Animal Symbolism in Aesop\'s Fables
Since the dawn of time, man and animal have been intertwined. We have defended ourselves against lions and wolves, we have hunted birds and fish for food and we have domesticated oxen and horses to plow our fields. All civilizations have been in some way connected to the animal world. It is a theme that runs the course of humanity. This common thread allows authors to reach audiences in ways that would be simply impossible with human protagonists. Animals are universal symbols, common to all of mankind. In her book, Talking Animals, Jan Ziolkowski asserts that "Taken as a group, animals represent a language common to all people." All cultures incorporate animals into their history and folklore. Obviously, each of these cultures regards different animals with different connotations and associations. "But animals have earned their universal status not because they are so much the same the world over but because people are so much the same; for most animals in fiction are not portrayed realistically but instead are anthropomorphized. Regardless of their species, they are given human characteristics, motivations and behavior." (Ziolkowski, 1993).In Animal Lore in English Literature, P. Ansell Robin says that, "This interpretation
This title makes the lion a representative of royalty or position of power. Annabel Patterson's book Fables of Power states that "despite the ubiquity and vitality of traditions about Aesop, it is not certain that any so-called Aesopic fables record even approximately fables told by a man named Aesop. John Ogilby, a fabulist from London, played a significant part in the politicizing of the fable in the seventeenth century. And on that note, the wolf eats the lamb anyway. " (Lewis, 1996) It is not coincidental however, that the period of the fable's greatest historical significance occurred during and after the English Civil War. The moral of the fable is that one ill turn deserves another. Authors such as Ogilby and the Grubb Street Writers reappropriate these ancient stories and twist them to their own devices. He would have needed a way to disguise what he was saying. Aesop at Epsom casts himself as a Whig and his opponent as a Tory. Aesop is considered the father of fable, for it is to him that most fables are attributed. Often visibly driven by a combative sociopolitical context, and by determination to confer words the status of objects, this textual self-consciousness perfectly suited Aesop's fables to the cultural climate of Augustan England. In the last quarter of the seventeenth century and particular in the wake of the so called Glorious Revolution of 1668, there developed what one might reasonably call a craze for political fables, whose modishness was eventually recognized by Aesops personal transformation into a fashionable man about town. Thus Aesopic fables are defined not only as those from the period in which Aesop supposedly lived, but from all other periods as well.
Common topics in this essay:
Goat Sheep,
Greek Loveridge,
Joseph Jacobs,
Ansell Robin,
Whigs Tories,
Wolf Lamb,
Aesop's Fables,
Oxen Lion,
War Patterson,
Ogilby's Aesop,
patterson 1991,
ziolkowski 1993,
seventeenth century,
lewis 1996,
civil war,
aesop's fables,
english civil war,
wolf lamb,
lamb responds,
beast fable,
grub street,
patterson 1991 fable,
grub street aesops,
seventeenth century england,
jacobs 1962 fable,
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Acceptance Essays
