The Fable as Literature

Title

en_US The Fable as Literature

Description

en_US This is a hardbound book (hard cover)

en_US This book has a dust jacket (book cover)

en_US H.J. Blackham

Creator

en_US Blackham, H.J.

Date

2016-01-25T20:16:26Z

en_US 1986-07

en_US 1985

Date Available

2016-01-25T20:16:26Z

Date Issued

en_US 1985

Abstract

en_US This has been a favorite book of mine, but one I have had to labor with. Blackham treats the fable genre seriously and has an excellent sense of what fable is. Thus Blackham insists correctly that a summary statement never gets all the meaning of a fable: There is no definitive `moral'. The metaphor is open; the comparison invites exploratory reflection (xiii). He presents a wealth of valuable material for the student of fable to ponder. His descriptions of fable are wonderfully suggestive. For Blackham, fable gets past the garrison of resident assumptions; it is a tactical manoevre to prompt new thinking (xi). A fable embodies the general in an invented particular which, when it is recognized, informs the general notion with more perceptive recognitions (9). Fable says more than it seems to say (xi); it never says Think this but always says Think about this (223); it does not state anything but only shows (252). The message is not delivered--certainly not in the `morals' tagged to the Aesopic fables: it is embodied (xviii-xix). These suggestive expressions give a strong sense of fable. But for me Blackham's work fails to go beyond description of Aesopic fable to achieve satisfying definition. Blackham's project is to extrapolate from Aesopic fable to all sorts of other literary works: One can see in the primitive Aesopic fable a potentiality for development as a mental artefact, which detains the thought that conceived it in the further reflection it prompts. Stripped and focused as it must always be, fable is then, like any work of art, dense enough to abide repeated examination, and to abound in stimulus. It is this development, with the achievements that have marked it, which the present study sets out to describe (xiii). My fear is that in the project, the very sense of fable itself can be lost, including the sense of Aesopic fable, stripped and focused as it must always be. His definition of fable is a narrative device to provoke and aid concrete thinking, focused on some general matter of concern (xvii). My problem lies not with his descriptions of Aesopic fables, which are helpful, but with his attempts to apply fable to all sorts of works quite distinct from Aesopic fable. Thus for Blackham, Animal Farm, 1984, Erewhon, Brave New World, and Gulliver's Travels are fables, but Watership Down is not. I know what it means to talk of Aesopic texts as fables; I am not sure I know what it means to call these works fables. For all that, this is a stimulating and insightful book!

Identifier

en_US 9780485112788

en_US 8345 (Access ID)

uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10504/83577

Language

en_US eng

Publisher

en_US The Athlone Press

en_US Dover, NH

Subject

en_US PN980.B56 1985

en_US Secondary

en_US Title Page Scanned

Type

en_US Book, Whole