A History of Augustan FableCambridge University Press, 1998 M11 12 - 280 pages This book explores the tradition of fable across a wide variety of written and illustrative media, from its origins in classical antiquity to the end of the eighteenth century and beyond. It offers both a history and a poetics of the genre, presenting a body of evidence on the stable and transhistorical qualities of fable, while showing that many individual writers consciously employed these qualities in dynamic and witty ways highly responsive to their own historical and cultural moment. Tracing the impact of classical and European models on verse and moral fables of the eighteenth century, and the use of the fable by major writers - including Dryden, Pope, Mandeville, Swift, Gay, and Cowper - in their historical and literary contexts, Mark Loveridge offers the first full account of a significant form of English and European literature and suggests new ways of reading eighteenth-century literature. |
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Common terms and phrases
Aesop Aesop's Fables Aesopian fable allegory animals appears application audience Augustan fable beasts Beggar's Opera Birds Bossu burlesque Catholic Chaucer's Christian classical Cock collection comic context Cowper critics culture discourse double Dryden effect eighteenth century emblem English fable Ephesian Matron epic example exemplarity fable's fabulist Female Quixote fiction Fielding's figure flattery Fontaine French Gay's Fables Hercules heroic Hind Houyhnhnms ibid illustration John Ogilby kind King L'Estrange La Fontaine later Lion literary fable Mandeville Mandeville's masters medieval metaphor misreading mode modern Momus moral moralistic myth narrative natural novel numbers Nun's Priest Ogilby Ogilby's opposition orthodox Pamela Panther parable paradox Pearl Phaedrian Phaedrus poem poet poetic poetry political Preface prose qualities reader reading reworking Reynard rhetorical romance satire says sense social speak story Swift Tale Thomas Chippendale tion tradition translation Tristram Shandy truth verse fable Walpole Wenceslaus Hollar word writing