Ancient Fables Research Articles

EMOCIONALNI DISKURS U „UČENOM MAČKU“ BRANKA V. RADIČEVIĆA

Animals as characters have been present in literature from its very beginning, from ancient fables, stories about animals, through the biblical motif in the story of Adam and Eve to contemporary literary works, especially in works intended for children. Starting from the approach of animal studies as a discipline that deals with the analysis of the depiction of animals in literature, focusing on children’s literature, the anthropomorphic aspect of the analysis was singled out. Branko V. Radičević (1925–2001) sculpted figures of animals in his works intended for children. The aim of the paper is to analyze the emotional discourse in Branko V. Radičević’s animalistic prose for children. The focus will be on the work The Learned Cat (Učeni mačak), the tasks are to observe the characteristics and way of building the characters of animals, especially the cat, then the dog, and to analyze the mutual communication of literary characters. With a brilliant storytelling style, linguistic expression, with the full support of imagination, Radičević created the novel The Learned Cat. It is a truly beautiful and imaginatively spun story about a cat who, after becoming a high school graduate, experiences unusual adventures in search of a vocation. He represented animals as heroes in almost all forms of prose for children – from stories, poetry, all the way to novels. While in his poetry animals appear less, mostly as an integral part of nature and serve to better describe it, in his prose works, especially in the analyzed work The Learned Cat, animals are the main characters who go through various events or whose function is to help the main character (in human form), but also pose a threat to the main character. This novel also shows the importance of emotions in people’s lives in general, how positive ones such as neighbourly love, empathy, compassion bring them pleasure, but how it is necessary to face the negative ones, such as fear, and overcome them.

Die Versfabel und der Witz: Ähnlichkeiten und Unterschiede aus stilistisch-synergetischer Sicht

Based on the material of German-language texts, the article considers a joke and a poetic fable as related and at the same time different forms of a small genre, if we consider them from opposite poles: as a properly-fable and a properly-joke. Depending on the ratio of stylistic features and their intensity, primarily the features of the comic, transitional forms, mixed texts are formed. With the strengthening of the role of the comic, the fable tends to turn into a joke. All varieties of the comic have always been inherent in the fable. But comicality did not dominate in it, since preference was given to the didactic purpose of the fable. If the comic takes first place, pushing morality into the background, then the fable turns into a joke. On the question of the relationship between fable and joke, the article presents the concept of V. Liebchen, a modern fable theorist and fabulist. In its form, the joke corresponds to the form of Aesop's fable, namely the rhetorical fable. It is based, as well as a joke, on a situational part (expectation) and a heuristic, cognitive part (pointe). The article presents Liebchen's short rhetorical fable “Witz und Fabel”, which is a figurative and symbolic reflection of this concept. It metaphorically and transparently depicts the value of the genre of the fable, its relationship with the joke, its subordination to the ancient fable. In my opinion, the creation of comic effects is based on the discrepancy between form and content: the original form of the object of ridicule is destroyed by a metaphorical comparison of this object with any other object or with the same, but with new characteristics that reduce its significance. The boundaries between a fable and a joke are very flexible: they are determined by the ratio of the comic and the instructive. Actually-joke moralization is not inherent. In this, it fully corresponds to the old form of the fable, which had no interpretation, no explicit morality. The article provides illustrations of the German-language texts of fables, in which the feature of comicality is so enhanced that one can speak of a tendency to turn into a joke (M. Claudius, F. V. Tsakharia, G. K. Pfeffel, V. Bush, V. Liebchen). When determining the relationship or dissimilarity of a fable and a joke, according to my method of analysis, the intensity of style features is taken into account: comicality, which in this case can be understood as the intensity of the alienation effect (pointe), and instructiveness, which must be understood not only in its direct meaning, but also in the meaning of knowledge and statements of certain truth. According to my definition and classification of fables, in addition, one must remember the feature of figurative symbolism associated with allegoricalness and fantasticness, due to which a more or less generalized and globalized image-symbol is formed, which is more associated with the heuristic than with the comic. Therefore this is also one of the main criteria for separating a fable from a joke. The ratio, the advantage of one or another feature moves the text into the zone of influence of the fable or joke. The prospects for further research include the inclusion of jokes in the diagrams of zones of mutual influence of related forms (fables, parables, didactic poems, instructive verses, epigrams, aphorisms), the study of linguistic and stylistic means of expressing the comic, which are implemented in the texts of these genre forms. I also consider the further development of studies of jokes and related forms in the linguosynergetic and pragmastylistic directions as an important perspective.

