The Fox and the Grapes is one of Aesop's Fables, [1] numbered 15 in the Perry Index. [2] The narration is concise and subsequent retellings have often been equally so. The story concerns a fox that tries to eat grapes from a vine but cannot reach them. Rather than admit defeat, he states they are undesirable. The expression "sour grapes" originated from this fable. [3]
The fable of The Fox and the Grapes is one of the few which feature only a single animal protagonist. There are several Greek versions as well as one in Latin by Phaedrus (IV.3) which is terse and to the point:
Driven by hunger, a fox tried to reach some grapes hanging high on the vine but was unable to, although he leaped with all his strength. As he went away, the fox remarked 'Oh, you aren't even ripe yet! I don't need any sour grapes.' People who speak disparagingly of things that they cannot attain would do well to apply this story to themselves. [4]
In her version of La Fontaine's Fables, Marianne Moore underlines his ironic comment on the situation in a final pun, "Better, I think, than an embittered whine". [5]
Although the fable describes purely subjective behaviour, the English idiom "sour grapes", which derives from the story, is now often used also of envious disparagement of something to others. Similar expressions exist in other languages of Europe and Asia, [6] [7] sometimes introducing different fruit. During the 12th century, Peter Abelard says a version in which the fox is after cherries has become proverbial; [8] it is also so recorded in that century by the troubador Aimeric de Peguilhan. [9] In the Scandinavian version the fox makes its comment about rowanberries, since grapes are not common in northern latitudes. [10] In Russian, not one but two expressions derive from Ivan Krylov's translation of La Fontaine. While "Green are the grapes" (Зелен виноград) has become the response to disparagement, [11] Krylov's earlier exposition, "Eye may see but tooth not taste" (Хоть видит око, да зуб неймет), is now proverbial. [12]
The French fable of La Fontaine (III.11) is almost as concise and pointed as the early versions of Babrius and Phaedrus and certainly contributed to the story's popularity. A century after its publication, this was the tale with which the sculptor Pierre Julien chose to associate its creator in his statue of La Fontaine (commissioned in 1782), now in the Louvre. The poet is represented in a famous episode of his life, when he was seen one morning by the Duchess of Bouillon seated against a tree trunk meditating. When she passed the same spot that evening he was still there in exactly the same position. Julien has portrayed him in an ample cloak, with a gnarled tree on which a vine with grapes is climbing. On his knee is the manuscript of the poem; at his feet, a fox is seated on his hat with its paw on a leather-bound volume, looking up at him.
Gustave Doré's illustration of the fable for the 1870 edition [13] pictures a young man in a garden who is looking towards the steps to a mansion in the distance on which several young women are congregated. An older man is holding up his thumb and forefinger, indicating that they are only little girls. The meaning of this transposition to the human situation hinges on the double meaning of 'unripe' (vert) in French, which could also be used of a sexually immature female. From this emerges the story's subtext, of which a literal translation reads:
The gallant would gladly have made a meal of them
But as he was unable to succeed, says he:
'They are unripe and only fit for green boys.'
There is the same sexual ambiguity in the Greek of Babrius. The phrase there is "όμφακες εισίν" (omphakes eisin), the word omphax [14] having both the literal meaning of an unripe grape and the metaphorical usage of a girl not yet ripe for marriage.
Rather than admit his failure to reach the grapes, the fox rationalises that they are not really desirable. One commentator argues that the story illustrates the state of cognitive dissonance. The fox is taken as attempting to hold incompatible ideas simultaneously, desire and its frustration. In that case, the disdain expressed by the fox at the conclusion to the fable serves as a psychological defence mechanism by reducing the dissonance through criticism. Jon Elster calls this pattern of mental behaviour "adaptive preference formation". [15]
Many translations, whether of Aesop's fable or of La Fontaine's, are wordy and often add details not sanctioned by the original. Two English authors have produced short poetical versions which still retain both the general lines of the story and its lesson. The first of these is a quatrain by Aphra Behn appearing in Francis Barlow's illustrated edition of the fables (1687):
The fox who longed for grapes, beholds with pain
The tempting clusters were too high to gain;
Grieved in his heart he forced a careless smile,
And cried, 'They’re sharp and hardly worth my while.' [16]
The second also accompanies an illustrated edition, in this case the work of Walter Crane in Baby's Own Aesop (1887). Each fable has been reduced to a limerick by W. J. Linton and is enclosed within the design. "The Fox and the Grapes" has been given the moral 'The grapes of disappointment are always sour' and runs as follows:
This Fox has a longing for grapes:
He jumps, but the bunch still escapes.
