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The Grasshopper And The Ants
The Ant and the Grasshopper, alternatively titled The Grasshopper and the Ant (or Ants), is one of Aesop's Fables, numbered 373 in the Perry Index. The fable describes how a hungry grasshopper begs for food from an ant when winter comes and is refused. The situation sums up moral lessons about the virtues of hard work and planning for the future. Even in Classical times, however, the advice was mistrusted by some and an alternative story represented the ant's industry as mean and self-serving. Jean de la Fontaine's delicately ironic retelling in French later widened the debate to cover the themes of compassion and charity. Since the 18th century the grasshopper has been seen as the type of the artist and the question of the place of culture in society has also been included. Argument over the fable's ambivalent meaning has generally been conducted through adaptation or reinterpretation of the fable in literature, arts, and music. Fable and counter-fable The fable concerns a gra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Perry Index
The Perry Index is a widely used index of "Aesop's Fables" or "Aesopica", the fables credited to Aesop, the storyteller who lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BC. The index was created by Ben Edwin Perry, a professor of classics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Modern scholarship takes the view that Aesop probably did not compose all of the fables attributed to him;D. L. Ashliman, “Introduction,” in George Stade (Consulting Editorial Director), ''Aesop’s Fables.'' New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, (2005). Produced and published in conjunction with Fine Creative Media, Inc. (New York) Michael J. Fine, President and Publisher. See pp. xiii–xv and xxv–xxvi. indeed, a few are known to have first been used before Aesop lived, while the first record we have of many others is from well over a millennium after his time. Traditionally, Aesop's fables were arranged alphabetically, which is not helpful to the reader. Perry listed them by language (Greek ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