L’evolució de les bèsties. A propòsit del Bestiari de Pere Quart i les Histoires naturelles de Jules Renard

This paper has two aims: on the one hand, to compare Joan Oliver’s Bestiari with works such as Bestiaire ou cortège d’Orphée by Guillaume Apollinaire (1911), “Bestiario” by Ramón del Valle-Inclán (in La Pipa de Kif, 1919), The animaux et leurs hommes. The hommes et leurs animaux by Paul Éluard (1920) and, above all, Histoires naturelles by Jules Renard (1896), in search of possible influences and coincidences. The other aim is to classify and analyze the poems in order to clarify the intention with which Oliver wrotethe Bestiari and to relate it to the didactic and moral purpose of medieval Bestiaries and ancient Fables.

ЛЕКСИКО-ГРАМАТИЧНІ ОСОБЛИВОСТІ ІНТЕРПРЕТАЦІЇ БАЙОК ЕЗОПА У ТВОРЧОСТІ УКРАЇНСЬКИХ ПИСЬМЕННИКІВ-ПЕРЕКЛАДАЧІВ (НА МАТЕРІАЛІ ПЕРЕКЛАДІВ ЮРІЯ МУШАКА)

Ancient fable is one of the most notable phenomena of European literature. Many monuments of this genre are distinguished by high artistic skill and have not lost their aesthetic value to these days. Short stories with a moral component, the protagonists of which were the representatives of animate or inanimate nature, were known in ancient times. Aesop is considered the founder of fable’s genre, according to the legend he first made them in literary processing. The most commonly among the works of the ancient Greek fabulist there are the themes of hypocrisy and human recklessness, lies and greed, fame and its consequences. The traditional structure of fables usually has two components – a morality and a narrative, and its main elements are an instructive, figurative, concise presentation, the introduction to the plot of various species of animals, plants, natural phenomena, gods, etc., which endowed with traditional allegorical image. The events described in the fables have an instructive content, in which the negative social phenomena and the human traits are ridiculed with help of allegory. Each fable of the legendary master is a separate episode, not related to the rest of the fables. The article defines the concept of a fable, provides a theoretical justification for choosing the object of study, takes into account a state of the linguistic researches of a chosen topic, outlines the artistic features of the genre, determines a compositional, stylistic and speech structure of Aesop’s fables and their translations into Ukrainian. Yuri Mushak’s translations are distinguished by the desire to preserve the artistic features of Aesop’s fables with a detailed transfer of their individual linguistic and stylistic elements. At the same time, the translator manages to bring his translations closer to the living conditions and morals of the Ukrainian people, he widely uses abbreviations or, conversely, additions to the text, replacement, concretization, and so on.

Idola fori and language: Francis Bacon as a source for Giambattista Vico

ABSTRACT In this article, it is argued that Giambattista Vico’s own interest in language, intellectual prejudices, parabolic poetry, the interpretation of ancient fables, and even his notion of verum-factum derived from the works of Francis Bacon, and that Vico explicitly acknowledged his debt to the English philosopher. Not only did Vico carefully read Bacon’s works, but he cited them in his own writings, and in greater detail and at greater length than has hitherto been acknowledged. In the Appendix, I provide the texts of all the explicit Baconian citations that appear in Vico’s works (in the original Latin or Italian), and these alone suffice to prove the extent to which he was familiar with Bacon’s works. As well as the Novum organum, there are indirect references to the De dignitate et augmentis scientiarum, the De sapientia veterum, and the Cogitata et visa. The aim of the textual comparison is to identify explicit references to Bacon and his works in Vico, appearing as either direct or indirect citations.

