Fabeln und Parabeln der Weltliteratur

Abstract

I previously knew Etzel's work through a 1990 edition by Bechtermünz Verlag, which -- as is now clear to me -- took Etzel's classic text collection and added illustrations, making a small-format book into a large one. Now here is a lovely first edition of that original work. As I wrote then, this book is a library in itself. I have kept separate notes on the sampling of fables I enjoyed in going through the book and on its good illustrations. Parable does not get the representation one might expect from the title; a few items are included that are labelled as parables. The translations wisely follow the original's choice of prose or verse. The heart of this book is, appropriately, German fable, with over 300 pages and some fifty-three fabulists. Orientals receive forty pages, and western ancients thirty pages before the Germans, and five other literatures and two continents get eighty pages after them. Fables labelled Aesop here do not always have the texts which one would find in, say, Perry's Aesopica. I am not sure of Etzel's source for them.