Fables

Das Buch ist die erste monografische Abhandlung zu Vogelbildern als Untergattung der niederländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts. Es nähert sich dem Thema interdisziplinär mit einem ungewohnten methodischen Ansatz, der die erzählerische Struktur der Bilder behandelt. So wird erstmals in einer umfassenden Form deutlich, wie viele Geschichten und Geschichtchen in den Gemälden zu finden sind, die deutlich mehr als nur dekorative Aspekte zu bieten haben. In einigen Bildern können mithilfe der narrativen Analyse Fabeln als literarischer Bezug benannt werden. Nebenbei wird ein geschichtlicher Überblick der Vogelmalerei einschließlich Ursprüngen, Entwicklungsverläufen und Nachwirkungen geboten, in welchem beinahe alle Künstler dieser Gattung vertreten sind. Die Arbeit schöpft aus einem reichen Fundus von Gemäl­den, der aus Privatsammlungen, dem Kunsthandel und natürlich Museen zusammengetragen wurde.

https://www.amazon.com/Book-Wisdom-Lies-Georgian-Discover/dp/9941961670/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1546537186&sr=8-7&keywords=book+of+wisdom+and+lies

The presented edition of Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani's "Book of Wisdom and Lies" is a reprint of Sir Oliver Wardrop's translation that he published in 1894. The publisher was William Morris at the Jelmscott Press, in the County of Middlesex.The idea of republishing of this book was born, because it was Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani's 360th anniversary in 2018 and Georgia dedicated this year to his commemoration. There were made several editions in Georgian, including illustrated edition, by Nino Gambashidze, together with Academic Book Publishing (acad.ge). The international community expressed their interest to get familiar to this author, and in particular with this text. To meet this interest we decided to publish this translation with minor corrections, such as: 1. changing 2nd person singular (thou) into 2nd person plural (you); 2. changing symbol & with conjunction "and"; 3. making more paragraphs, then they were done in existing publication, e.g. distinguishing dialogues.On edition of the text worked Maya Gambashidze and Nino Gambashidze, and the students of Guivi Zaldastanishvili American Academy in Tbilisi: Sopo Kevlishvili, Ana Zamtaradze, Ana Kostava and Giorgi Iashvil.About the design of the book worked Giorgi Kakabadze, who tried to bring the visual side of the text closer to modern reader

The work is analyzing language and poetics of contemporary fable. Genre specifics makes definite limits on the personal author’s style. Some fables are shifting to the periphery of the genre field and become closer to the city folklore, literature ballad, tales. Object of our research are more than 90 fables by contemporary poet Irina Belykh, member of Russia’s Writers Union. Contemporary fable is using emotional and image possibilities of all stylistic language layers, showing verbal portrait of contemporary people. The fable becomes polygon for creation new words. “New fable” uses actual plot steps reflecting contemporary life and keeps traditional genre specifics.

This research describes the chronological variation, from the 18th to the 21st century, of the fidelity of Spanish translations of three Jean de La Fontaine’s fables: Le corbeau et le renard, Le lion et le rat and Le lièvre et la tortue. The concept of fidelity used to analyze the translations is the one posed by Jin Di (2003/2014). For this author, being faithful to the original work means respecting both its content (“spirit”) and its form; both elements are grouped together in the notion of “message”. To carry out this study, the spirit, in this case the moral, and the form of the source and target texts were analyzed. Then, a comparison was made between the different translations. The results show that between the 18th and 19th centuries, and in the 21st-century translators, in general, remained faithful to both spirit and form. Whereas, between the end of the 19th and 20th centuries, translators were only faithful to the spirit. The present century is the period in which the greatest fidelity was achieved to the three fables of Jean de La Fontaine.

Keywords: fidelity, Spanish translations, fable, Jean de La Fontaine, spirit, form, message, moral.

