Creighton University

Here is the first volume of an ambitious set of five.  This comprehensive presentation is quite an undertaking!  This "Book One" covers Aesop, Phaedrus, and Sadi.  It offers some 84 fables on 368 pages.  There is an English T of C on 14-16.  I believe that one refers correctly to the Chinese here as "Simplified Chinese."  Each story is attributed to a particular writer, adapter, translator, and illustrator.  The cartoon approach fits the fables well. One notes the struggles of foreigners to deal well with English in the sometimes crazy syllabification of words in their narrow columns.  So, for example, "house" is split into "ho" and "use" on 59.  Mistakes happen too: "Cavern" on 60 becomes "carven."  The illustration styles vary considerably.  A favorite set of illustrations, though the texts are not the best, develops "The Deer and the Lion" (54-58) by Zhao Qinguo.  The same artist uses another fetching style for DS (107-112).  On 83, I enjoy the tortoise who is not yet condemned to carry around his home.  Another strong style is that of Sun Aignuo in "A Man and a Lion Walk Together" (212-215).  A good example of a distinctive style and of the linguistic problems is "An Arrogant Sportsman" (267-270).  This sportsman took part in a "five-item race" on "Rode Island."  Human beings here are often pictured in the style of figures on Greek vases and statues.  One such style appears in "Two Enemies" (271-274).  This volume features FC in color on both of its covers.  This set was reproduced, I believe, in 2008 in similar but not identical form.

Here is the second volume of an ambitious set of five.  This comprehensive presentation is quite an undertaking!  This "Book Two" covers fables by Krylov and Schedrin and other fable writers from the Soviet Union, Romania, Yugoslavia, Poland, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia.  Krylov finishes at 210 and Schedrin at 252.  Schedrin's fables are quite long, e.g. 211-229.  This volume offers some 67 fables on 378 pages.  There is an English T of C on 3-5.  I believe that one refers correctly to the Chinese here as "Simplified Chinese."  Each story is attributed to a particular writer, adapter, translator, and illustrator.  The cartoon approach fits the fables well. One notes the struggles of foreigners to deal well with English in the sometimes crazy syllabification of words in their narrow columns.  The trouble with English perdures here as we see "became" divided on 362 into "beca" and "me."  A distinctive style here is that of Wang Longfer in "The Eagle and the Mole" (14-19).  Another distinctive style follows immediately in "A Swan, a Barracuda, and a Shrimp" (20-22).  We usually see this fable as featuring the swan, pike, and crab trying to work together to drag a cart.  OF by Wu Ming (63-38) represents another style.  Did Wu Ming do the covers' OF illustration?  New to me is "Holding the Funeral Procession" (134-138).  A visitor interrupts the usual wailing at a funeral and offers to revive the deceased.  The hired mourners mention that he did nothing worthy of a reviving in his lifetime -- and apparently they would prefer to have yet another mourning in three days!  In "The Wolf and Its Bag" (304-309) we see three enemies of the wolf attack him, but they attack singly.  He wins and the fabulist wonders what might have happened if all three had attacked together.  The last Russian fable, "A Crane and a Small Fox," praises the wisdom of those, like the crane, who have one secure last ploy and puts down the wisdom of those, like the fox, who have many tricks (373-378).  This volume features OF in color on both of its covers.  This set of volumes was reproduced, I believe, in 2008 in similar but not identical form.

Here is the third volume of an ambitious set of five.  This comprehensive presentation is quite an undertaking!  This "Book Three" covers classic European Fabulists, particularly La Fontaine.  Others include Da Vinci and several Germans.  It offers some 71 fables on 378 pages.  There is an English T of C on 3-5.  Pagination begins immediately after this T of C with a new set of Roman numerals beginning with "1."  I believe that one refers correctly to the Chinese here as "Simplified Chinese."  Each story is attributed to a particular writer, adapter, translator, and illustrator.  The cartoon approach fits the fables well.  One notes the struggles of foreigners to deal well with English in the sometimes crazy syllabification of words in their narrow columns.  So, for example, the first story has the cobbler respond to the banker "I don't expect to have any savings, but every day bring its meals" (3).  Thus also "rushed" is divided into two syllables on 14 and "lakeside" sees its last two letters separated on 29.  The graphic style of Li Mu Chen Yiking for FC is strong (20-25).  This art is almost geometric.  The realistic artistic style of Zhou Shen in "The Grinder, His Son, and Their Donkey" is strong (50-56) and the story is true to La Fontaine's particular telling of MSA.  The first 198 pages are given to La Fontaine, followed by Lessing.  Lessing's first fable builds on FK.  When one young frog speaks up and says to the snake "I didn't ask for you as king," the snake responds "That is even more hateful" (199-202).  Leonardo da Vinci has a fine fable on 224-28: a spider hides among grapes and captures many fruitflies.  Then the vintner comes and plucks the bunch of grapes.  The spider's hiding place became his prison.  "The Court of Death" by William Gay seems new to me (247-51).  Death prefers Indulgence over all his other servants because people like Indulgence.  The illustration style of Wang Xiaomi is strong.  Chaucer's Chanticleer is called "Cantacalay" (264).  Petrus Alfons, Waldis, Luther, Johann Fischer, Werner Rainert, Friedrich Ruechert, Hans Sachs, Hebbel, Grimm, Geiler, Lichtwer, and Bierce round out the list of authors.  Grimm is credited with the story of the fox and the cat arguing over the number of evasive tricks either has.  This volume features WL in color on both of its covers.  The set was reproduced, I believe, in 2008 in similar but not identical form.

