikte, kent kurulusu ile baglantili olan bu mi­tologem ozellikle Hellenistik Donem'de kullanilmistir. Bir sekilde Iskenderiye'nin Buyuk Iskender tarafindan Misir yakinlarinda kurulmasi model olusturabilir, cunku sonrasinda benzer hikayeler olusturulup yayilmistir. Buyuk Iskender'in yasadigi donemde bile zaten yaygin olan Iskenderiye'nin yerel (Patria) oykuleri, Iskender'in kurban eti calan bir kartal tarafindan, bilinmeyen bir donemden beri Serapis'in tapinim gordugu bir yere yonlendirildigini soylemektedir. Kendi kultunun kurulusu ile Iskenderiye'nin kurulusu tamamlanmistir: Iskenderiye koruyucu tanricasina sahip olmustu. Kent kurulusuna iliskin bir baska hikaye, muhtemelen tarihsel olmamakla birlikte, Aleksandreia Troas'ta ortaya cikmistir. Ilginc bir sekilde Zeus tarafindan degil de, yerel tanri Apollon Smintheus tarafindan gonderilen bir kartal, Iskender'i bu Aleksandreia'yi kurdugu yere getirmistir. Bir kurbanin uyluk kemikleri uzerine tuneyen bir kartal, Phrygia kentleri Blaundos ve Amorion'un sikkeleri uzerinde betimlenmistir. Bu, yerel inanisin bu kentlerin kurulusunu Zeus'in kartalinin gorunmesiyle iliskilendirdigini kesinlestirmektedir. Her iki durumda da Buyuk Iskender bu kentlerin kurucusu olabilir, fakat bu tam olarak acik degildir. Buyuk Iskender ornegi kisa bir sure sonra Seleukos kralliklari tarafindan kentlerin kurulusu hakkinda olusturulan efsanevi hikayeler icin kullanildi. Syria'­daki Antiokheia, limani Seleukeia Pieria ve yakinindaki Laodikeia'nin, Zeus'un kartallarinin dogru yerlere yonlendirdigi I. Seleukos tarafindan kurulusunun sikkeler uzerine yansitilan edebi anlatilari mevcuttur. Laodikeia orneginde bu mitologem, basarili bir av sonrasindaki kent kurulusu mitologemi ile birlestirilmistir: Kartal buyuk bir yaban domuzunu oldurdukten sonra Seleukos'u bu liman yerlesimini kurmaya yonlendirmistir. Ayrica Karia'daki Antiokheia'nin vatandaslari da kartal mitologemini I. Antiokhos tarafindan yapilandirilan kentlerinin Zeus'un iradesi ile kuruldugunu iddia etmislerdir. Bithynia'nin Hellenistik krallari da, bu tip hikayeleri yaygin bir sekilde kullanmislardir. Kral I. Nikomedes yeni ikametgahi Nikomedeia'yi Zeus tarafindan gonderilen kartalin ve Demeter'in kutsal hayvani olan yilanin onderliginde kurmustur. Ekin tanricasi yeni kentin kuruldugu bolgenin sahibesiydi. Olympos Dagi dibindeki Prusa, basarili bir av sonrasinda ve kartal alameti uzerine Kral I. Prusias tarafindan kurulmustur. Belki de Hellenistik Donem'de dahi krallar degil ama kahramanlar tarafindan kurulmus olan bazi kentler de kartal mitologemini kullanmislardi. Bunlardan birisi, bir kartalin isaretiyle Asur Krali Ninos tarafindan kurulusu hakkindaki Patria an­latilarinin sadece kabartmalarda hala gorulebildigi, fakat bu yazida tartisilan tum paralel anlatilarin yardimiyla bu oykulerin tam olarak anlasilabildigi Karia kenti Aphrodisias'tir. Kucuk bir Lykia kenti olan Arykanda'nin sikkeleri, iki eponym kahraman olan Arys ve Kandys'un bir yaban domuzunu cuvala koyma basarisinin anlatildigi bir kurulus hikayesini yansitmaktadir. Bu iki kahraman domuzun kafasini kurban olarak sunduklarinda, kartal bunu calar ve bu iki kahramanin kendi isimlerini vererek Arykanda'yi kurduklari yere goturur. Kartal hikayesinin kullaniminin Byzantion'da da cok eski bir gelenegi vardir. Patria anlatilari bize Byzantion'un, yeni kenti kurmasi gerektigi kayalik bir yere bir kartal onderliginde giden Trakyali kahraman Byzas tarafindan kuruldugunu anlatan bir efsaneden bahsetmektedir. Daha oncesinde kartal Byzas'in sundugu kurbanin kalbini calmistir. On yuzunde Byzas'in portresinin betimlendigi bir kent sikkesinin arka yuzunde yakinda Byzantion olacak olan kayaliklarin uzerinde oturan bu kartali gostermektedir. Sikke tahrip edilmis ve kucuk dusurulmus olan kente yardimlarindan dolayi “Yeni Byzas” olan Caracalla'nin imparatorlugu surecinde basilmistir. Daha sonra kartal mitologemi Constantinus'un Konstantinopolis'i kurusunda kullanilmistir. Son olarak da, kucuk bir Peloponnesos kenti olan Kleonai'dan bir ornek kartal mitologeminin Yunan anakarasinda da yayildigini gostermektedir. Ayrica makalede bu hikayelerin ne icin kullanildigi ve Yunan kurucularin rasyonel ve efsanevi dusunceyi birbirleriyle nasil birlestir­digi ya da kaynastirdigi konulari da tartisilmaktadir.