This chapter will make use of a friendly, narrative style that invites participation from the reader, to explore caring for self, others and nature, as encapsulated in the notion of kindness. It begins with a fable, a short story that serves a moral purpose, which is based on my empirical research with ‘looked after’ young people. This fable shares the experience of one young male, centrally placing him within the discussion, and it is utilised in stages to explore the concept of care. It adopts an interdisciplinary, contextual approach to literature, drawing from geography, environment and nature; youthwork; experiential, outdoor and adventure education; child/adolescent development and play; storytelling and creative writing; philosophy and psychology. The fable is based on one of many ‘magic moments’ that I have experienced as I have explored young people’s relationship with nature. The chapter argues that we need to be able to pause, reflect and extract meaning from these specif...

Ouvrage issu de la thèse de doctorat, accepté par les éditions Honoré Champion, coll. "Convergences (Antiquité-XXIe siècle)", à paraître en 2020.
En PJ : position de thèse.
Résumé (français) : Au seuil de ses Fables, La Fontaine affirme qu’il «chante les héros dont Ésope est le Père». Souvent prise pour argent comptant, cette généalogie affichée a conduit la critique à envisager la composition des Fables dans le cadre d’un face-à-face schématique entre le « Père » supposé du genre et son Fils incarné dans la France du Grand Siècle. Cette thèse se propose de reprendre sur nouveaux frais la question des sources de l’inspiration « ésopique » de La Fontaine : « chante[r] les héros dont Ésope est le père », qu’est-ce à dire exactement ? À quelle figure auctoriale et à quels ouvrages le nom d’Ésope pouvait-il être associé dans l’esprit d’un poète du XVIIe siècle ? Au travers de quels filtres la « matière ésopique » était-elle passée avant que La Fontaine ne se l’approprie ? Après un examen approfondi de l’origine et de la nature du corpus des fables dites d’Ésope et de la biographie fictive du fabuliste grec (Vie d’Ésope), l’enquête se porte sur la réception et la transmission de ces textes aux XVe, XVIe et XVIIe siècles. Elle révèle que la filiation apparemment directe, évidente et sans médiation entre l’inventeur légendaire de l’apologue et son héritier majeur demande une révision de nos préjugés critiques, à la lumière de l’archéologie d’un modèle, d’un genre et d’une tradition qui s’avèrent d’une complexité et d’une diversité que La Fontaine lui-même ne soupçonnait peut-être pas, mais qui promet à l’analyste moderne la révélation d’un mode d’invention et de réception du genre fable beaucoup plus ouvert, fluide, voire confus, que ne le laisserait supposer l’annotation des éditions du fabuliste français.
Summary : At the beginning of his Fables, La Fontaine claims that he « sings the heroes whose father is Æsop ». Because it was often accepted at face value, this self-styled genealogy leds the critics to consider the composition of the Fables  as a « tête-à-tête » between the so-called « father » of the genre and his spiritual son. In this dissertation, I try to renew the study of the Æsopic sources of La Fontaine. What does « singing the heroes whose father is Æsop » really mean ? Which books could be related to the name of Æsop in the mind of a 17th-century French poet ? After a carefull examination of the origin and nature of the so-called Æsop’s fables as well as the fictionnal biography of the Greek fabulist, the present investigation analyses the reception and the transmission of both Æsop’s life and fables in Early Modernity (15th, 16th and 17th centuries). In the light of this archeological research, the belief in an obvious and direct relationship without any mediation between the legendary inventor of the fable and his most gifted heir turns out to be completely deceptive. The Æsopic tradition proves to be far more various and complex than one might think after reading the comments and footnotes of the critical editions of La Fontaine’s Fables choisies mises en vers.

Entries for 10 Egyptian objects from Museum August Kestner, Hannover / Germany (Cat. I.9 - I.17), and Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden / The Netherlands (Cat. I.8) in the beautiful publication (Schriftenreihe des Landesmuseums Natur und Mensch, Heft 63) accompanying the cross-cultural exhibition "Tierisch moralisch. Die Welt der Fabel in Orient und Okzident" at Landesmuseum Natur und Mensch Oldenburg / Germany (22 February - 1 June 2009). - For the relevant essay, see differendt PDF. - Egyptian stories in which animals act like humans are known from written sources only as late as the 2nd century AD (e.g. the famous Demotic papyrus Leiden AMS 75 - was part of the exhibition!). However, similar stories existed in Pharaonic Egypt for thousands of years. Proof are animal stories of which only "pictorial versions" are preserved (e.g. the "other side" of the famous pornographical papyrus Turin 55001 or numerous ostraca). Particularely fascinating in this respect is the purely "pictorial story" at Antikenmuseum Basel (Ae 1081) painted on stuccoed linnen from the New Kingdom (c. 1200 BC), which therefore is the focus of the essay. The text of this fairly complex animal story can unfortunaltely not be reconstructed. The existence of this purely pictorial story shows well that fables existed in Pharonic Egypt for millenia, however, only in oral transmission which - when not written down at one point AND also preserved - got lost ... likely forever. - (in German)

