Fables of a Jewish Aesop

Title

en_US Fables of a Jewish Aesop

Description

en_US Original language: heb

en_US First printing

en_US Translated from the Fox Fables of Berechiah ha-Nakdan by Moses Hadas

Creator

en_US Berechiah ben Natronai

Contributor

en_US Kredel, Fritz

en_US Hadas, David (Essayist)

Date

2016-01-25T19:28:43Z

en_US 2004-08

en_US 2001

Date Available

2016-01-25T19:28:43Z

Date Issued

en_US 2001

Abstract

en_US I have a hardbound copy of the 1967 original publication from which this paperback is reprinted. This edition adds an essay by David Hadas. Let me repeat some of my comments from that edition. This is a curious but disappointing book. The 119 Hebrew fables come from France of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries and seem to be based chiefly on those of Marie de France. They are bleak about the fickleness of fortune's turning wheel. They are also rhetorically fulsome, using Biblical phrases to expand on (and sometimes obfuscate) simple action and speech. A favorite insult seems to be My little finger is bigger than your loins. These fables become parables squeezed for moral meaning, like those in Rodriguez' Christian Perfection. The fables regularly have an application afterwards and often a bit of poetry. Kredel's few illustrations are nice reinterpretations of the Ulm woodcuts: 7, 33, 51, 68, 90, 109, 135, 157, 184, 214 and the frontispiece. The point of many fables seems to be simply missed in the search for meaning: #12, 18(?), 22, 33, 64, 94, and 112. The rhetoric becomes unconsciously funny when the lamb hopes he will not fulfill the prophecy that the wolf will lie down with the lamb (45). Differently told: the eagle gets the frog but not the mouse, who survives; the sheep argues that children should not die for their fathers' sins; the frogs ask the tree to be king; the crane stores food in a tree's holes; the fox apportions whole beasts to the lion, lioness, and cub; the covetous and the envious become apes before king lion (the story is repeated with human characters in #119); the shepherd gives the wolf away with his eyes, though no one notices; an osprey fills a pot with stones; a man is besieged by flies; and the father ape comes to love his hated son. Some stories are new to me and delightful: #26, 32, 36, 38, 40, 46, 49, 71, 77, 91, 113, and 115. The Apes' King (#78) is particularly well told.

Identifier

en_US 1567921310 (pbk.)

en_US 5054 (Access ID)

uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10504/80646

Language

en_US eng

Publisher

en_US David R. Godine Publisher,

en_US Boston, MA

Subject

en_US PJ5050.B4 M53 2001

en_US Aesop

en_US Title Page Scanned

Type

en_US Book, Whole