Our shadows are incomplete, imperfect imitations of ourselves. When the sun is high, they cower unformed at our feet, while later, they walk by our side, like children, devoted and playful, and small. But as the sun goes down, the shadows start to outgrow us; they stretch, as far as they dare, before turning back […]

Many Aesopic fables are little more than a description of a situation or an action; to call them stories would be to stretch the definition. The situation does not develop, there is no turning point, sometimes there’s no conflict at all. A character makes an observation, a comment aimed at another and this all that […]

The phrase ‘the lion’s share’, meaning the largest portion, comes from Aesop. A number of fables describe an unequal dividing of spoils implemented by the most powerful member of a hunting party, a lion. It goes something like this: the lion teams up with either two or three weaker animals (a cow, a goat, a […]

Many of Aesop’s fables are about predators. There must be over twenty featuring wolf, almost as many with wily but weaker the fox, as well as the lion, eagle, hawk, and snake. Tales of cunning, brutality, betrayal, but also mercy and cooperation. ‘The Wolf and the Lamb’ One of the most well-known fables, though one […]

  Fables are not literary texts. They are both less and more. They are brief, simple fictions with an exemplary message whose value resides almost exclusively in the quality of that message. Their pleasures are to be found primarily in the clarity and economy with which that message is rendered. Think of fables as a […]