La postérité a si bien attaché le nom de La Fontaine au genre de la fable animalière que l'on veut croire que le poète n'a écrit que des fables et qu'il n'est de fable que d'animaux : c'est méconnaître le nombre de fables sans animaux dans les douze livres des Fables ; et c'est ne pas vouloir se souvenir que le fabuliste est l'auteur de deux recueils de Contes au moins, dont la rédaction et la publication sont exactement contemporaines de la diffusion des Fables. Ici comme ailleurs, manque d'attention et défaut de mémoire ont partie liée. Pour pallier le premier, tentons d'abord de remédier au second.

हमने ईसप, जातक, पञ्चतन्त्र और हितोपदेश की नीतिकथाएँ पढ़ी हैं। पर क्या हमने महाभारत की नीति कथाएँ पढ़ी हैं? हम महाभारत के मनुष्य पात्रों के बारे में जानते हैं। पर क्या हम महर्षि वेद व्यास की महान् संहिता में चतुर सियार, ढोंगी हंस, जानकार चूहा, कपटी बिल्ला, बड़बोला कौआ, आलसी ऊँट, घमण्डी पेड़, भगत सुग्गा , दयालु कबूतर और अनोखे नेवले के बारे में जानते हैं?

यह व्यास-कथा महाभारत की इक्यावन नीति कथाओं का संकलन है। ये मनोरञ्जक और प्रबोधक कथाएँ व्यावहारिक और राजनीतिक ज्ञान, नैतिक मूल्यों, वैश्विक सत्यों और दर्शन का सागर हैं। पशु, पक्षी, सरीसृप, मछलियाँ, कीड़े, पेड़, नदियाँ, दिशाएँ, प्राण, मृत्यु और काल एक बहुत रोचक ढंग से हमें प्राचीन भारतीय ज्ञान सि खाते हैं। सजीव चित्रण और प्रभावशाली अभिव्यक्ति वाली ये कथाएँ प्राचीन भारत की उत्कृष्ट कथाशैली का उदाहरण हैं।

लेखक प्रत्येक कथा का संदर्भ के साथ यथार्थ और पूर्ण अनुवाद प्रस्तुत करते हैं। नीलकण्ठ की टीका और अन्य भारतीय ग्रन्थों से अनेक शिक्षाओं, पच्चीस चित्रों और उपयोगी टिप्पणियों सहित यह पुस्तक हर आयु वर्ग (बच्चों और बड़ों) अर्थात् सबके लिए पढ़ने योग्य है।

भारतीय प्रबन्ध संस्था न बेंगलूरु से पढ़े नित्यानन्द मिश्र संस्कृत और हिन्दू धर्म के प्रख्यात विद्वान् हैं। श्री मिश्र एक वित्तीय विश्लेषक और नामकरण विशेषज्ञ हैं। साथ ही वे हिन्दू धर्म, इसके विविध शास्त्र, दर्शन और संस्कृति पर लेखन कार्य भी करते हैं। श्री मिश्र सपरिवार मुम्बई में रहते हैं।

Horace’s Epist. 1.7 poses notoriously difficult problems about the author’s relationship with Maecenas. This article proposes that we identify the Calaber hospes of v. 14 with Augustus, and that the entire poem be understood as an implicit comparison between Maecenas and the master of Rome.

