Aesop's Fables With the possible exception of the New Testament, no works written in Greek are more widespread and better known than Aesop’s Fables. For at least 2500 years they have been teaching people of all ages and every social status lessons how to choose correct actions and the likely consequences of choosing incorrect actions. … Continue reading Aesop's Fables →.

A crow sat in a tree holding in his beak a piece of meat that he had stolen. A fox which saw him determined to get the meat. It stood under the tree and began to tell the crow what a beautiful big bird he was. He ought to be king of all the birds, the fox said, and he undoubtedly would have been made king, if only he had a voice as well. The crow was so anxious to prove (...) that he had a voice, that he dropped the meat and croaked for all he was worth. Up ran the fox, snapped up the meat, and said to him: ‘If you added brains to all your other qualifications you would make an ideal king.’. (shrink)

Two studies examined children’s developing understanding of Aesop’s fables in relation to reading comprehension and to theory of mind. Study 1 included 172 children from Junior Kindergarten through Grade 6 in a school-wide examination of the relation between reading comprehension skills and understanding of Aesop’s fables told orally. Study 2 examined the relation between theory of mind and fables understanding among 186 Junior (4-year-old) and Senior (5-year-old) Kindergarten children. Study 1 results showed a developmental progression in fables understanding (...) with children’s responses becoming increasingly decontextualized as they were able to extract the life lesson. After general vocabulary, passage comprehension predicted fables understanding. Study 2 results showed a relation between young children’s theory of mind development and their understanding of fables. After general vocabulary, second-order theory of mind predicted children’s fables understanding. Findings point to the importance of developing mental state awareness in children’s ability to judge characters’ intentions and to understand the deeper message embedded in fables. (shrink)

In her book Uneasy Virtue, Julia Driver presents an account of motive or trait utilitarianism, one that has been taken as “the most detailed and thoroughly defended recent formulation” of consequential virtue ethics. On Driver's account character traits are morally virtuous if and only if they generally lead to good consequences for society. Various commentators have taken Driver to task over this account of virtue, which she terms “pure evaluational externalism.” They object that, on Driver's account of virtue, it could (...) turn out that traits traditionally understood as pernicious are actually virtuous. While many writers have speculated about the forms new 'virtues' might take in a hypothetical world, I will argue that at least one trait that is seemingly pernicious but would have to be counted as virtuous by Driver already exists. (shrink)

The object of this study is the speech style of artists of the Bolshoi Drama Theater in the 1950s and 1960s. The subject of the study is the evolution of the speech style from the first to the second edition of G. Tovstonogov's performance "The Fox and the Grapes" ("Aesop"). The author of the article studies in detail two versions of the famous performance, analyzes the acting speech of N. Korn, V. Polizeimako, O. Basilashvili and S. Yursky from aesthetic (...) and technological positions. The author pays special attention to the fundamental changes in the intonation-melodical architectonics of sounding speech in less than one decade. A change in speech style in the Bolshoi Drama Theater is included by the author in the wider context of changes in the art of the "thaw" era. The methodology of this study includes measurement (auditory analysis of the pace of speech, auditory analysis of diction and orthoepia, instrumental analysis of the intonation-melodic score), comparative analysis, induction, historical method. The novelty of the present study lies in the combined use of auditory and instrumental analysis tools for acting speech. The author clearly proves the subjectively obvious difference between the sound of speech in the first and second editions of the performance "The Fox and The Grapes" by conducting a detailed comparative analysis of acting speech in all main parameters: tempo, diction, orthoepia, melodics. From the study of a specific performance and specific acting works, the author goes to generalization, concluding about the powerful influence of screen (cinematic) speech on theatrical speech in the 1950s and 1960s, about the formation of a new standard of audience perception and a new idea of the naturalness of acting speech. (shrink)

Aesopic fables constitute an important case in folk and popular literature. This genre went through various stages of development; its plasticity, pedagogical dimension, and mainly its ability to convey messages through an indirect and pleasant way prompted many to take interest in it, reading, adapting, or even creating new fables. As a result, fables became a favorite topic in literature and, especially, children's literature through many and various adaptations, translations, and metanarratives. In this paper, considering fables as an early form (...) of utopic/dystopic discourse, we aim to demonstrate some cases of such references through examples taken from the corpus of Aesopic fables. (shrink)

