The Picture Treasury of World Fables 3
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Authors
Yan, Wenjing
Issue Date
1989
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Book, Whole
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Abstract
Here is the third volume of an ambitious set of five. This comprehensive presentation is quite an undertaking! This "Book Three" covers classic European Fabulists, particularly La Fontaine. Others include Da Vinci and several Germans. It offers some 71 fables on 378 pages. There is an English T of C on 3-5. Pagination begins immediately after this T of C with a new set of Roman numerals beginning with "1." I believe that one refers correctly to the Chinese here as "Simplified Chinese." Each story is attributed to a particular writer, adapter, translator, and illustrator. The cartoon approach fits the fables well. One notes the struggles of foreigners to deal well with English in the sometimes crazy syllabification of words in their narrow columns. So, for example, the first story has the cobbler respond to the banker "I don't expect to have any savings, but every day bring its meals" (3). Thus also "rushed" is divided into two syllables on 14 and "lakeside" sees its last two letters separated on 29. The graphic style of Li Mu Chen Yiking for FC is strong (20-25). This art is almost geometric. The realistic artistic style of Zhou Shen in "The Grinder, His Son, and Their Donkey" is strong (50-56) and the story is true to La Fontaine's particular telling of MSA. The first 198 pages are given to La Fontaine, followed by Lessing. Lessing's first fable builds on FK. When one young frog speaks up and says to the snake "I didn't ask for you as king," the snake responds "That is even more hateful" (199-202). Leonardo da Vinci has a fine fable on 224-28: a spider hides among grapes and captures many fruitflies. Then the vintner comes and plucks the bunch of grapes. The spider's hiding place became his prison. "The Court of Death" by William Gay seems new to me (247-51). Death prefers Indulgence over all his other servants because people like Indulgence. The illustration style of Wang Xiaomi is strong. Chaucer's Chanticleer is called "Cantacalay" (264). Petrus Alfons, Waldis, Luther, Johann Fischer, Werner Rainert, Friedrich Ruechert, Hans Sachs, Hebbel, Grimm, Geiler, Lichtwer, and Bierce round out the list of authors. Grimm is credited with the story of the fox and the cat arguing over the number of evasive tricks either has. This volume features WL in color on both of its covers. The set was reproduced, I believe, in 2008 in similar but not identical form.
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Publisher
Shandong Friendship Press
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Identifier
10571 (Access ID)