Aristote ne la mentionne pas dans La Poétique, Sénèque ignorait son existence, et depuis La Fontaine, elle compte parmi les genres les plus représentatifs de la littérature française. L’évolution du genre de la fable n’est pas des plus ordinaires. Nous observons au Moyen Âge l’apparition de recueils de fables, les « Isopets »,  reprenant les thèmes abordés dans les fables antiques. La multiplicité de ces recueils témoigne du goût du Moyen Âge pour cette littérature didactique. Toutefois, les Isopets ne sont pas une duplication des fables d’Esope et de Phèdre, puisque leurs ouvrages étaient perdus. Toute cette littérature de l’apologue médiéval repose – en majeure partie – sur un texte paraphrasant des fables de Phèdre : le Romulus Vulgaris.

A collection of forty-nine short stories from the Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist, and Confucian traditions, as well as from Indian, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean folklore. The book is aimed for a general audience.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08GJXB1JM/

in Studia Romanica 42/3 (2015): p. 59-77

Le conte n'est pas seulement un récit linéaire, sobre, mais une savante combinaison d'une diégèse d'un certain type, d'un réseau d'images et d'une philosophie implicite. C'est en cela qu'il se distingue de la nouvelle comme de la fable. En tant que genre littéraire, il apparaît moins comme une « forme simple » (André Jolles) que comme une forme « simplexe » (A. Berthoz). Dans ce cadre, comment aborder la question du style simple dans le genre littéraire du conte merveilleux, qui s'est inscrit sous l'égide de la complexité et de la sophistication, plus que de la simplicité ? Nous ferons ici l'hypothèse que l'idéal littéraire de simplicité prôné par Perrault, et dont Les Fées est le meilleur témoignage, se construit en prenant comme repoussoir une esthétique galante qui était à la source des contes de fées français.

We have all read the the fables of Aesop, the Jataka tales, the Panchatantra or Hitopadesha stories. But what about the fables from the Mahabharata? We know about the human characters, but do we know about the clever jackal, the hypocrite swan, the smart mouse, the evil cat, the lazy camel, the arrogant tree, the faithful parrot or the astonishing mongoose in Vyasa’s great epic?

‘Vyasa-Katha’ compiles fifty-one fables from the Mahabharata as narrated by Bhishma, Sauti, Vaishampayana, Markandeya, Duryodhana, Shalya, Arjuna and many more. These fascinating and instructive fables are a treasure trove of practical and political wisdom, moral values, universal truths and philosophy. Animals, birds, reptiles, fish, insects, trees, rivers, life forces, death and time teach ancient Indian wisdom in this intriguing collection. With vivid descriptions and colourful expressions, the fables exemplify the advanced art of storytelling in ancient India.

Author Nityananda Misra contextualises the fables and presents a faithful and unabridged translation. Carrying insights from Nilakantha’s commentary and numerous Indian texts, with a beautiful collection of twenty-five illustrations, this is a must-read for children and adults alike.

A scholar of Sanskrit and Hinduism, Nityananda Misra is an IIM Bangalore graduate, an equity execution consultant and a professional onomastician. He writes chiefly on Indic religions, scriptures, philosophy, culture and names. He lives in Mumbai with his family.

"Jan M. Ziolkowski not only provides a comprehensive overview of the theoretical debates about fairy tale origins but includes an extensive discussion of the relationship of the fairy tale to both the written and oral sources. Ziolkowski offers interpretation of a sampling of the tales in order to sketch the complex connections that existed in the Middle Ages between oral folktales and their written equivalents, the variety of uses to which the writers applied the stories, and the diverse relationships between the medieval texts and the expressions of the same tales in the "classic" fairy tale collections of the nineteenth century."

https://www.press.umich.edu/1204480/fairy_tales_from_before_fairy_tales

Includes a review published in Marvels & Tales: Journals of Fairy-Tale Studies, 22.2, 2008.

