The wolf and the dog
The wolf and the dog (French: Le Loup et le Chien ) is the fifth fable in the first book of the Fables Choisies collection , Mises En Vers by Jean de La Fontaine . In this animal fable, two animals meet that are morphologically close, but lead two different ways of life: one is wild and the other is tamed:
A well-fed domestic dog advises a starved wolf to join humans in order to always get plenty of food. The wolf is about to accept the suggestion when he discovers a bald spot on the dog's neck. He asks about the cause and learns that the dog is sometimes chained by his master. “The chain? Asks the wolf. So you are not free? ”Thereupon the wolf despises the dog's life and its indulgence and disappears into the forest to prefer to live in freedom.
analysis
This fable by La Fontaine goes back to Phaedrus , but he made some changes. In Phaedrus' version, the wolf also determines the dog's physical condition, but it is about poverty, which offers security, and wealth, which harbors danger.
La Fontaine's wolf does not simply greet the dog, but first considers attacking it, which it fails to do. Impressed by the dog's strength, the wolf decides to "humbly" approach it by complimenting it on its size. The dog tells the wolf that all he has to do for his master is chase away intruders and be kind to household members, and in return he will be given plenty of leftover food. When the dog says, however, that the wolf is so unhappy that he has to look for his food "á la pointe de l'épée" (German: on the tip of the sword, so with force), he exaggerates things because the wolf himself previously relied on his teeth and claws. In a game of opposites, the wolf is portrayed as wiser than the dog. The wolf is the one of the two who would not give up what he has no matter what is offered to him. On the other hand, the dog is characterized by the stubbornness of his words.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote in his educational work Emil or On Education :
“From the fable of the skinny wolf and the fat dog, he (the child) does not learn moderation, which you would like to recommend to him, but licentiousness. I will never forget how bitterly I once saw a girl crying, who had been brought into half despair by this fable, because, following the instructions of the same, one always preached to her about obedience. ... The poor child had grown into the role of the dog so much that it finally grew tired of being constantly on the chain; it already felt its throat sore; it wept that it couldn't be the wolf. Hence, in the morality of the first cited fable for the child there is an instruction to the lowest flattery: in that of the second there is an invitation to heartlessness; in the third a praise of injustice; in the fourth an instruction in art to be mocked and in the fifth an incentive to independence. "
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jean de La Fontaine: Fables Choisies, mises en vers. Retrieved January 22, 2020 .
- ^ Ernst Dohm : Lafontaine's fables. Retrieved January 22, 2020 .
- ↑ Randolph Paul Runyon, Randolph Runyon: In La Fontaine's Labyrinth: A Thread Through the Fables . Rookwood Press, 2000, ISBN 978-1-886365-16-2 , pp. 12-14 ( google.de [accessed June 4, 2020]).
- ↑ https://books.google.de/books?id=kZoxCgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Emil+oder+%C3%9Cber+die+Erbildung+von+Jean-Jacques+Rousseau&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj394uI1pfnAhUKEwj394uI1pfnAhWWLalGAHbepage=QvIMChBepage % 20M% C3% A4dchen & f = true