RAISING INTEREST IN MALAY CLASSIC LITERATURE IN YOUNG READERS

The interest in reading printed books has tapered off in this digital age as shown by reports of continual loss from many book publishers over the years. What to do to whet reading habits, especially among the young? What are the options in store in book publishing? What can publishing experts predict? What can we say how to whet reading habit? We know that without reader, more publishers will wind up their business. Thus, new ways and outlets have to search. Though Malay hikayat are considered important, they are not interesting. To make them interesting, relevant and acceptable to young readers, publishers must recognize the twin purposes of instruction and delight that have long been accepted as the primary goals of books for children and the fact that they are important and form a distinctive category of readers with separate needs and interests. Only by making the books interesting, relevant and acceptable to them, Malay hikayat can hope to live on. Though physically weak, they are spiritually, emotionally and imaginatively strong. Stories about animals, fantasy and legends are popular with them. They love the illustrated books, cartoons, comics, movies and others on Pak Pandir, Pak Belalang, Singapura Dilanggar Todak, Puteri Gunung Ledang, Hang Tuah dan Hang Jebat. These stories are also among the  nest examples of moral tales that encourage them to focus on self-improvement like Aesop fables, stories from Grimn’s brothers. This means that integration of visual and verbal elements has remained a signi cant feature to attract children. In this paper, we argue that publishers must adapt stories from Malay classical literature to illustrated books, movies, comics, movies,  lms and e-books. Linking the best visual and verbal elements in these publications is the way forward to teach literacy, history and moral to young readers.

Treatment of the chronic total occlusion: a call to action for the interventional community.

There is substantial evidence that recanalization of a chronic total occlusion is beneficial; nonetheless, it is generally underutilized in clinical practice. We consider the Aesop's fable of the "Fox and the Grapes" as analogous to the current situation in interventional cardiology. The technical challenges in achieving CTO recanalization has led interventionalists, clinical cardiologists, and sometimes even patients to believe that CTO recanalization is not effective, and, therefore, not needed. This perspective reviews available data regarding efficacy and safety of CTO percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) in the current drug-eluting stent era, discusses areas where more studies are required, and encourages the interventional community to utilize CTO PCI where appropriate based on current evidence.

Emerging infections and sensationalism: in Aesop's fable, the boy who cried wolf had a dreadful fate

In this issue of CMI, Memish et al. [1] show that circulation of the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) in Saudi Arabia is much lower than was feared, announced, or predicted. One year after the discovery of this novel coronavirus, the Saudi Arabian Virology Reference Laboratory has tested 5065 people for MERS-CoV direct detection with WHO-recommended real-time RT-PCR tests [2,3]. Interestingly, no significant increase in detection rates was observed in a period of 1 year. Moreover, mass gatherings of people in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia during the Hajj pilgrimage in 2012 and 2013 were associated with neither an increased number of cases nor reported clusters of cases [4], suggesting poor or moderate interhuman transmission.

