Fable Scholarship: An Annotated Bibliography

Abstract

Here is one of Pack's many good projects dealing with fables. He was constantly working on the revised version, which would have been several times the size of this 382-page book with its 1457 entries. It is hard to imagine the sustained work that went into compiling this book! Pack's introduction is careful. The base line, as it were, is Aesopic as found in the monumental 'Aesopica' by Ben Edwin Perry (xiii). All works dealing with materials for which the claim of 'Aesopic' has been made have been included (xiii). Pack uses La Fontaine as a case in point. General studies of La Fontaine will not be found here. Only those works that were specifically directed toward La Fontaine's fables or fable theory or La Fontaine's position in the history of fable writing were included (xiv). Three indices follow the main body of the book: a name and subject index; an index of fables using Perry's numbers; and a tale-type index following Aarne and Thompson's The Types of the Folktale and Thompson's Motif-Index of Folk-Literature.