"Comparisons are Odious?" Revisiting the ancient fable of the ant and the grasshopper adapted in Maugham's short story

The article seeks to locate a comparative study of the meanings and the morals of a popular ancient fable, adapted by William Somerset Maugham in his short story, The Ant and the Grasshopper. The comparison and contrast in adapting the fable generated an intense academic debate about the appropriate policies of life, a human should undergo. Alike the ancient fable, the setting of the story opens with the conversation between an industrious ant and its reluctant counterpart, a grasshopper. Although the story of the fable is embodied with a moral where industry is rewarded and giddiness punished, we see a completely different scenario at the end of the story. Therefore, it is an irony of the moral conflict between two Ramsay brothers, namely George Ramsay, a man of ethics and Tom Ramsay, a man of a fantasy world. Throughout the story, The Ant and the Grasshopper, Maugham's effort to portray the themes of justice, trust, fear, morality, embarrassment, happiness and struggle is indeed praiseworthy. But, at the same time, it has aroused a hypothesis of seeking out the ultimate principles of life. The paper considers the development of the Greek fable from its origin to the later adaptations, including the version of La Fontaine, a French fabulist, and the final reversal to a counter-fable by Maugham. It also includes a web of researches in the corresponding fields, and a synthesis resulting from the causes and effects of indebtedness and unemployment that can eventually affect the economy through fluctuations in confidence. The further objective of this work illustrates the misconception and mockery of a man of letter and the eventual paradoxes he has to face in reality. Finally, it concludes with an inception that a post modern world like ours needs not only a determined and preset humane policy, but also a new narrative, and liberal outlook to survive or live in luxury.

Acute traumatic coagulopathy: The elephant in a room of blind scientists.

Acute traumatic coagulopathy (ATC) is the failure of coagulation homeostasis that can rapidly arise following traumatic injury, hemorrhage, and shock; it is associated with higher injury severity, coagulation abnormalities, and increased blood transfusions. Acute traumatic coagulopathy has historically been defined by a prolonged prothrombin time, although newer, more informative measurements of hemostatic function have been used to improve diagnosis and support clinical decision making. The underlying biochemical mechanisms of and best practice therapeutics for ATC remain under active investigation because of its significant correlation to poor outcomes. The wide range of hypothesized mechanisms for ATC results from the large number of symptoms, phenotypes, and altered states in these patients as observed by multiple research groups. Much like the ancient fable of blind men describing an elephant from their limited perspectives, the limited nature of clinical and laboratory tools used to diagnose coagulopathy or evaluate hemostatic function has made finding causation difficult. The prolonged prothrombin time, degree of fibrinolysis, depletion of coagulation factors and inhibitors, and general failure of the blood have all been identified as being primary indicators for ATC. Therapeutic interventions including recombinant coagulation factors, antifibrinolytics, and blood products have been used with varying degrees of success as they are used to address specific symptoms. To truly understand the causes of ATC, research efforts must recognize the complexity of the hemostatic system and get to the heart of the matter by answering the question: "Is ATC a pathological condition that develops from the observed deficiencies in coagulation, fibrinolysis, and autoregulation, or is ATC an adaptive response generated as the body attempts to restore perfusion and avoid massive organ failure?" Because patient management must proceed without definitive answers regarding the entire causative chain, the current therapeutic focus should be on using what knowledge has been gained to the patient's advantage: control hemorrhage, maintain appropriate homeostatic balances of coagulation proteins, and restore oxygen perfusion.

Diglossia: The Early Modern Reinvention of Mythological Discourse

Diglossia: The Early Modern Reinvention of Mythological Discourse

The Ancient Fable: An Introduction (review)