Points, Depictions, Gestures and Enactment: Partly Lexical and Non-Lexical Signs as Core Elements of Single Clause-Like Units in Auslan (Australian Sign Language)

Pointing signs, depicting signs and manual gestures are all used for meaningful expression in Auslan, as are full or partial body enactments to demonstrate action or dialogue. This article outlines a corpus-driven approach to identifying clause-like units in a native signed language and investigates the use of pointing signs, depicting signs, gestures and enactments to express core elements of possible clause-like units in Auslan narratives. We explore the frequency and distribution of the core argument and predicate elements of single clause-like units that were identified in elicited retellings of an Aesop's fable which have been archived in the Auslan Corpus. Core elements of these units are described according to sign type, the order in which they appear and handedness (articulation with the strong or weak hand). We find that one-third of the core elements in the single clause-like units in these Auslan narratives are expressed via pointing signs, depicting signs, gestures and enactments, in various orders. This study uses empirical corpus-based data to contribute insights into the use of composite utterances in a signed language and therefore on the way meaning is negotiated between interactants.

Using the Aesop's Fable Paradigm to Investigate Causal Understanding of Water Displacement by New Caledonian Crows

Understanding causal regularities in the world is a key feature of human cognition. However, the extent to which non-human animals are capable of causal understanding is not well understood. Here, we used the Aesop's fable paradigm – in which subjects drop stones into water to raise the water level and obtain an out of reach reward – to assess New Caledonian crows' causal understanding of water displacement. We found that crows preferentially dropped stones into a water-filled tube instead of a sand-filled tube; they dropped sinking objects rather than floating objects; solid objects rather than hollow objects, and they dropped objects into a tube with a high water level rather than a low one. However, they failed two more challenging tasks which required them to attend to the width of the tube, and to counter-intuitive causal cues in a U-shaped apparatus. Our results indicate that New Caledonian crows possess a sophisticated, but incomplete, understanding of the causal properties of displacement, rivalling that of 5–7 year old children.

Quia Ego Nominor Leo: Barthes, Stereotypes and Aesop’s Animal

Taking Barthes's discussion of Aesop's as starting point, this essay examines two uses to which the animals of philosophy and critical theory have been put: as ciphers and as indices. The twin dangers to theory's beasts, of becoming either examples of deadening, generic animal or stultifying stereotypes, are assessed and potential solutions proposed. ********** Leo the Lion, mightiest of beasts, will stand up to anybody. The word 'beasts' should properly be used about lions, leopards, tigers, wolves, foxes, dogs, monkeys and others which rage about with tooth and claw--with the exception of snakes. They are called Beasts because of the violence with which they rage, and are known as 'wild' (ferus) because they are accustomed to freedom by nature and are governed (ferantur) by their own wishes. They wander hither and thither, fancy free, and they go wherever they want to go.--The Book of Beasts, trans. T.H. White In his Inaugural Lecture at the College de France, Barthes suggested that it had been his semiological project, at least during the mid-1950s, to understand society produces stereotypes, i.e., triumphs of artifice, which it then consumes as innate meanings, i.e. triumphs of Nature (471). The stereotype is insistent and dangerous, Barthes says, monster that sleeps within every sign (461). His analyses of this process of naturalization, this speech, are well known from his Mythologies. Perhaps the most famous of all, and certainly the most frequently quoted, is his discussion of the Paris-Match cover in Myth Today (109-59). There is another example in this essay, however, that immediately precedes that of the soldier and the tricolour, and which is usually passed over by commentators. Imagining himself pupil in French lycee once more, Barthes opens his Latin grammar and reads single sentence: quia ego nominor leo (because am named Lion) (115). The sentence is borrowed, he says, from the fables of Aesop. At the level of the linguistic system, Barthes points out, it has a fullness, richness, history drawn from the fable and beyond: I am animal, lion, live in certain country. have just been hunting, they would have me share my prey with heifer, cow and goat; but being the stronger, award myself all the shares for various reasons, the last of which is quite simply that my name is lion (118). As part of mythical system, however, this rich set of values and meanings is put aside. When it is used as example, concerning the agreement of the predicate, the sentence has new function. The old values make way for whole new set of ideas and assumptions, this time concerning the importance of Aesop, of Latin, of grammar itself. We focus no longer on the intriguing details of Aesop's tale, but are required instead to concentrate on the grammatical exemplarity of the sentence (118-19). The rich detail of the lion's story is not entirely suppressed, however. By keeping it close to hand, an instantaneous reserve of history on which it can draw, the myth lends itself air of the (118). This is how the myth, the stereotype, works, by invoking natural history that is not its own, but which shores up its legitimacy. The lion, so ferocious, so regal, so wild in Aesop, is tamed in the example, the better to naturalize the assumptions and values that accrue, at particular time and place, around the student learning Latin in the second form of French lycee. How obvious that one should learn Latin, that one should ensure that the predicate always agrees with the subject, that Aesop is worthy pedagogical text for pursuing these worthy scholarly goals. In discussions of, and especially introductions to, Barthes's analysis of myth, Aesop's is often put aside in favour of the saluting soldier. The latter, with Barthes's brief but effective analysis of the implicit concepts (signifieds) of imperialism and colonialism, seems more immediate, more useful perhaps, than example drawn from dusty Latin grammar. …

