The Panchatantra and Aesop's Fables: A Study in Genre
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Authors
Pawate, Chennabasappa Ishtalingappa
Issue Date
1986
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Book, Whole
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Abstract
This study, thus, gives the origin, meaning, importance and descent of the fable and attempts to prove that it really is an important branch of literature. This attempt is, perhaps, the first of its kind (105, in Conclusion). This work is a strenuous attempt to show that fables are serious literature. Since I have been spending my days lately getting at least a little acquainted with a number of serious attempts to understand the fable genre, the claim to be first in this effort here is surprising. Would not Perry's Aesopica, cited here, have some claim to that honor? Have Germans been not theorizing about the fable genre forever? In any case, there has been lately a glut of people who take fable very seriously. There may be some assumptions by Pawate that will not hold up in a larger view of fables, especially that a good fable has the deduction of a moral (105). Each and every fable is followed by a moral lesson (105) might thus be an exaggerated claim. Morals do not need to be stated, and whole collections put the moral before the appropriate fable. The maxim containing the moral of the fable, which occurs at the conclusion of each story, serves the aesthetic purpose of rounding off and no other. The witty maxims found at the end of Walt Disney comics serve the same purpose (106). Do they? Is That's all, folks! equivalent to Undank ist der Welt Lohn? Pawate's attempt to demonstrate the seriousness of fable as literature tends to depend on Aristotelian (here regularly spelled Aristotalian) characteristics, like having a beginning, middle, and end. Pawate is convinced that the form is not dead. Disney and Thurber seem to be his main evidence.
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Publisher
Amar Prakashan
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Identifier
7920 (Access ID)