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The English Fable

Aesop and Literary Culture, 1651 1740

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Paperback | 30 March 2006

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248 Pages

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22.86 x 15.24 x 1.42

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Between 1651 and 1740 hundreds of fables, fable collections, and biographies of the ancient Greek slave Aesop were published in England. In The English Fable, Jayne Elizabeth Lewis describes the national obsession with Aesop's fables during this period as both a figural response to sociopolitical crises, and an antidote to emerging anxieties about authorship. Lewis traces the role that fable collections, Augustan fable theory, and debates about the figure of Aesop played in the formation of a modern, literate, and self-consciously English culture, and shows how three Augustan writers - John Dryden, Anne Finch, and John Gay - experimented with the seemingly marginal symbolic form of fable to gain access to new centres of English culture. Often interpreted as a discourse of the dispossessed, the fable in fact offered Augustan writers access to a unique form of cultural authority.

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You Can Find This Book In

Non-Fiction Literature, Poetry & Plays History & Criticism of Literature General Literary Studies Classical Literary Studies Literary Studies of Poetry & Poets Literary Studies from 1500 to 1800 Literary Studies of Plays & Playwrights Society & Culture Popular Beliefs & Controversial Knowledge Folklore Studies / Study of Myth (Mythology)

Acknowledgments
Introduction: The English fable
Aesopiean examples: the English fable collection and its authors, 1651-1740
'The first pieces of wit': Augustan fable theory and the birth of the book
Common and uncommon characters: the lives of Aesop
Brutal transactions, 'mysterious writ': Aesop's fables and Dryden's later poetry
In her 'transparent Laberynth': obstructions of poetic justice in Anne Finch's fables
Risking contradiction: John Gay's Fables and the matter of reading
The moral
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

The English Fable

Aesop and Literary Culture, 1651 1740

At a Glance

Paperback

Shipping

How to return your order

Defective items

You Can Find This Book In

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