Perspective Index in Company X from 2004–2013

Abstract: perspective index (Takahashi, 2014) was tested in a company that has been successful in the process of organizational reform, Company X. An exhaustive survey (Survey X) for all employees was conducted once a fiscal year from 2004 to 2013. According to Survey X, over 13,000 employees showed near-perfect linearity between perspective index and job satisfaction ratio/turnover candidate ratio. Each occupational and rank category also showed a near-straight line, although the values greatly varied per year before and after organizational reform. However, the incline and intercept points of the lines somewhat differed contingent on the occupational and rank category. This might explain the difference between data from Survey X and that of the JPC Survey conducted in Takahashi (2014).Keywords: on future perspective index, job satisfaction, turnover1. IntroductionAt present, many Japanese firms are enduring highly competitive environments to make and are tight fisted in terms of paying salaries and dividends. Even if they do not provide accountability, they unfailingly reserve profits internally for investments in further expansion (Takahashi, 2013). Takahashi (1996a, 1996b, 2013) states that this behavior follows the leaning on future principle, a decision principle using which people choose a better future rather than act on present mercenary motives based on the past results.According to Takahashi (2013), even in the 1990s Japanese companies hardly applied the discount rate in investment decisions, whereas American companies rapidly adopted the discount rate method of valuation since the 1960s (Kim 8s Farragher, 1981; Klammer, 1972). This behavior of Japanese companies also holds for the on future because if Takahashi's (2013) future parameter1 w is any less than 1, even a large earned 10 or 20 years later will be almost nil after being multiplied by w10 or w20. Accordingly, even though the expectation values of long-term profit will definitely converge, it is similar to focusing on near-future profits and ignoring distant-future profits. If the future parameter w = 1, the divergence of the expected makes nonsense of discount rate methods, such as the use of net present value (NPV) when making investment decisions. This is the case of Japanese companies having a high future parameter w » 1. Under such circumstances, we witness The Ant and the Grasshopper (Aesop's Fable) phenomenon in everyday life.Abegglen's lifetime commitment between a company and an employee-the company will not discharge him even temporarily except in the most extreme circumstances. He will not quit the company for industrial employment elsewhere (Abegglen, 1958, p. 11)2-is an example of future parameter w » 1. In this situation, cooperation can easily occur even between mutual enemies (Axelrod, 1984).3 This is seen in labor union cooperation between capital and labor in Japanese companies.The present paper uses the perspective index developed by Takahashi (1996a) to conduct Survey X, an annual survey conducted ten times at Company X, which has been successful in organizational reform. This paper also compares this data with that of the JPC Survey used in Takahashi (2014).2. Change of Company XSurvey X is an exhaustive survey for all employees of Company X and conducted once a fiscal year. questionnaires were distributed at the same time to all the employees and collected once filled (placement method). Like Takahashi, Ohkawa, and Inamizu (2014, in press), this paper uses data gathered over ten years, that is, from the fiscal years 2004-2013. survey was conducted in October 2004, September 2005, and February from 2007 to 2013. Data from 13,230 out of 13,383 surveys distributed were collected during the ten-year period, which mean response rate is 98.9%.The most dramatic change during the ten-year duration of Survey X was the restructuring of the company between 2005 and 2006. …

The Pleasure of Being In On It: Foreign Perspectives and "In-Authenticity" in The Golden Dragon at the Tarragon Theatre

