3.4 Aesop
graphic
Thomas Bewick's engraving 'The Fox and the Grapes' (1818)

The fables associated with Aesop grow naturally out of the moralizing element of the bestiaries; but they were addressed at first to a more popular audience, and illustrated with drawings and woodcuts much humbler than the decorative and imaginative illuminations of the earlier MSS.

The concept that man can learn from the wisdom of animals has a widespread, almost a humorous appeal, and revives in a new form the sense of kinship; and fables continued to be popular till the mid nineteenth century. In the work of La Fontaine they even inspired great literature.
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