Synopses & Reviews
We are all familiar with the moralizing animal tales ascribed to Aesop. Described as fiction that conveys truths, fables can be found in some of the earliest Greek literature and have been an important component of European literature ever since. The fable as a literary form is a subject to which scholars of various modern literatures have recently turned their attention, but ancient Greek and Latin texts of this kind have fared less well. In The Ancient Fable: An Introduction, Niklas Holzberg provides the first one-volume study of the fable's history in antiquity, using the methods of modern literary criticism to describe its development.
Holzberg considers--not only in terms of literary history, but also in individual analyses--fables used by many Greek and Roman authors in varying contexts as exempla; the verse fable books of Phaedrus, Babrius, and Avianus; and finally one Greek and one Latin prose fable book, both dating from the time of the Roman Empire and both attributed to Aesop.
Synopsis
Includes bibliographical references (p. [105]-121) and index.
Synopsis
It appears that fable was not recognised as a distinct literary genre in antiquity although it did exist in a recognisable form. This unique introduction' to the history of the fable looks at both literary form and structure, and at generic history through the works of Greek and Roman authors and those fabulists who re-shaped the material of their predecessors to form new fables. Among the fables discussed are the books of Phaedrus (1st century AD), Babrius (3rd century AD), Avianus (4th-5th century AD), and the Aesopic tradition. Translated from the German.
About the Author
Niklas Holzberg, Professor of Classics at the University of Munich, is a renowned authority on classical literature, having published extensively on ancient fiction, Roman elegy, and the Aesop tradition.
Christine Jackson-Holzberg is translator of The Ancient Novel: An Introduction, also by Niklas Holzberg.