"Animal Stories and Fables in Ancient Egypt" - Essay in the beautiful publication (Schriftenreihe des Landesmuseums Natur und Mensch, Heft 63) accompanying the cross-cultural exhibition "Tierisch moralisch. Die Welt der Fabel in Orient und Okzident" at Landesmuseum Natur und Mensch Oldenburg / Germany (22 February - 1 June 2009). - Egyptian stories in which animals act like humans are known from written sources only as late as the 2nd century AD (e.g. the famous Demotic papyrus Leiden AMS 75 - was part of the exhibition!). However, similar stories existed in Pharaonic Egypt for thousands of years. Proof are animal stories of which only "pictorial versions" are preserved (e.g. the "other side" of the famous pornographical papyrus Turin 55001 or numerous ostraca). Particularely fascinating in this respect is the purely "pictorial story" at Antikenmuseum Basel (Ae 1081) painted on stuccoed linnen from the New Kingdom (c. 1200 BC), which therefore is the focus of the essay. The text of this fairly complex animal story can unfortunaltely not be reconstructed. The existence of this purely pictorial story shows well that fables existed in Pharonic Egypt for millenia, however, only in oral transmission which - when not written down at one point AND also preserved - got lost ... likely forever. - (in German)

Nata in Mesopotamia, la favola antica fiorì nel mondo greco-romano, ai margini della cultura alta delle classi superiori, come particolare genere letterario dove si depositò la visione del mondo e della vita maturata dagli schiavi attraverso i secoli. Con i suoi messaggi asciutti, la favola esopica ci dice che sono le questioni cruciali dell’esistenza – vincere o perdere, pensare o agire al momento giusto, saper giocare di forza o d’astuzia –quelle che occupano la mente di quanti sono costretti a lavorare, ovvero dei ceti subalterni, che nelle società antiche erano prevalentemente gli schiavi. La morale che viene fuori dalla favolistica greca e latina, quella che La Penna chiama «la sapienza degli schiavi», è dominata da un’amara rassegnazione: nel mondo degli uomini non vi è alcun intervento della divinità, e il potere è nelle mani dei più forti, dei più violenti, dei più astuti, non dei più giusti. L’astuzia, l’abilità, l’energia servono solo per sopravvivere in un mondo siffatto, ed è illusoria ogni speranza di mutarne le leggi fondamentali. La favola esopica, sebbene priva di qualunque connotato rivoluzionario, fu un passo decisivo nel distacco dalla cultura religiosa e nell’elaborazione di una cultura laica popolare. La raccolta degli scritti di La Penna sulla tradizione esopica in Grecia e a Roma, ad opera di Giovanni Niccoli e Stefano Grazzini, conferma ancora una volta il valore dei classici come strumento per affrontare le sfide e i cambiamenti del nostro tempo.

The twelfth-century Latin beast epic Ysengrimus is one of the great comic masterpieces of the Middle Ages. This long poem, composed in what is today Belgium, recounts the relentless persecution of the wolf Ysengrimus by his archenemy Reynard the fox, in the course of which the wolf is beaten to a pulp, flayed (twice), mutilated, and finally eaten alive by sixty-six pigs. The cartoon-like violence of the narrative is not motivated by a gratuitous delight in cruelty but by a specific satiric aim: the wolf represents the hybrid ecclesiastic who is both abbot and bishop, whose greed is comparable to the wolf’s. The details of the narrative are carefully crafted to make the wolf’s punishment fit the abbot-bishop’s crime, creating a topsy-turvy world in which the predator becomes prey. In the elaborate rhetorical fantasies that accompany the narrative, the wolf’s tortures are represented as honors (for example, his flaying is mockingly represented as an episcopal consecration). This poem gave rise to a whole body of narratives, beginning with the earliest branches of the Romance of Renard and extending into most of the European vernaculars, so influential that the name Renard eventually became the standard word for fox in French.

Παρατίθενται εδώ εισαγωγικά γραμματολογικά στοιχεία και μεταφράσεις για το είδος των διδακτικών μύθων (μύθοι ζώων, μύθοι αισώπειου τύπου) σε διάφορους πολιτισμούς της Ανατολής: Αίγυπτο, Μεσοποταμία, Ισραήλ, Ινδία. Αποδίδονται στη γλώσσα μας πολλοί μύθοι ζώων και άλλες διδακτικές παραβολές, που σώζονται σε κείμενα αυτών των λαών. Σχεδόν για όλες αυτές τις ιστορίες ο έμπειρος αναγνώστης θα θυμηθεί χαρακτηριστικά παράλληλα από τις ελληνικές συλλογές του Αισώπου. Στο τέλος μεταφράζονται και μερικοί μύθοι λατίνων συγγραφέων: του Φαίδρου, του Αβιανού και του Όδωνα εκ Κεριτώνος.

