Customer Reviews

Fables from the Old French: Aesop's Beasts and Bumpkins (Wesleyan Poetry in Translation)

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This book is a bilingual edition (Old French, English) containing approximately 40 Old French fables and their English translations. The originals and the translations are in verse and appear on facing pages so that the scholar who knows Old French can compare the two. Shapiro's translations are quite good. He manages to preserve the rhyming pattern of the originals, without significantly altering the content or resorting to awkward syntax. Also of note here is an outstanding 45 page introduction by Howard Needler, who discusses the history and cultural import of fables as a genre and performs a quick close reading. of each fable in this edition. There are also some nice medievalesque woodcut illustrations. When all's said and done, this is a well-done book-- but, don't think that this is going to be a good gift for a child. While this isn't exactly a scholarly tome, it's a bit denser than your typical rendition of Aesop... and probably isn't going to be too interesting to kids. I highly recommend this for those interested in poetry, and especially medieval poetry, though.

This book is a bilingual edition (Old French, English) containing approximately 40 Old French fables and their English translations. The originals and the translations are in verse and appear on facing pages so that the scholar who knows Old French can compare the two. Shapiro's translations are quite good. He manages to preserve the rhyming pattern of the originals, without significantly altering the content or resorting to awkward syntax. Also of note here is an outstanding 45 page introduction by Howard Needler, who discusses the history and cultural import of fables as a genre and performs a quick close reading. of each fable in this edition. There are also some nice medievalesque woodcut illustrations. When all's said and done, this is a well-done book-- but, don't think that this is going to be a good gift for a child. While this isn't exactly a scholarly tome, it's a bit denser than your typical rendition of Aesop... and probably isn't going to be too interesting to kids. I highly recommend this for those interested in poetry, and especially medieval poetry, though.