Английский язык спецтексты для филологов
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Lesson 15. FableFable, in its origin, widest sense, a fictitious story or statement of any descrip- tion (from the Latin fibula, “a thing said”). In the narrower, modern sense, with which this article is concerned, the term is synonymous with apologue and de- notes a short narrative in prose or verse designed to convey a moral or a useful lesson. The characters are most often animals, but inanimate objects, human be- ings or gods may also appear. It has affinities with the parable, but the latter nor- mally deals with humans in a situation that might naturally occur and is usually on a higher ethical plane; fables, on the other hand, commonly depict a fantastic situ- ation (e.g., a mouse helping a lion) and teach a more worldly wisdom. Fables also have affinities with proverbs, which are often virtually condensed fables, and many common proverbial phrases (e.g., sour grapes, a dog in the manger, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, to cry “Wolf!,” never count your chickens before they are hatched) summarize well-known fables. The moral – “the soul of the fable,” ac- cording to La Fontaine – may be stated separately at the beginning or end, or it may be implicit in the narrative. The presence of a consciously derived moral serves to differentiate the fable from many related forms, such as myths, legends, folk tales and the medieval French fabliaux. Myths are primarily explanatory stories devised to account for natural phenomena or the nature of divine beings or to give reasons for ritual cus- toms whose real origin has been lost; legends contain a core of historical fact around which mythical elements have collected; folk or fairy tales, like the fabli- aux, are usually for entertainment and are innocent of moral.
Lesson 16. ProverbThe Oxford Dictionary’s definition of a proverb is “A short pithy saying in common use …” emphasized that proverbs are part of the spoken language. They belong, in origin, to the same stage of racial history as ballad and folksong, and are related to the fable and riddle. Their literary counterparts are the apothegm, aphorism, maxim, epigram, and gnome; although many proverbs show literary re- finement. Thus “God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb,” found in Sterne’s Sen- timental Journey (1768), is derived from Latin and was translated from French in George Herbert’s Outlandish Proverbs (1640) “To close-shorn sheep God gives wind by measure.” Proverbs are found all over the world, and their comparison provides insight in- to the effects of cultural conditions, language, and local variations on expression. Thus the biblical “An eye for the eye, a tooth for a tooth,” has an equivalent among the Nandi of East Africa: “A goat’s hide buys a goat’s hide and a gourd a gourd.” Both form part of codes of behaviour, and exemplify the proverb’s use for trans- mission of tribal wisdom and rules of conduct. Often, the same proverb may be found in many variants. In Europe this may result from the international currency of Latin proverbs in the Middle Ages. “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” originated in the medieval Latin Plus valet in minibus avis unica fronde duabus, and is first found in English in the Harleian manuscript (c. 1470) as “Betyr ys a byrd in the hond than tweye in the wode.” Later English versions are “three” (or “ten”) “in the wood,” and “One … in the net is worth 100 flying.” The Rumanian version is “Better a bird in the hand than 1,ooo on the house”; the Italian, “Better one in a cage than four in the arbour”; the Portuguese, “Better a sparrow in the hand than two flying”; the German, “A sparrow in the hand is better than a crane on the roof”; and the Icelandic, “Better a hawk in the hand than two in flight.”
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