Η εργασία αυτή συνεχίζει και συμπληρώνει προηγούμενες δουλειές μου σχετικά με το είδος των αισώπειων μύθων: τη μετάφραση της ελληνικής συναγωγής του Αισώπου, η οποία φιλοξενείται στον ιστότοπο του Κέντρου Ελληνικής Γλώσσας, καθώς και διάφορα μελετήματα που έχω δημοσιεύσει ή πρόκειται να δημοσιευτούν σύντομα. Αποτελεί ένα ακόμη δείγμα από την εν προόδω εργασία μου, η οποία ίσως κάποτε θα καταλήξει σε μεγάλο βιβλίο. Αν βρεθεί, ασφαλώς, εκδότης για να το τυπώσει.

Κάθε αναγνώστης είναι ελεύθερος να χρησιμοποιήσει το υλικό που ακολουθεί, να το μεταχειριστεί στη διδακτική πράξη, να το παραθέσει σε δικά του έργα ή μελετήματα-με έναν μόνον όρο: θα μνημονεύσει το όνομά μου, ως δημιουργού των μεταφράσεων και των λοιπών σημειωμάτων, και θα παραπέμψει στην παρούσα ακαδημαϊκή ιστοσελίδα (uoa.academia.edu/IoannisKonstantakos), στην οποία φιλοξενούνται τα κείμενα.

A re-translation of Michel Serres's “The Parasite” by Randolph Burks, based on Lawrence Schehr's translation. It was high time “The Parasite” saw a revision. Here it is. Schehr's translation has been substantially altered in style and content.

A new edition of Leonardo da Vinci's Fables, Facetiae, Bestiary, and Prophecies, curated by Giuditta Cirnigliaro and Carlo Vecce. It shows Leonardo's wonder in front of the marvels of Nature, his scientific discoveries, the work of the artist and his personal life. Leonardo's passion for little animals, such as spiders, lizards, and ants, emerges through the reading, along with his creative imagination. By following the free stream of the images, the writing records on paper the changing nature, the fight for life, the eternal flow of time.

In the history of European literature the philosophical tale flourished especially in the sphere of literary writing but was never essentially accepted by purely philosophical dicourse. Nevertheless, in the ancient traditions of the East (e.g. in Rabbinical Judaism and Buddhism) fiction was sanctioned as a means for the transmission of spiritual teachings. Even earlier, the philosophical tale had been born in Classical Athens, and the sophists were the midwives who assisted in its birth. Already since that time, as in its entire subsequent history, the philosophical tale was a multi-collective form and absorbed motifs and modes of expression from various genres of storytelling. In the present study three narratives are examined, created by thinkers who were active in ancient Athens. The aim is to trace the materials of the popular imaginary, which were used for the composition of these narratives, and the manner in which these materials were refined and spiritualized, so as to embody theoretical ideas. Prodicus’ myth on the choice of Heracles between Virtue and Vice (Xenophon, Memorabilia, 2.1.21-34) is mainly based on a type of allegorical story which was widespread in the Near East from early times: the protagonists are personifications of good and evil, which debate in front of a divine arbiter. Prodicus focuses on the personage of the arbiter and transforms the naïve allegory into a moral parable about the crucial choices of human life. In the anthropological myth of Protagoras, from the homonymous Platonic dialogue (320c-322d), the narrative material comes chiefly from the Aesopic tradition of aetiological fables. The sophist variates and reworks the motifs of this fabulistic tradition. The myth of Theuth and writing (Plato, Phaedrus, 274c-275b) presents analogies to the central episode of an Egyptian fantastic novella, in which the same divinities (Thoth and Amun-Ra) are confronted, again in connection to writing, its force and dangers. Plato has transformed the fantastic tale into a philosophical parable on the limits of knowledge, placed within a far broader anthropological and epistemological frame.

Cette étude se concentre sur les représentation du renard au Moyen-Âge et à la Renaissance italienne. Les deux sources majeures de ces représentations sont le Roman de Renart et les Fables d'Ésope.

