Aesop's Fables
Loading...
Authors
Aesop
Issue Date
1933
Volume
Issue
Type
Book, Whole
Language
Keywords
Alternative Title
Abstract
T of C at the front and an AI at the rear. About twenty great wood engravings, starting from the reading donkey on the front cover of the first printing! The engravings are particularly distinct and lively in the first printing, finding which represents the culmination of a long search on my part. The ninth printing features a different cover (gray and no donkey), different paper, and a different strength of inking. The text is based on Croxall (1722) and James (1848). Now in 1997, I have just finished a careful review of the texts in comparison with those two versions. Artzybasheff's changes worked upon them generally involve predictable improvements like greater care in tenses, more contemporary language, and shorter and more pointed prose. His brief and engaging comments about using those two sources do not cover all of what he does. For he offers some fables presented by neither of these two: five of them from sources I do not yet recognize, one from Phaedrus and one from Caxton. I hope sometime to investigate whether a typo or creative imagination is at work in each of these word substitutions: shaking vs. shutting in GA, degree vs. decree of fate in PJ (#51), and currier vs. carrier in The Horse and the Ass. Artzybasheff introduces a tiger into the story normally pitting a lion against several bulls, and he also makes a tiger rather than a bear the lion's opponent in a fight over a fawn, which the clever fox eventually takes away. A fascinating book!
Description
Citation
Publisher
Viking Press
License
Journal
Volume
Issue
PubMed ID
DOI
Identifier
188 (Access ID)