The Fables of Avianus - Hardcover

The Fables. Translated by D.R. Slavitt. With a Foreword by J. Zipes. Illustrations by N. Welliver.

The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore / London, 1993. XIX,55p. ills.(two-tone line drawings). Original anthracite cloth with pictorial dust wrappers. Spine gilt titled. Dust wrappers to spine and small part front cover a little bit discoloured. Else fine. 'When the word fable is mentioned,' writes Jack Zipes in his foreword to this volume, 'one automatically thinks of the name Aesop, never Avianus.' Nevertheless, the liverly and insturctive fables of this early fifth-century Roman writer enjoyed significant popularity in europe throughout the Middle Ages. Noew the complete work of Avianus - forty-two elegiac fables in all - has been rendered into contemporary English verse by acclaimed translator David Slavitt. The fables of Avianus show a world in flux, a topsy-turvy wirkd, in which humor and cunning constitute the only saving grace for humans, and, one might add, the poet. While remaining true to the Aesopic spirit of depicting scenes of survival of the fittest in a blunt and candid manner, Avianus is fond of hyperbole and the grotesque, and he skillfully emplys his hexameters to bring about an ironic twist that often makes the reader question traditional assumptions. Writing at a time when the roman world was being transformed by the rise of Christianity, Avianus appears to voice doubt about humankind's ability to deal with change. Bus Avianus's voice was not a voice of despair. Like Aesop, he shows a clear preference in his fables for learning how to survive and for the underdog. These and other parallels between Avianus' world and our own are all the more striking in the splendid verse translations of David Slavitt. Speaking as clearly to us as he dit to his Roman contemporaries, Avianus is once again reveales as a shrewd poet who can unmask hypocracy and overcome adversity every bit as well as his savvy master Aesop. (Publisher's information). Artikel-Nr. 63520

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