Here is the fourth volume of an ambitious set of five.  This comprehensive presentation is quite an undertaking!  This "Book Four" covers, as Page 9 of Book One declares, fables of India, Japan, Korea, Burma, Thailand, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Indonesia, Tunisia, Egypt, South Africa and Middle Africa.  Wow!  It offers some 69 fables on 378 pages.  There is an English T of C on 3-5.  Pagination begins immediately after this T of C with a new set of Roman numerals beginning with "1."  I believe that one refers correctly to the Chinese here as "Simplified Chinese."  Each story is attributed to a particular writer, adapter, translator, and illustrator.  The cartoon approach fits the fables well.  One notes the struggles of foreigners to deal well with English.  Thus the three Brahmans in the first story want to show off their "respecting" talents when normal English usage would call for "respective" talents.  On 76, a spittoon becomes a "spilloon."  Liu Kongsi uses a distinctive illustrative style in "A Brahman and a Snake" (7-11).  The volume's first stories come straight from the "Panchatantra," here called "The Five Volumes."  A number of them are also K&D stories.  Many of the next selections come from "The Book of a Hundred Metaphors" from India.  One of the best of these has a camel owner face the problem of a camel who had got his head stuck in a jar.  "No problem."  The owner cut off the camel's head and then removed it from the jar (89-92).  Next up from India is "Stories of Sakyamuni," including "The Earth Collapsed" (138-49).  This is one of the longest stories in the whole work.  "Shadows in a Jar" (150-55) shows husband, wife, and others in conflict because each has seen a rival as a reflection in a jar.  A wise Taoist priest comes, understands, and breaks the jar.  One of the strongest illustration styles is that of Liu Kongxi in "A Deceived Brahman" (191-97).  This is the old story of thieves telling the Brahman that the goat which the Brahman has caught is a dog.  A strong silhouette illustration style is shown by Zhao Fangting in "How Did a Badger and a Marten Squabbie" (sic, 250-55).  Do not miss the good Korean story of "A Boy Who Hold an Empty Flowerpot" (256-62).  The king gives each child a seed and asks them to come back with the appropriate flower in a certain time.  Only the one child comes back with an empty pot.  It turns out that he is the only honest child, since all the seeds were sterile.  "The Rat Married Off His Daughter" (271-76) is told as a fable from Burma.  It adds a bull and a rope between mountain and the rat in the chain of prospective husbands.  In "The Clever Beauty," a beautiful girl followed by an eager admirer tells him that her younger sister is following and is ten times more beautiful than she is.  He stupidly takes the bait and loses her.  She has proved that he did not love her (308-312).  Xu Huahua in "The Virtuous Man" is either copying or imitating Asterix in his illustrations (313-17)!  The story of the three axes from the river is told as a Pakistani story (367).  This volume features TH in color on both of its covers.  The set was reproduced, I believe, in 2008 in similar but not identical form.

Here is the fifth volume of an ambitious set of five.  This comprehensive presentation is quite an undertaking!  This "Book Five" covers, as Page 9 of Book One declares, fables of China by more than 28 authors.  It offers some 77 fables.  There is an English T of C on 3-5.  Pagination begins immediately after this T of C with a new set of Roman numerals beginning with "1."  I believe that one refers correctly to the Chinese here as "Simplified Chinese."  Each story is attributed to a particular writer, adapter, translator, and illustrator.  The cartoon approach fits the fables well.  One notes the struggles of foreigners to deal well with English.  Thus on 293 "Want Qi answered hastedly."  Many of the fables seem surprisingly simple to me.  "The Cock Stealer" tells of a thief who has been stealing a chicken from his neighbor every day (51-53).  Admonished, he says that he will steal fewer and fewer and then none at all.  "If it's wrong, why would you steal any?"  "Self-Knowledge" tells of a man who asks his wife, his concubine, and his guest whether he is more handsome than the famously beautiful Mr. Xu.  All three respond "yes."  Then he meets Mr. Xu and finds him more beautiful than himself.  He realizes that the three lied.  His wife was fond of him, his mistress feared him, and his guest wanted to make use of him (216-19).  A more intricate fable with a distinctive visual style is "The Donkey in Guizhou" (273-78).  The familiar "Cutting a Mark to Get Back the Sword" is here (150-52).  There is occasional reference to Confucius, as on 158.  "The Zhongshan Wolf" is a version of the old story of getting the perpetrator back into the trap, in this case a bag (308-20).  In this case, the wise third party of the story stabs the wolf in the bag, noting that the man who originally had saved the wolf had not had the heart to kill the wolf.  The last story is "The Fox and the Monkey" (373-77).  The two work together to make a bridge out of a log.  The bridge connects land to an island with a peach tree.  The fox is first across the bridge and enjoys the peaches, but is greedy and so undoes the bridge.  Monkey gets the last laugh, since the clever fox has isolated himself.  This volume features a colored image of man sitting under a tree on both of its covers.  The set was reproduced, I believe, in 2008 in similar but not identical form.  This fifth volume makes clear on its last page (388) that it is a first impression of the first edition.