Aesop’s Fables – Interesting Literature

A Summary and Analysis of the ‘Dog in the Manger’ Fable

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘The Dog in the Manger’ is one of several fables attributed to the ancient writer Aesop which have become not just famous, but proverbial: the fable has itself become a well-known phrase whose meaning is synonymous with the fable’s moral. However, as with a few other famous ‘Aesop fables’, the attribution to Aesop is shaky at best, and most early copies of Aesop’s fables don’t actually contain ‘The Dog in the Manger’. More on this in a moment.

A Summary and Analysis of Aesop’s ‘The Frogs Asking for a King’ Fable

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘The Frogs Asking for a King’, like Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale of the emperor’s new clothes, is a children’s story that also carries a strong political message. Often included in editions of Aesop’s fables, ‘The Frogs Asking for a King’ is summarised below, accompanied by a few words of analysis.

Once upon a time, the Frogs were discontented because they had no one to rule over them: so they sent a deputation to Jupiter to ask him to give them a King. Jupiter, despising the folly of their request, cast a log into the pool where they lived, and said that the log should be their King.

A Summary and Analysis of Aesop’s ‘The Fox and the Hedgehog’ Fable

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Say ‘fox and hedgehog’ and one is likely to think of several things. There is the old proverb, attributed to many people throughout history, that ‘the fox knows many things; the hedgehog, one big thing’. And, building on this idea, there is the philosopher Isaiah Berlin’s famous essay, ‘The Hedgehog and the Fox’. But these vulpine and erinaceous phrases and references are perhaps eclipsed by Aesop’s famous fable of the fox and the hedgehog.