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They were told with the didactic intent of drawing moral lessons which could be either secular or spiritual. Many different versions of the stories were created but writers frequently followed understood conventions. One such convention was the inclusion of the didactic moral lesson in a moralitas (plural moralitates) inserted after the fable ...
Victorian versions of the fable give the moral as "Persuasion is better than force", [6] but it had been put in different ways at other times. In the Barlow edition of 1667, Aphra Behn taught the Stoic lesson that there should be moderation in everything: "In every passion moderation choose, For all extremes do bad effects produce". [7]
The moral drawn from the fable by Babrius was that "Brotherly love is the greatest good in life and often lifts the humble higher". In his emblem book Hecatomgraphie (1540), Gilles Corrozet reflected on it that if there can be friendship among strangers, it is even more of a necessity among family members. [4]
The fable is retold in only the first four lines of the poem, while the moral is drawn at length, based on Plutarch's account of the episode. Another versification was undertaken by Abraham Arouetty in his Fables in Verse Inspired by Aesop and La Fontaine (2000), whose rendering clarifies the lesson to be drawn:
In his retelling of the story, Lydgate had drawn the lesson that the one "Who all coveteth, oft he loseth all", [18] He stated as well that this was "an olde proverb" [19] which, indeed, in the form "All covet, all lose", was later to be quoted as the fable's moral by Roger L'Estrange. [20]
Articles relating to fables, succinct fictional stories, in prose or verse, that feature animals, legendary creatures, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature that are anthropomorphized, and that illustrate or lead to a particular moral lesson (a "moral"), which may at the end be added explicitly as a concise maxim.
The moral lesson taught by these stories is summed up by the English proverb 'Once bitten, twice shy'. The episode of the rats holding a council is similar to the fable of The Mice in Council who suggested hanging a bell on the cat, but that only developed during the Middle Ages and has a completely different moral.
When the fable figured in 16th century emblem books, more emphasis was put on the moral lesson to be learned, to which the story acted as a mere appendage.Thus Hadrianus Junius tells the fable in a four-line Latin poem and follows it with a lengthy commentary, part of which reads: "By contrast we see the reed obstinately holding out against the power of cloudy storms, and overcoming the onrush ...