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Aesop's Fables, or the Aesopica, is a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and storyteller who lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 564 BCE. Of diverse origins, the stories associated with his name have descended to modern times through a number of sources and continue to be reinterpreted in different verbal registers and in popular as well as artistic media.
Reynard the Fox is a literary cycle of medieval allegorical Dutch, English, French and German fables. The first extant versions of the cycle date from the second half of the 12th century. The genre was popular throughout the Late Middle Ages, as well as in chapbook form throughout the Early Modern period.
Berechiah ben Natronai Krespia ha-Nakdan was a Jewish exegete, ethical writer, grammarian, translator, poet, and philosopher. His best-known works are Mishlè Shu'alim and Sefer ha-Ḥibbur.
The Deer without a Heart is an ancient fable, attributed to Aesop in Europe and numbered 336 in the Perry Index. It involves a deer who was twice persuaded by a wily fox to visit the ailing lion. After the lion had killed it, the fox stole and ate the deer's heart. When asked where it is, the fox reasoned that an animal so foolish as to visit a lion in his den cannot have had one, an argument that reflects the ancient belief that the heart was the seat of thoughts and intellect. The story is catalogued as type 52 in the Aarne-Thompson classification system.
The lion's share is an idiomatic expression which now refers to the major share of something. The phrase derives from the plot of a number of fables ascribed to Aesop and is used here as their generic title. There are two main types of story, which exist in several different versions. Other fables exist in the East that feature division of prey in such a way that the divider gains the greater part - or even the whole. In English the phrase used in the sense of nearly all only appeared at the end of the 18th century; the French equivalent, le partage du lion, is recorded from the start of that century, following La Fontaine's version of the fable.
Ysengrimus is a Latin fabliau and mock epic, an anthropomorphic series of fables written in 1148 or 1149, possibly by the poet Nivardus. Its chief character is Isengrim, the Wolf; the plot describes how the trickster figure Reynard, the Fox, overcomes Isengrim's various schemes.
Beast poetry, in the context of European literature and medieval studies, refers to a corpus of poems written in Latin from the 8th to the 11th century.
The Alexandreis is a medieval Latin epic poem by Walter of Châtillon, a 12th-century French writer and theologian. It gives an account of the life of Alexander the Great, based on Quintus Curtius Rufus' Historia Alexandri Magni. The poem was popular and influential in Walter's own times: according to Henry of Ghent, it was more popular than Virgil's Aeneid in thirteenth-century schools. Translations were made into Old Spanish, Middle Dutch into Old Norse as the Alexanderssaga; Matthew of Vendôme and Alan of Lille borrowed from it and Henry of Settimello imitated it, but it is now seldom read. One line is sometimes quoted:
The Morall Fabillis of Esope the Phrygian is a work of Northern Renaissance literature composed in Middle Scots by the fifteenth century Scottish makar, Robert Henryson. It is a cycle of thirteen connected narrative poems based on fables from the European tradition. The drama of the cycle exploits a set of complex moral dilemmas through the figure of animals representing a full range of human psychology. As the work progresses, the stories and situations become increasingly dark.
An animal tale or beast fable generally consists of a short story or poem in which animals talk. They may exhibit other anthropomorphic qualities as well, such as living in a human-like society. It is a traditional form of allegorical writing.
Talking animals are a common element in mythology and folk tales, children's literature, and modern comic books and animated cartoons. Fictional talking animals often are anthropomorphic, possessing human-like qualities. Whether they are realistic animals or fantastical ones, talking animals serve a wide range of uses in literature, from teaching morality to providing social commentary. Realistic talking animals are often found in fables, religious texts, indigenous texts, wilderness coming of age stories, naturalist fiction, animal autobiography, animal satire, and in works featuring pets and domesticated animals. Conversely, fantastical and more anthropomorphic animals are often found in the fairy tale, science fiction, toy story, and fantasy genres.
The Ass in the Lion's Skin is one of Aesop's Fables, of which there are two distinct versions. There are also several Eastern variants, and the story's interpretation varies accordingly.
The Perry Index is a widely used index of "Aesop's Fables" or "Aesopica", the fables credited to Aesop, the storyteller who lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BC. The index was created by Ben Edwin Perry, a professor of classics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
The Fox and the Lion is one of Aesop's Fables and represents a comedy of manners. It is number 10 in the Perry Index.
The Fox and the Woodman is a cautionary story against hypocrisy included among Aesop's Fables and is numbered 22 in the Perry Index. Although the same basic plot recurs, different versions have included a variety of participants.
The Fox and the Mask is one of Aesop's Fables, of which there are both Greek and Latin variants. It is numbered 27 in the Perry Index.
The Fox, the Wolf and the Husbandman is a poem by the 15th-century Scottish poet Robert Henryson and part of his collection of moral fables known as the Morall Fabillis of Esope the Phrygian. It is written in Middle Scots. As with the other tales in the collection, appended to it is a moralitas which elaborates on the moral that the fable is supposed to contain. However, the appropriateness of the moralitas for the tale itself has been questioned.
The Ape and the Fox is a fable credited to Aesop and is numbered 81 in the Perry Index. However, the story goes back before Aesop’s time and an alternative variant may even be of Asian origin.
"The Hare and many friends" was the final fable in John Gay's first collection of 1727. It concerns the inconstancy of friendship as exemplified by a hare that lives on friendly terms with the farm animals. When the horns of the hunt are heard, she panics and eventually collapses exhausted, begging each of her acquaintances to help her escape. All give her different excuses, the last being a "trotting calf" who bids her "Adieu" as the hunters burst onto the scene. The poem won widespread popularity for some 150 years afterwards but, on a prose version appearing in a collection of Aesop's Fables, Gay's original authorship has gradually become forgotten.
The lion grown old is counted among Aesop’s Fables and is numbered 481 in the Perry Index. It is used in illustration of the insults given those who have fallen from power and has a similar moral to the fable of The dogs and the lion's skin. Parallel proverbs of similar meaning were later associated with it.
References
- Henry Hallam (1889). Introduction to the literature of Europe in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries (in French). A. C. Armstrong.
- Ernst Voigt, ed. (1875). Ecbasis Captivi, das älteste Thierepos des Mittelalters (in German). K. J. Trübner. Retrieved 19 January 2010.
- Bibliotheca Augustana, Ecbasis cuiusdam captivi (Latin source text)
- Jan M. Ziolkowski (1993). Talking animals: medieval Latin beast poetry, 750-1150. University of Pennsylvania. ISBN 0-8122-3161-9.
