Fables of a Jewish Aesop

Title

en_US Fables of a Jewish Aesop

Description

en_US This is a hardbound book (hard cover)

en_US This book has a dust jacket (book cover)

en_US Berechiah ha-Nakdan and Moses Hadas

Creator

en_US Berechiah ben Natronai

Contributor

en_US Kredel, Fritz

Date

2016-01-25T15:24:18Z

en_US 1993-08

en_US 1967

Date Available

2016-01-25T15:24:18Z

Date Issued

en_US 1967

Abstract

en_US 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 reproduced on the dust jacket. 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 1145 (Access ID)

uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10504/75930

Language

en_US eng

Publisher

en_US Columbia University Press

en_US New York, NY

Subject

en_US PJ5050.B4 M53

en_US Aesop

en_US Title Page Scanned

Type

en_US Book, Whole