This study focuses on representations of the fox in the Middle Ages and the Italian Renaissance. The two major sources of these representations are the Roman de Renart and the Fables of Aesop.

https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/handle/1887/84707.
More than 350 years after their first publication, Jean de La Fontaine's Fables (1668) are still republished every year in French children's books, used in school curricula, and often considered as a way of both delighting and instructing children at the same time. This is an important aim in the history of French literature since Nicolas Boileau's Art poétique (1674), inspired by Horace's Ars Poetica (19 BCE). It became a significant principle in French children's literature too, especially after Jan Amos Comenius' Orbis sensualium pictus (1658), the first picture book for children, was translated into French in 1666. Because they have been written in the same context as the Orbis sensualium pictus and officially dedicated to the aspiring future king, the Fables have often been considered a delighting and instructing book for children, while the efforts made by authors, illustrators, and editors in their adaptations show it is not entirely obvious that they are indeed meant for children. Therefore, I argue that they seem to be taught in France primarily for traditional reasons in order to reinforce national and cultural cohesion, which is a practice that is worth being questioned and discussed.

The object of this study is the narrative genre of the parable in Jewish tradition -- a storytelling form of age-old roots, which developed into an emblematic expression of the spirit of Israel. In the entire course of the history of Judaism and Jewry, from the Biblical and the Roman period and subsequently during the long centuries of the Diaspora, the spiritual teachers of the Jewish people showed a keen fondness for this genre, whose concise and dense form afforded the ideal means to convey the peculiar Jewish sense of humour and ironic worldview. One of the central themes of Jewish parables, diachronically, is the experience of persecution in its various manifestations: the life of Jewish populations in hostile environments, the discriminations and prosecutions against them, their oppression by unfavourably disposed state authorities. The transcription of this kind of experience, the reflection on the trials of Jewish identity and the proper attitude of the Judaic people in face of such dire conditions run through the narrative production of Jewish masters from the Talmud to the age of modernity.

In my study characteristic examples of parables are discussed, coming from different periods of the history of Jewish culture, in all of which the theme of persecution and trials is dominant. This topic is adapted every time to different historical circumstances, which impose corresponding narrative modes and thematic transformations. The comparative examination of these stories highlights the continuity but also the Protean multiformity of this subject-matter in the Jewish tradition.

In particular, Rabbi Akiva and the other tannaim of the Talmud apply their parables to emphasize the importance of loyalty to the spiritual and religious heritage of Israel, in spite of the oppression and the interdictions of the Roman imperial authority. As the rabbinical stories indicate, the study of the Torah and the sacred scriptures is the core of the identity of the Jewish people, and therefore it must be kept at all costs, in defiance of the violent persecutions of the Roman state. On the other hand, in the age of the acme of Hasidism, possibly under the influence of the dynamic and innovatory nature of this movement at its early phases, the phenomenon of persecution is confronted with a stance of new optimism. In the Hasidic parables the violence and the threats of the state authorities are magically overcome and pushed aside by the charismatic Rebbe, who ensures the salvation of his people in a supernatural manner. These fairy-tale stories reflect the intense mysticism and the folk basis of the Hasidic movement.

Finally, Kafka, the ultimate heir of this long tradition, immerses the traditional Jewish sagacity into black humour and imbues his parables with a peculiar sense of paradox and a nightmarish quality. The heroes of his stories are persecuted above all by existential Angst and can find redemption neither in the study of the Scriptures nor in miraculous salvation. The identities of the persecutor and the victim seem at times to be so vague and inclusive, that the Kafkaesque parables acquire an all-human value and universal symbolism. The experience of persecuted Israel becomes an overarching parable for the fate of tantalized humanity in a hostile cosmos. From Kafka onwards, we are all Jews.

This paper explores the folklore of indentured Indians and endeavors to understand the elements of Indian folk culture in the sugar colonies in the age of the empires. While examining the content and context of the folklore, it finds that the indentured folktales were very much influenced by the Indian socio-cultural life, however, these folktales got transformed and modified due to the contact with host countries' languages, places and space. On the other hand, the content of the indentured folksongs not only depicted the culture and pain of separation from homeland and familial ties, but also became an instrument to resist against the plantation hardship.

This essay explores Rousseau's relationship with truth through an exposition of his autobiographical works, especially his Reveries of the Solitary Walker, as well as its implications for understanding the intended role of his Lawgiver in the Social Contract.

