Fables and Fabulists: Ancient and Modern

Sir Roger L'Estrange (1616-1704) was a rabid Jacobite, journalist, and pamphleteer, and during a long life spent in fierce political conflict, in which, at times, he bore a far...

'When to my study I retire, And from books of ancient sages Glean fresh sparks of buried fire Lurking in their ample pages-- While the task my mind engages Let old words new tru...

Pictures illustrating fables are a feature that tends to enhance their attractiveness and value, and the ablest artists have employed their pencils in the work. It is sufficient...

'Fables,' says Aristotle, 'are adapted to deliberate oratory, and possess this advantage: that to hit upon facts which have occurred in point is difficult; but with regard to fa...

It is a remarkable circumstance in connection with the literature of fable, that those who have excelled in it are comparatively few. The principal names that occur to us are Æs...

It has been asserted that this same Æsop, if not a mythical personage, is at least credited with much more than is his due, and that it is only around his name that have cluster...

There are numerous tales told of Æsop, some of which are obviously mythical; others, though their actual parentage may be doubtful, are entirely in keeping with his reputation f...

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, born January 22, 1729, at Kamenz, died February 15, 1781, aged fifty-two years, was a distinguished German scholar, poet and dramatist. As a fabulist,...

Æsop is justly regarded as the foremost inventor of fables that the world has seen. He flourished in the sixth century before Christ. Several places, as in the case of Homer, ar...

In the earlier ages of the world's history fables were invented for the edification of men and women. This was so in the palmiest days of Greek, Roman and Arabian or Saracenic c...

Robert Dodsley, born at Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, in 1703, died at Durham, December 25, 1764, buried in the abbey churchyard there, author of 'The Economy of Human Life' and o...

First, as _fabulæ_, it is employed to denote the myths or fictions which, by the aid of imagination and superstition, have clouded, or have become blended with, the history of t...

Thus La Fontaine:[10] 'The fable proper is composed of two parts, of which one may be termed the body and the other the soul. The body is the subject-matter of the fable and the...

Fabulists as censors have always been not only tolerated, but patronized and encouraged, even in the most despotic countries, and when they have exposed wickedness and folly in...

There is an archness about the best fables that creates interest and awakens curiosity; and it is the quality of such that, whilst simple enough as stories to be understood and...

Phædrus, who wrote the fables of Æsop in Latin iambics, and added others of his own, was born at the very source of poetic inspiration, on Mount Pierius, near to the Pierian spr...