The Pleasure of Being In On It:Foreign Perspectives and "In-Authenticity" in The Golden Dragon at the Tarragon Theatre Birgit Schreyer Duarte (bio) In Roland Schimmelpfennig's modern fable Der Goldene Drache (The Golden Dragon, 2009), the Cricket, a character inspired by Aesop's fable of the Ant and the Cricket, doubles as an illegal Chinese immigrant-turned-prostitute/dancer. Throughout the play, we are invited to see the Girl in the Cricket, and vice versa, as if we were watching through two lenses at once. In a similar way, I experienced the Canadian premiere of The Golden Dragon at Tarragon Theatre by Toronto's Volcano Theatre, with Ross Manson's direction and David Tushingham's translation, through two lenses: as a German immigrant, still negotiating her roots and Canadian vantage point, and as a translator, familiar with the pains and joys of cultural transfer in the theatre. When watching great international theatre on our (Canadian) stages, I'd like to argue, we are stimulated by a certain level of "exoticism" in seeing a foreign work that is able to speak to us across cultures and languages. It gives us the exciting inkling that there is a lot more to discover than what we know. At the same time, great international theatre also complicates representations of the foreign and claims to cultural authenticity, as I will argue. I found myself compelled to look out for the moments in the production where the Canadian performance of the German play betrays its "transnational" nature. For me, those are the instances where cultural specificities of a play's origin create (productive or unproductive) tension on the Canadian stage: a place name that means little to non-German audiences, a food that has interesting socioeconomic connotations in its source culture that are lost on foreign recipients, or an idiom that needs a more loose translation to be understood elsewhere. Such expectations, however, remained largely unfulfilled in the Toronto interpretation of The Golden Dragon. As it turns out, The Golden Dragon adapts so smoothly to this foreign stage it nearly denied me the kind of "detective" pleasure, the inevitable "double view," if you will, of watching it as a cultural/linguistic import. But even without pointing overtly to this split view of both source and target cultures at once, the production succeeded in raising the kinds of questions that occur because of the transfer—questions about the target country Canada in its global context: How do conditions for illegal immigrants in Germany compare to those in Canada? Are national differences really leveled by an economic system that instead differentiates between the rich and the poor? The Postdramatic in The Golden Dragon Part of this foreign play's remarkable fit on the Canadian stage is certainly the result of a number of careful revisions by Schimmelpfennig and Manson that turned some "British-isms" of Tushingham's translation into more familiar terms for Canadians, as the production's assistant director, Leora Morris, Click for larger view View full resolution From l to r: Lili Francks, David Yee, David Fox, Anusree Roy, and Tony Nappo as employees of the Asian fast food restaurant The Golden Dragon in Volcano Theatre's production of Roland Schimmelpfennig's The Golden Dragon at Tarragon Theatre. Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann [End Page 102] shared with me (Morris). But I believe the more fundamental reasons for this lie in the original playtext's transnational setting and its commentary on a global, culturally nondistinct society. The Toronto production further amplified both of these features; the production made me think that it could, in fact, have been conceptualized by the playwright especially as the raw material for interpretation through cultural transfer. In addition to the nondistinct setting, The Golden Dragon features a variety of other markers of "postdramatic" writing1—a style that continues to enjoy enormous popularity with German playwrights and audiences and increasing attention on Toronto's stages as well. Often referred to as raw material (to be shaped by the artists' realization and audience reception), postdramatic theatre invites theatre makers and spectators to become coauthors of the play. As in many postdramatic plays, characters lack names and describe locations and settings...

The revised lease accounting proposals: Aesop's Fables revisited

A close study of the newly proposed lease accounting changes from the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) brings to mind the lessons in many of Aesop's best-known fables. While the FASB and IASB's recently issued Revised Exposure Draft documents on lease accounting contain many significant changes from their original proposals in August 2010, these new proposals will require CRE executives and their counterparts in finance significantly to change the way in which they analyse, negotiate and structure leases going forward in order to avoid learning — or remembering — many of those lessons the hard way. For example, assuming two different leases with identical gross cash flows will have an identical impact on the tenant's balance sheet and income statement may result in the tenant wishing it had looked before it leapt. Understanding the full financial statement impact from any lease helps illustrate how changes in the structure and negotiation of that lease may likewise change its financial statement impact, for better or for worse. Moreover, the subjective nature of many elements of these newest proposals increases the need for CRE and finance executives to be able to deal objectively and consistently with those elements in order to avoid unintended financial consequences. While the FASB and IASB have clearly attempted to assuage the concerns many raised about their original proposals from 2010, some criticisms of these revised lease accounting proposals remain, though a more thoughtful analysis shows that many of them appear exaggerated. Those concerns notwithstanding, the combination of significant and varying financial statement impacts, numerous subjective issues and, in many cases, incomplete data on existing leases means the worlds of CRE and finance will need to begin working more closely together than they have in the past. In fact, many will find they should have already begun doing so in order to be prepared to transition to these new standards in time.