TV series Black Mirror (2011-2019) explores how humans collide with technology and each other in time-settings situated either now or in the immediate future. Often described as a philosophical classic of the 21st century, the series has been widely analysed by the current academia within the fields of Critical Media Theory and Cultural Studies (Altunay, 2015; Cirucci and Vacker, 2018; Berns, 2018; Albrecht, 2018; Jones, 2018; Drage, 2018, Thomas and Ryan, 2018). However, very little has been said about its form, structure and genre from the narrative perspective. Each episode has an independent plot and a different cast, with the common thread of making spectators aware of a techno-dystopian moral. Thus, the entire series is conceived as a collection of contemporary fables or apologues which, as the classical Aesop’s or La Fontaine’s do, teaches us a particular lesson, in this case about a very specific threat of the so-called Technological Age. A fable narrates a concise and brief story promoting a moral lesson at the end. This chapter analyses Black Mirror as a collection of fables by paying special attention to the moral that each episode conveys in relation to the dangers of the potential of technology-embedded stock of characters in it. The formal and narrative perspective that this chapter adopts when addressing Black Mirror from the literary field by analysing it within the genre of the fable constitutes an original and cutting-edge approach. It examines how the series instructs us on contemporary lessons to be learned of different nature, most related to the hegemony of the New Media Age and the surveillance culture we are currently immersed in. This chapter will definitely improve our understanding of the series as a whole and will open new paths for academic research on TV series from the literary domain.

If you want to teach emotional intelligence and social and emotional learning skills, try AESOP'S FABLES. His stories are timeless and really speak to children's--and adults'--sensibilities. In this article you will find modernized versions of the fables, which might not be such a bad assignment/lesson for students. Ask your class to take a fable and write their own version of it set in contemporary times.

Cet article analyse les Fables de 1668 à la lumière d’une double tradition, l’art de la pointe et les traités de civilité, dont les Fables font affleurer les potentialités politiques. La rhétorique du trait d’esprit, dans le premier recueil de La Fontaine, serait une forme de pédagogie mondaine, où le poète se donnerait en exemple au prince pour l’inciter à apprendre l’art de la parole civile. En ce sens le prince n’est plus seulement le destinataire des poèmes, invité à devenir un parfait honnête homme, primus inter pares, mais aussi le modèle et l’image de la souveraineté et de l’autonomie de la personne privée.

Aesopic fables constitute an important case in popular literature. This genre went through various stages of development, as its practical and educational value was recognized from the beginning; its plasticity, pedagogical dimension and mainly its ability to convey messages through an indirect and pleasant way prompted many to take interest in it, reading, adapting or even creating new fables. Initially, these fables were developed for use in linguistic education and later they assumed a pedagogical and simultaneously literary character, while, in many cases, they became a means of indirect expression and protest. Even though generation and adaptation of fables was recorded in almost every era and country, it was greatly increased with the movement of the European (1687-1789) and of the Modern Greek Enlightenment (1750-1821). The messages of these fables appeared to be aiming at the liberation of man from ignorance and superstition. This paper aims to demonstrate this ‘Aesopic prod...

Riddles and related intellectual problems are a recurrent theme in the Vita Aesopi and play a significant part in the structure of its narrative. The solution and propounding of such problems accompany the central hero in his gradual rise from slavery and lowliness to power and glory, abandoning him only at the moment of his final doom. In this respect, the Vita is comparable to other near contemporary narrative works, such as the Contest of Homer and Hesiod and the Historia Apollonii regis Tyri, where riddles have a similar structural function. Aesop’s association with riddles was not invented by Vita-Author but has roots in earlier legendary tradition. It is a fictionalized expression of the generic affinity between the riddle and the Aesopic fable, an affinity the Greeks were keenly aware of. Other influential factors were Aesop’s connection with the Seven Sages, traditionally regarded as master riddlers, and his paradoxical combination of contradictory qualities (physical ugliness and inner beauty), which made Aesop a living enigma. Other writers contemporary with the Vita-Author, such as Plutarch and Phaedrus, also exploited Aesop’s association with riddles in their works.