Reviewed by: The Ancient Fable: An Introduction Laura Gibbs The Ancient Fable: An Introduction. By Niklas Holzberg. Trans. by Christine Jackson-Holzberg. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002. Pp. 128, bibliography, indexes.) Niklas Holzberg's Ancient Fable: An Introduction provides a concise and clear analysis of the Greek and Roman sources for Aesop's fables. The book surveys each of the major sources for the approximately six hundred Greek and Latin fables that have survived from antiquity. This [End Page 111] includes fables as exempla in the different historical periods of Greek and Roman literature; the verse fable collections of the poets Phaedrus, Babrius, and Avianus; and the prose fable collections in Greek and Latin. Each of these brief sections (approximately ten pages or less) is followed by a page or so of bibliographical observations. Although the book is called an "introduction" to the fables, readers would do well to first read through a collection of Aesop's fables in English, given that Holzberg is able to cite and analyze only a few representative fables in the course of the book. Readers who are already familiar with the corpus of ancient fables will appreciate his judicious and even-handed approach in selecting specific fables for close attention. Holzberg's main aim is to provide a critical review of prior scholarship on the fables, but he also advances some ideas and approaches of his own. His most extended argument concerns the authorship of the novelistic Life of Aesop and the Greek prose fables called the Collectio Augustana. "Dare we infer again that the author of this novel also wrote the fable book that now survives in the form of the Collectio Augustana?" Holzberg asks (p. 91). The author of The Ancient Fable wants to answer in the affirmative, and in order to make this argument about authorship he produces a very useful analysis of the structure of both the novel and the prose fable collection. In all of his interpretations, Holzberg insists on respecting the purposes and intentions of the authors under consideration, whether the anonymous author of the Life of Aesop or the poets Phaedrus, Babrius, and Avianus. In the past, many of the classical scholars who studied Aesop's fables were less than enthusiastic about their chosen subject. For example, Holzberg cites August Hausrath's comment that Avianus is "long-winded and boring" (p. 67) and Johann Jakob Reiske's remark that the Life of Aesop is "pitiful entertainment for the common herd" (p. 76). Unlike those scholars who seem to have studied Aesop out of a sense of philological duty, Holzberg conveys real excitement about the fables in all their forms, and his approach to their ancient authors is consistently sympathetic. Holzberg also has good intentions towards his audience, regularly distinguishing between topics he considers suitable for a general introduction and questions that must be set aside for a "specialized study" (p. 65). Yet while this book is meant to provide a general introduction to the fables, many of the chapters will be difficult for readers whose interests are in folklore rather than in classics. Holzberg seems to expect that his audience will have a solid background in Greek and Latin literature, and his analyses of the individual fables usually depend on a highly literary interpretation of their Greek or Latin style. English-speaking readers may also be frustrated by attempts to look up the fables referenced in the text. Generally, Holzberg cites the fables using their Aes. number, based on Ben E. Perry's Aesopica of 1952 (University of Illinois Press). Yet when you consult Perry's text, you will find that all the explanatory materials—even the instructions for using the indexes!—are given in Latin. English-speaking readers need to know that they can also find an English version of the Aesopica numeration system in Perry's Babrius and Phaedrus (Harvard University Press, 1965), which also includes references to motif numbers for many of the fables, a feature not found in the Aesopica. By cataloging and annotating the work of classical scholars who have studied the fables over the past two hundred years, Holzberg is able to make their often highly technical analyses accessible to a...

The Ancient Fable: An Introduction

Book Review| January 01 2007 The Ancient Fable: An Introduction The Ancient Fable: An Introduction, Niklas Holzberg. Laura Gibbs Laura Gibbs Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of American Folklore (2007) 120 (475): 111–113. https://doi.org/10.2307/4137885 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Laura Gibbs; The Ancient Fable: An Introduction. Journal of American Folklore 1 January 2007; 120 (475): 111–113. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/4137885 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressJournal of American Folklore Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2007 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2007 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Apologizing to the Ancient Fable: Gianni Rodari and His Influence on Italian Children's Literature

Apologizing to the Ancient Fable: Gianni Rodari and His Influence on Italian Children's Literature

Documentación suplementaria de la fábula greco-latina

This paper is a supplement of my book Historia de Ja Fabula Greco-Latina, Vol. Ill, Madrid, 1987, which gives an inventary of the known versions of the ancient fable. It adds a new documentation on the already known fables and on the other new ones. This documentation comes either from the ancient Greek and Latin Literature or from ≪The thousand and one nights≫ or from the rabbinical Literature.