Empathy is essential in story comprehension as it requires understanding of the emotions and intentions of the characters. We evaluated the sensitivity of an emotional perspective-taking task using Aesop’s Fables in relation to empathy. Participants (N = 301) were presented with 15 short fables and were asked to rate the intensity of the emotions they would feel (anger, sadness, disgust, fear, surprise, joy, trust, and anticipation) by adopting the perspective of one of the characters (offender, victim) or the observer’s (...) perspective. A data-driven approach revealed that participants’ responses were aligned with the characters’ intentions, suggesting successful emotional perspective-taking. Participants sympathized with the victim rather than the offender, demonstrating affective sharing processes. Further, participants with higher empathy scores exhibited stronger negative emotions from the victim’s perspective, independently of their level of distress. Our task was not influenced by gender effects. We suggest that the Aesop’s Fables task could provide an indirect instrument to study empathy. (shrink)

Das Leben des Fabeldichters Äsop (6.Jh. v. Chr.) wird in einem griechischen Roman der römischen Kaiserzeit erzählt. Die vollständige Fassung des anonymen Originals ist uns nicht mehr erhalten, überliefert ist er aber in Papyrusfragmenten und in Handschriften, die verschiedene Fassungen und Versionen erkennen lassen.

『이솝우화』는 그리스의 노예 신분이었던 아이소포스가 만든 우화작품으로 고대 이후 인간들의 행동적 특성을 설명하거나 도덕적 판단이 필요한 상황에서 개인의 심리 상태 등을 예화적으로 보여줄 목적으로 만든 작품이다. 단순히 동화적인 요소뿐만 아니라 도덕적인 딜레마 상황을 묘사하고 있어서 아동들을 대상으로 바람직한 인성 형성에 보조적 수단으로 현대에도 많이 사용하고 있다. 그리고 우화에는 거의 모든 편에서 우화의 마지막 부분에 교훈을 붙여서 이해를 돕고 이기도 하다. 『이솝우화』에서는 인간의 심리 상태나 행동특성을 설명하기 위한 장치로서 Anthropomorphism이 등장한다. Anthropomorphism은 인간중심주의의 입장에서 신과 인간은 같은 형상과 같은 특성을 가지고 있다는 (...) 의미(신인 동형 동성설)와 아울러 동물과 여타의 생명체를 인간으로 유비하여 의인화의 의미를 가진다는 점에서 중의적인 표현이다. 이 논문이 의도하는 것은 『이솝우화』에서 Anthropomorphism의 사용례를 분석하고, 그러한 분석을 바탕으로 『이솝우화』 안에서 Anthropomorphism의 특징을 살피는 것이다. 연구자는 Anthropomorphism의 용례를 분석하여 『이솝우화』의 Anthropomorphism은 신인 동형동성설의 특징보다는 의인화의 특징을 가진다는 사실을 확인하였다. 용례에서 신인 동형동성설보다는 주로 의인화의 특징을 가지면서 동시에 표유류를 의인화하는 경우가 월등하게 많은 점을 확인할 수 있었다. 이러한 현상은 인간의 형상과 더 유사한 대상에의 근친성을 통해서 인간을 잘 표현하리라는 희망에서 출발한 것으로 보이고 있다. (shrink)

A persistent theme in the Vitae of Aesop, Archilochus, and Homer, and in Plato's Apology, is the righteous poet brought to trial by a corrupt society that has found him and his poetry intolerable. As society condemns the poet, it condemns itself, and is punished following the poet's punishment ; often the society then grants a hero cult to the poet.

Taking Barthes’ discussion of Aesop’s lion as my starting point, I examine the notion of the stereotype as it applies to the use of animals in philosophy and cultural theory. By employing an illustrative selection of animal ciphers from Saussure and Austin, and animal indices from Peirce and Schopenhauer, I argue that theory’s beasts are always at risk of becoming either exemplars of a deadening, generic Animal or mere stultifying stereotypes. Gilbert Ryle’s faithful dog, Fido, as well as a (...) number of Aesop’s edifying animals, help to demonstrate that these two dangers are not inescapable, however. I close by indicating two strategies for preventing the unnecessary inhibition of the creatures of critical theory, focusing on Derrida’s individual and gently unruly cat. (shrink)