100 World's Great Fables
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Authors
Chen, Deyun
Li, Zhong
Zhou, Guozhen
Issue Date
1995
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Book, Whole
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Abstract
This paperback offers an excellent selection of one hundred Western fables. I am surprised not to find some Chinese fables included! A glance at the T of C near the book's beginning shows that Aesop gets fully 41 texts; Lessing 13; Phaedrus, Kriloff, and Tolstoi each 8; and La Fontaine 4. I am surprised to see Pignotti, Aikin, and Bierce included at all. Some stories that are new to me and good include the Talmud's story about getting the cow to move by putting the calf in front of her (86) and Pignotti's The Mouse and the Elephant (174, different from La Fontaine's). Among the fables included from Phaedrus is The Camel and the Fly (90). I do not think that there is such a fable in Phaedrus' corpus! The prose Phaedrus seems to have the more usual Bull and Fly. Similarly, I am unaware of a Phaedrian fable like #51 here, in which an ox and an ass, who have been pulling a wagon together, both end up dying. Because La Fontaine is represented by only four fables here, it is especially surprising for me that one of them is The Treasure and the Two Men (112). I like Lessing's fables more every time I read them. On this trip through, his The Lion with the Ass (152) strikes me particularly. Asked if he is ashamed to walk with an ass, the lion responds that he can allow to walk at his side whomever he can make use of. Lessing comments that this is the way great people think when they honor a common person with their company. I am delighted to have found this book in an Eastern store in Berkeley.
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Shang wu yin shu guan Xianggang fen guan
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4121 (Access ID)