So he goes away sour;
And, 'tis said, to this hour
Declares that he's no taste for grapes. [17]
By comparison, the Phaedrus version has six pentameter lines, of which two draw the moral, and Gabriele Faerno's Latin reworking has five lines and two more drawing the moral. [18] Both Babrius and La Fontaine have eight, the latter using his final line to comment on the situation. Though the emblematist Geoffrey Whitney confines the story to four lines, he adds two more of personal application: 'So thou, that hunt'st for that thou longe hast mist,/ Still makes thy boast, thou maist if that thou list.' [19]
The fable was also one that the French poet Isaac de Benserade summed up in a single quatrain, not needing to go into much detail since his verses accompanied the hydraulic statue of it in the labyrinth of Versailles. He can therefore afford a thoughtful, moralising tone:
Pleasures are dear and difficult to get.
Feasting the eye, fat grapes hung in the arbour,
That the fox could not reach, for all his labour,
And leaving them declared, they're not ripe yet.
But Benserade then adds another quatrain, speculating on the fox's mental processes; finally it admits that the grapes really were ripe but 'what cannot be had, you speak of badly'. [20]
One of La Fontaine's early illustrators was the artist Jean-Baptiste Oudry, [21] who was also artistic director at both the Beauvais and the Gobelins tapestry works. In consequence of this a series based on La Fontaine's fables designed by Oudry was produced by them during the 1740s and included "The Fox and the Grapes". These stayed in production for some forty years and were imitated by other factories in France and abroad, [22] being used not just as wall hangings but for chair covers and other domestic purposes. Furniture craftsmen in France also used the fables as themes and took these with them when they emigrated. Among them was Martin Jugiez (d. 1815), who had a workshop in the American city of Philadelphia where the still surviving Fox and Grapes chest of drawers was produced. [23]
The Sèvres porcelain works used the fables on their china as well as reproducing Pierre Julien's statue from a preliminary model in 1784, even before the finished product was exhibited. [24] Another domestic use for the fable was as an architectural medallion on the outside of mansions, of which there is still an example dating from the turn of the 19th century on the Avenue Felix Fauré in Paris. [25] A medallion of another kind, cast in bronze by Jean Vernon (1897–1975), was produced as part of his renowned series based on the fables in the 1930s. That of "The Fox and the Grapes" features two foxes scrambling up a trellis with what looks like more success than La Fontaine's creation. [26]
There was as diverse a use of the fables in England and from as early a date. Principally this was on domestic china and includes a Chelsea candlestick (1750) and a Worcester jug (1754) in the 18th century; [27] a Brownhills alphabet plate (1888) in the 19th century; [28] and a collector's edition from the Knowles pottery (1988) in the 20th. [29] Series based on Aesop's fables became popular for pictorial tiles towards the end the 19th century, of which Minton Hollins produced a particularly charming example illustrating "The Fox and the Grapes". On this a vixen is accompanied by her cubs, who make ineffectual leaps at the grapes while the mother contemplates them with her paws clasped behind her. [30]
There have also been the following musical settings:
The "Fox and the Grapes" was spread widely to a variety of cultures by Aesop's Fables.