Tales about the Wood Demon

Beliefs about the wood demon have along attracted the attention of Russian scholars. As early as the end of the eighteenth and very beginning of the nineteenth centuries, the authors of works devoted to the mythology of the Slavs not only cited the wood demon as one of the most prevalent images in "ancient fables" but also pointed to the fact that notions about this Slavic demonological being were similar to mythological images of other peoples, particularly the satyrs of antiquity. (1)

The Characterization of Animals in Sumerian Fables

Although classical education is waning and general historical knowledge is at its nadir, many ancient fables are still widely known and commonly cited in spoken language. For example, Aesop’s fable The Boy Who Cried Wolf has resulted in the phrase “crying wolf,” which—even today—is a cultural shorthand for expressing the idea of raising a false alarm. The successful communication of this idea, however, rests on culture: the shared understanding of the wolf as dangerous. If we thought of wolves as we do pet dogs, the reference would be lost.Fables constitute a subgenre of ancient Near Eastern ‘wisdom literature;’ they are short narratives utilizing anthropomorphized animals to impart conventional wisdom. Like proverbs, fables “belong to the speech of everyday life” (Alster 1997). Perhaps for this reason, they were among the first compositions that young scribes learned to write in ancient Mesopotamia. Sumerian fables are attested as early as the mid-third millennium BCE. Much like written language itself, fables traffic in tradition and “habitual connection” (Peirce 1885) in order to convey their meaning. This meaning is so strong that it can be carried even via elliptical (truncated) renderings, as in the example of “crying wolf.” This shorthand is possible, in part, because animals are not just things themselves, they are loaded with symbolic meanings that are imparted in fables via their role, their actions, and the words they speak. In fables, animals are characters, and these characterizations can reveal the context and values of the culture that created them.As Falkowitz (1980) notes, consistently and extensively employed animal images can become culturally ingrained as rhetorical topoi: the fox is cunning, the bee is busy. The meaning in these images” is derived from their characteristics, which fables can uniquely elucidate for us. Through the understanding that fables provide, we can more successfully “read” both the elliptical references to animals in proverbs and in images. Moreover, understanding animals in this way can provide us a method to access the contexts and values of ancient Mesopotamians without privileging our contemporary, Western symbolic or ethical norms.I will provide an overview of the small corpus of available Sumerian fables and analysis of the roles of the animals characterized within them. These will be linked to Sumerian proverbs and compared to ancient Greek fables to form a starting point for conceptualizing fauna in the ancient world.

Profiles of Ethics: A Tribute to Lewis Miller Stevens

NATIONS, or in fact any form of society, local communities, cities, and states, have reputations and present images to mankind based upon their conduct. This conduct is the product of mass behavior which, in turn, is often shaped by that of individuals, particularly of leaders. These behavior patterns are often described in terms involving value judgments: they are deemed either good or bad. They involve conceptions of ethics, standards of excellence, which the societies may cherish and which they may strive to maintain at what is considered a high level. To use terms today much in vogue, one of the principal features by which a community image is judged is the profile of ethics which it displays. If the local standards of behavior are high and its leadership righteously responsible, its profile is admirable. However the reverse may be true, and if the standards of conduct are low, the profile may be hideous or at least forbidding. But the description of a community profile of ethics may be difficult to capture and record, for its elements may be complex and blurred. There is an ancient fable of an individual whose face was of such a character that if one gazed on it from the left it appeared perfect and of good report, but if seen from the opposite angle it was evil. Unfortunately, community images can be equally puzzling to those who wish to portray what one sees on direct confrontation. No one can be more conscious of the fact that in seek-

A Visit to Cyrene in 1895

The difficulties that hedged round the Garden of the Hesperides in the Greek seem still destined to make the Cyrenaica, a country to which the eyes of archæologists have so wistfully turned, almost as inaccessible to the modern traveller as to the heroes of ancient fable. The classic maidens have vanished, the Garden is somewhat run to seed, but the dragon of early legend is there, in the person of the native official who guards the historical treasures that lie strewn over the rich sites of the Pentapolis, stately tombs that worthless Arabs kennel in or plunder for statues and vases, to be peddled to Maltese or Greeks for (literally) home consumption or foreign export.