Aesop’s Fables Just for

children?

Scott Shamleffer

ENG 1102-XTIL

07 December 2012

The Main Editions of Aesop's

Fables William Caxton's Subtyl Historyes and Fables of Esope: 12 editions between 1484 and 1676, with 167 fables.

William Barrett's Fables of Aesop, With His Whole Life: 18 editions between 1639 and 1721, with 213 fables.

Roger L'Estrange's Fables of Aesop and other Eminent Mythologists: nine editions between 1692 and 1740, with 500 fables.

The Rev. Samuel Croxall's Fables of Aesop and Others: 47 editions between 1722 and 1865, with 196 fables.

The Rev. Thomas James's Aesop's Fables: A New Version: 30 editions between 1848 and 1912, with 203 fables.

The Rev. George Fyler Townsend's Three Hundred Aesop's Fables (later, Three Hundred Fifty): 20 editions between 1867 and 1911.

Joseph Jacobs's The Fables of Aesop: 33 editions between 1894 and 1967, with 82 fables.

V.S. Vernon Jones's Aesop's Fables: 18 editions between 1912 and 1994, with 284 fables.

Olivia and Robert Temple's The Complete Fables: published in 1998 with 350 fables.

Aesop 620 B.C.E. – 560 B.C.E. The first known use of Aesop’s Fables

printed for a children’s audience was when Lorenzo De Medici commissioned a special volume of Aesop’s Fables for his young son Piero in 1480.

Interesting Quotes about Aesop’s Fables

According to “Aesop’s Fables for Adults,” by Kenneth Cooper, “As an adult reader renews his acquaintance with the fables, he soon discovers that in Aesop’s world, virtue by no means always reaped it’s just reward.” (144)

Robert Temple and his wife Olivia published, “The Complete Fables” in 1998 after they found “some ribald original tales they found in a 1927 Greek-language text.” (“Aesop”)

The Man and the Serpent

In this fable a man steps on the tail of a snake and the snake strikes a mortal blow. The father of the man then chops off the tail of the snake and for revenge the snake starts killing the father’s cattle. The father then wants to agree to a truce to which the snake say’s neither would be able to forgive.

The moral of the story is “injuries may be forgiven but not forgotten,” sounds more like don’t forgive and continue to hold a grudge.

The Fox and the Crane

A fox invites a crane over for dinner and serves the crane food on a shallow dish making it very difficult for the crane to eat. To get back at the fox the crane invites the fox over and puts his dinner in a long jar making it impossible for the fox to get to the food.

The moral of the story could be interpreted as treat people like you want to be treated but it seems to me like this fable is teaching just the opposite; revenge.

Lloyd W. Daly, author of Aesop

without Morals: The Famous Fables

and a Life of Aesop (1961)

“Aesopic fables have been pap for children in schools for so many hundreds of years that it is perhaps difficult to think of them in any other light, but the cynical vein of the stories themselves runs so strong that it must be obvious they were not intended for the education of youth.” (qtd. in “Aesop’s Fables”)

Works CitedAesop. “Aesop's Fables.” n.p.: Project Gutenberg, n.d. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 7 Dec. 2012.

Aesop. “Aesop's Fables Online Collection.” John R. Long. Star Systems. 2011. Web. 7 Dec. 2012.

“Aesop.” Encyclopedia of World Biography. 2005. Encyclopedia.com. 7 Dec. 2012

“Aesops Fables.” Children’s Literature Review. Ed. Tom Burns. Vol. 115.  

Detroit: Gale, 2006. Literature Resource Center. Web. 7 Dec. 2012. 

Cooper, Kenneth. “Aesop’s Fables for Adults.” Peabody Journal of Education. Vol. 33. No. 3 (Nov. 1955). 143-147. Web. 7

Dec. 2012.

"The Main Editions Of Aesop's Fables." Chronicle Of Higher Education 54.23 (2008): B16. Academic Search Complete. Web. 7 Dec. 2012.

Winder, Robert. “Aesop: The Complete Fables.” New Statesman [1996]6 Mar. 1998: 44+. Literature Resource Center. Web 7 Dec. 2012.