Misadventures in the Land of Fables #38
I talked last week of my discovery of a whole new landscape of fables in Frederic Taber Cooper’s ‘An Argosy of Fables.’ Well, it seems this landscape was fraught with danger, a jungle of deep shadows and grave consequences. I was familiar with Aesop’s work, and the later latin upstarts often attributed to the ancient […]
Misadventures in the Land of Fables #37
You think you’ve seen them all and then, wait, another old collection of fables turns up. Just before New Year, I discovered ‘An Argosy of Fables‘ by Frederic Taber Cooper. An illustration from the volume popped up in my recommendations on the image sharing service Pinterest. A vivid composition of three monkeys on the branch […]
Misadventures in the Land of Fables #36
Just before Christmas I published a fable on my Facebook page. Followers may not have realised what it was: the fable consisted of only one line and was accompanied by a Christmas greeting. (The pessimistic tone was hardly full of Christmas cheer. Sorry about that.) But it raised a question: can a fable consist of […]
Misadventures in the Land of Fables #35
The latest fable is an original, and also pleasingly short. Nor was it inspired by a picture, or even by real life, although I have often disturbed hares hunkered down in the middle of woods as the hunting dog does in the tale. If you’d like to read the fable before proceed with these comments, […]
Misadventures in the Land of Fables #34
How do we deal with things we want but cannot reach? Aspirations or goals, which after making every effort, prove unattainable? Aesop’s fable of ‘The Fox and the Grapes’ describes one method: lie to yourself. Dismiss the goal as not worth having and move on. In modern parlance, you might call this a coping strategy, […]
Misadventures on the border of the Land of Fables #33
When is a fable not a fable? — When it doesn’t have a clear moral, or does not appear to be constructed as if it had a such a moral. How is the moral constructed? — There are numerous ways. The protagonists can get punished for an act of presumption, or for their vanity and […]