Nihil sub sole novum

19th Century Fables

As well-known as de La Fontaine is in France, Ivan Krylov (d. 1844) is in Russia.  He based many of his fables on those of de La Fontaine, but also found much inspiration in society.  You will also read fables from the second half of the 19th century by Charles Yriarte (d. 1898), a Spaniard who lived in France.

Day 1 – Ivan Krylov

Today, you will read a fable by Krylov that he based on one of de La Fontaine.  As you read about councils of mice and rats, think about how fables impart moral lessons.  First, what is the moral of de La Fontaine’s fable, and how is that lesson imparted?  Write two sentences to answer these two questions.  Second, what is the lesson of Krylov’s fable, and how is this lesson imparted?  Again, write two sentences to answer these two questions.  Satire is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “a poem or (in later use) a novel, film, or other work of art which uses humour, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize prevailing immorality or foolishness, esp. as a form of social or political commentary.”  Krylov is a satirist, while de La Fontaine writes more simply moralistic literature?  Explain with at least one sentence.

De La Fontaine’s Council Held by Rats

Krylov’s The Mice in Council  

Day 2 – Ivan Krylov

Krylov’s fable of The Quartet has not been connected to an older fable.  Write a one-sentence summary of the fable, then explain its moral in a second sentence.  Could you find a circumstance in your own life that this fable could satirize?  Describe this situation.

Krylov’s The Quartett

Day 3 – Charles Yriarte

Enjoy these two music-themed fables by Yriarte.  Fables anthropomorphize animals.  According to the Oxford English Dictionary, to anthropomorphize means “to attribute human characteristics, form, or personality to.”  Reflect on the fables that you have read thus far.  How did Aesop anthropomorphize animals in his fables?  How does Yriarte take anthropomorphism to a new level, by having the animals make music?  

Yriarte’s The Ass and the Flute

Yriarte’s The Concert of the Beasts

Day 4 – Charles Yriarte

Now read these two fables by Yriarte that anthropomorphize inanimate objects.  How does Yriarte make the various objects in these fables human-like?  Write a dialogue between two or more objects in your room (at least ten lines of dialogue).

Yriarte’s The Muff, the Fan, and the Umbrella 

Yriarte’s The Flint and the Steel

English Fables

Fables continued into the Early Modern Era to provide compelling sources for retelling for contemporary readers.    

Day 1 – Roger L’Estrange

Robert L’Estrange published a collection of fables by Aesop and by others, which he translated into English, including those by Laurentius Abstemius, an Italian, who published his fables in Latin in the Hecatomythium in 1495.  You may read the Latin, a literal Latin translation into English, and L’Estrange’s more “idiomatic” translation here.  L’Estrange also added a reflection.

Robert L’Estrange’s Translation of Laurentius Abstemius’s A Country Man and a River

Write a reflection in the style of L’Estrange for one of the fables of Aesop that you have read.  

Day 2 – John Gay

John Gay, English poet and dramatist, wrote Fifty-One Fables in Verse for the youngest son of King George II of England, age six at the time (1727).  

On the writing of fables, John Gay wrote in a letter to Jonathan Swift (author of Gulliver’s Travels), 

You seemed not to approve of my writing more fables. Those I am now writing, have a prefatory discourse before each of them, by way of epistle, and the morals of most of them are of the political kind, which makes them run into a greater length than those I have already published. I have already finished fifteen or sixteen ; four or five more would make a volume of the same size as the first. Though this is a kind of writing that appears very easy, I find it is the most difficult of any that I ever undertook. After I have invented one fable, and finished it, I despair of finding out another; but I have a moral or two more, which I wish to write upon.  (Source)

In response, Swift wrote

But you have quite misunderstood me ; for there is no writing I esteem more than fables, nor anything so difficult to succeed in, which, however, you have done excellently well, and I have often admired your happiness in such a kind of performance, which I have frequently endeavoured at in vain. I remember I acted as you seem to hint; I found a moral first, and then studied for a fable, but could do nothing that pleased me, and so left off that scheme forever. I remember one, which was to represent what scoundrels rise in armies by a long war, wherein I supposed the lion was engaged ; and having lost all his animals of worth, at last Sergeant Hog came to be brigadier, and Corporal Ass a colonel, etc. (Source)

Swift and Gay both began with the moral that they wanted to impart.  Read John Gay’s and Aesop’s fables about the Hare with Many Friends.  Reflect on this fable.  What is Aesop’s lesson?  What is John Gay’s?  How might this fable have a meaning in the present-day, to a reader such as yourself?  Write a paragraph on the moral of the fable of the Hare with Many Friends.  Support your answers to the first two questions with direct references to each writer’s fable; each answer will likely need more than one answer.  As you answer the third question, offer specific examples of how the fable can be relevant today.

Aesop’s The Hare with Many Friends

John Gay’s The Hare and Many Friends (alternately)

Day 3 – Thomas Day

In The History of Sandford and Merton (three volumes from 1783 to 1789), a best-selling children’s book, Thomas Day collected fables and other moralizing tales within the story of two boys, Tommy Merton and Harry Sandford.

Aesop’s Androcles

Thomas Day’s Androcles and the Lion (alternately, alternately)

How does Thomas Day continue the tradition of fables, and how does he further innovate in his telling of fables?  As you answer these two questions, provide support from the text in the form of a direct reference to the text for each way that he continues tradition or innovates.

Day 4 – Essays on Fables

By the 18th century, fables had not lost their relevance, nor did writers feel as though they could not improve upon them to update them for their present-day.  And fables also become a topic about which these same authors wrote essays.  As you think about the fable that you will write, which fables have you most enjoyed?  And least enjoyed?  What do you think makes a good fable?  Write a paragraph about three characteristics of a good fable.  For each characteristic, give an example from one of the fables that you have read.