From Ur to Uncle Remus: 5000 Years of Animal Fable Illustrations
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Authors
Lancaster, Clay
Issue Date
1997
Type
Book, Whole
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Abstract
I am still trying to find the focus in this book. It goes at a huge subject in snippets. Without that focus, I find too much that is scattered, partial, and misleading. Did the book perhaps grow out of a lecture or series of lectures? Frequently the text seems to be a commentary on the visuals. After the frontispiece, all of these appear on right-hand pages without print or image on the verso. There are fascinating glimpses at important moments in the history of art. Thus Sumerian harp figures are imbued with fable essence (11) even though there are no known texts associated with the figures. Lancaster finds fable in Greece by the eighth century BC. Be careful: the image of the fox and the crow on 23 is really from the story of Chanticleer, not the usual FC story of dropping a morsel of cheese or meat. The Jataka tales took their present form in the fifth century AD, but the first illustrations of them occurred in the second century BC. China's great contribution to fable history comes with the creation of paper in 100 AD, when prints became possible. There is a sizeable chapter (III) on Buddhism's spread of the Jatakas. For Lancaster, Buddhism developed the fable and gave it sanctity and popularity as it moved from India eastward throughout Asia. Why am I impatient with the book? There is too much here that is either erroneous or seems to invite to error. The story of the lion and the hare is about the lion plunging not at the perceived hare but rather at the perceived lion (70). Lancaster speaks on 85 as though Oudry's were the first edition of La Fontaine's fables. The only representatives of modern European fable discussed here are Oudry's La Fontaine and Bewick. Croxall did not publish his fable book in Philadelphia in 1777; he published it in England in 1722. Because of the misrepresentations, I do not know whether I can trust some of Lancaster's most engaging observations, e.g. that the first exclusively fable book published in the USA came in 1762 (100) or that the tar-baby story became the most popular of the Uncle Remus stories (111). Note the typo expressd on 70. I had hoped for more from this kindred spirit!
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University of Kentucky Librairies
University of Kentucky Libraries
University of Kentucky Libraries