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Title
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en_US
Unwitting Wisdom: An Anthology of Aesop's Fables
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Description
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en_US
This is a hardbound book (hard cover)
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en_US
This book has a dust jacket (book cover)
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en_US
Retold & Illustrated by Helen Ward
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Creator
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en_US
Aesop
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Contributor
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en_US
Ward, Helen
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Date
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2016-01-25T19:53:45Z
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en_US
2008-03
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en_US
2004
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Date Available
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2016-01-25T19:53:45Z
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Date Issued
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en_US
2004
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Abstract
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en_US
I need to be more careful when buying foreign duplicates of books I have from American publishers. This lovely book cost less than $5, but the postage was over $26! This edition by The Five Mile Press in Australia was printed in the same place as the USA edition from Chronicle Books. As far as I can tell, only the cover and dust-jacket are different. Let me repeat remarks made on that edition. This book has a lovely dedication: To Aesop and all tellers of moral tales who, despite a monumentally ineffective history, still gently try to point the human race in a better direction. I am not sure that I understand the characterization of fables' wisdom as unwitting in the title. Perhaps Ward is pointing to the fact, underscored in her introduction, that the animals (all twelve tales here feature animal actors) are all acting out their own parts, uncomprehending, in the great game of life. She quotes Chesterton: In Aesop's fables . . . the animals' reactions are always predictable. They have no choice; they cannot be anything but themselves. The text versions make the point of the fables abundantly clear, as when the fox not only leaps for the grapes but tries to climb the tree around which the vine is curled, tries to prod the grapes with a cane, and throws and kicks sticks and stones at the vine. When he leaves, he mutters to himself that they were undoubtedly the nastiest, most horrid, disgusting, revolting, inedible, indigestible and very probably the sourest grapes he had ever had the pleasure of not eating! Ward illustrates every page, but the key illustrations are those which accompany the title and a short description on a lavish two-page spread. (The text then generally follows on a more modest two-page spread). The prizes for the grandest illustrations may go to the dressed-up jackdaw and the fox sniffing among the stork's beautiful Greek urns. A special prize goes to the description after the title of DS; it has a mirror-image just below it, on a line with the reflection of the dog in the water on the facing page. The last line of the story of the tortoise who begged the eagle to teach him to fly sinks down the page the way the released tortoise does. Does it make sense that the shepherd, as it seems, does not discover that the wolf in sheep's clothing is a wolf even while eating him?
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Identifier
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en_US
9781741243161
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en_US
6287 (Access ID)
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Language
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en_US
eng
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Publisher
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en_US
The Five Mile Press
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en_US
Rowville, Vic
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Subject
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en_US
PZ8.2.W285 Un 2004b
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Type
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en_US
Book, Whole