Newberry Case MS 153 and the Circulation of Curricular Texts

The pecia system of reproducing curricular texts in European universities is well documented, but codicological evidence in the Newberry Library’s Case MS 153, a fifteenth-century copy of Latin Aesopic fables and the first part of Matthew of Vendome’s Tobias, suggests that grammar-school texts also circulated in individual gatherings rather than complete copies. This article examines the damage that the gatherings of this manuscript suffered before they were bound together in order to substantiate this claim, and also draws on evidence of such circulation practices for grammar-school texts in Italy that could have been known and followed in France.

Production and comprehension in aphasia: Gains and pitfalls in using macrostructure tasks in Aesop's fables

Macrostructures provide the global meaning of a text. Using Aesop's fables, the main goal of this study has been to identify the advantages and limitations in using the macrostructure tasks of retell, summary, lesson, and gist as clinical tools in understanding 16 patients with mild-to-moderate aphasia. Results suggest that all of the macrostructure tasks are important in determining the production skills of patients with aphasia. Comprehension, on the other hand, is best determined through the macrostructure tasks of retell and lesson. In addition to the language processing skills of patients with aphasia, macrostructures also provide a cognitive picture of how patients manipulate information from stories (i.e., reducing information, making inferences, and generalizing didactic information). Inherent limitations, however, are seen when interpreting possible reasons why patients with aphasia are unable to perform some of these tasks. Given that the potential gains of using macrostructure tasks outweigh the limitations, this study suggests that macrostructures may have clinical value as a diagnostic tool in understanding the cognitive-linguistic processes of patients with brain injury.

Zircon—Earth's timekeeper

One of the earliest written references to zircon is from Lydgate's edition of Aesop's Fables from c.1400 where a zircon was found ‘hid in the dunghill’. Since the humble surroundings of this early record, zircon has become a popular and important mineral. The name zircon is believed to have derived from the Persian words ‘zar’ and ‘gun’ meaning gold and colour respectively. During the Middle Ages, it was believed that wearing zircon jewellery was a cure against insomnia and protected against disease. In more modern times, zircon has found uses in industrial processes and is a key mineral for geologists investigating the geological history of the Earth. It can incorporate uranium which undergoes radioactive decay to lead at a constant rate. By measuring the ratios of uranium and lead isotopes, geologists can calculate the age at which zircons formed. Physical and chemical durability makes zircon able to survive for long periods of geological time and record information about hallmark geological events in Earth history, including early crustal formation, mountain‐building events and mass extinctions. Indeed, the oldest known material on the planet is a zircon from Jack Hills in Western Australia, dated at 4.4 billion years old, a mere 0.15 billion years after the formation of the Earth. This remarkable durability has also led to zircon finding commercial applications in high‐temperature industrial processes, such as brick foundries, while its chemical inertness makes it a potential material for testing the impact of the radioactive products of nuclear waste on mineral structures.

Divine-Human Relations in the Aesopic Corpus

AbstractThis paper argues that Aesopic fables are an under-used but valuable resource for the study of Graeco-Roman cognitive religiosity. The world of fables is ruled by a restricted group of divinities – an ‘oligotheon’ – dominated by Zeus, the largely benign creator who gives living beings their characteristic qualities and regulates their behaviour. Divine-human relations typically take place informally and/or in private, rather than in public and/or through cult acts. Fables present the gods as spontaneously interested in human beings and as having a tendency to interfere uninvited in their affairs; one can sometimes even detect development in a divine-human relationship in the course of a story. A few fables play with the tensions endemic in divine-human relations, such as the unequal value of what each party brings to the other, and the paradox of human stories’ power to capture in narrative what in principle is beyond the bounds of human control. Carefully handled, fables can be taken seriously as evidence of one, sometimes unexpectedly sophisticated strain in Graeco-Roman religious thinking, which persisted over a long period of time and across a wide spectrum of society.