Language communities to the north share an innovation, having the fox refer to a familiar northern berry rather than to less-familiar grapes. In Scandinavian countries it is proverbially the rowanberry of which the fox complains, as in Danish, [41] Norwegian, [42] Swedish, [43] and Finnish. [44]
Fable is a literary genre defined as a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, legendary creatures, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature that are anthropomorphized, and that illustrates or leads to a particular moral lesson, which may at the end be added explicitly as a concise maxim or saying.
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 varied and unclear 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.
The Frog and the Ox appears among Aesop's Fables and is numbered 376 in the Perry Index. The story concerns a frog that tries to inflate itself to the size of an ox, but bursts in the attempt. It has usually been applied to socio-economic relations.
The Ant and the Grasshopper, alternatively titled The Grasshopper and the Ant, is one of Aesop's Fables, numbered 373 in the Perry Index. The fable describes how a hungry grasshopper begs for food from an ant when winter comes and is refused. The situation sums up moral lessons about the virtues of hard work and planning for the future.
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Belling the Cat is a fable also known under the titles The Bell and the Cat and The Mice in Council. In the story, a group of mice agree to attach a bell to a cat's neck to warn of its approach in the future, but they fail to find a volunteer to perform the job. The term has become an idiom describing a group of persons, each agreeing to perform an impossibly difficult task under the misapprehension that someone else will be chosen to run the risks and endure the hardship of actual accomplishment.
The Tortoise and the Birds is a fable of probable folk origin, early versions of which are found in both India and Greece. There are also African variants. The moral lessons to be learned from these differ and depend on the context in which they are told.
The Wolf and the Crane is a fable attributed to Aesop that has several eastern analogues. Similar stories have a lion instead of a wolf, and a stork, heron or partridge takes the place of the crane.
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 Wolf and the Lamb is a well-known fable of Aesop and is numbered 155 in the Perry Index. There are several variant stories of tyrannical injustice in which a victim is falsely accused and killed despite a reasonable defence.
The Fox and the Stork, also known as The Fox and the Crane, is one of Aesop's fables and is first recorded in the collection of Phaedrus. It is numbered 426 in the Perry Index.
The Cock, the Dog and the Fox is one of Aesop's Fables and appears as number 252 in the Perry Index. Although it has similarities with other fables where a predator flatters a bird, such as The Fox and the Crow and Chanticleer and the Fox, in this one the cock is the victor rather than victim. There are also Eastern variants of this story.
The Mountain in Labour is one of Aesop's Fables and appears as number 520 in the Perry Index. The story became proverbial in Classical times and was applied to a variety of situations. It refers to speech acts which promise much but deliver little, especially in literary and political contexts. In more modern times the satirical intention behind the fable was given greater emphasis following Jean de la Fontaine's interpretation of it. Illustrations to the text underlined its ironical application particularly and went on to influence cartoons referring to the fable elsewhere in Europe and America.
The Oak and the Reed is one of Aesop's Fables and is numbered 70 in the Perry Index. It appears in many versions: in some it is with many reeds that the oak converses and in a late rewritten version it disputes with a willow.
The young man and the swallow is one of Aesop's Fables and is numbered 169 in the Perry Index. It is associated with the ancient proverb 'One swallow doesn't make a summer'.
The Man with Two Mistresses is one of Aesop's Fables that deals directly with human foibles. It is numbered 31 in the Perry Index.
The Ass and his Masters is a fable that has also gone by the alternative titles The ass and the gardener and Jupiter and the ass. Included among Aesop's Fables, it is numbered 179 in the Perry Index.
Hercules and the Wagoner or Hercules and the Carter is a fable credited to Aesop. It is associated with the proverb "God helps those who help themselves", variations on which are found in other ancient Greek authors.
There are no less than six fables concerning an impertinent insect, which is taken in general to refer to the kind of interfering person who makes himself out falsely to share in the enterprise of others or to be of greater importance than he is in reality. Some of these stories are included among Aesop's Fables, while others are of later origin, and from them have been derived idioms in several languages.
The Fly and the Ant is one of Aesop's Fables that appears in the form of a debate between the two insects. It is numbered 521 in the Perry Index.
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