The rabbit's ears
The ears of the hare (French: Les Oreilles du lièvre ) is the fourth fable in the fifth book of the collection of fables by Jean de La Fontaine .
The fable tells how the lion - king of the beasts - once banished all animals with horns from his country after he was pushed by a horned animal, so that this painful incident could not happen to him again. The fearful rabbit saw the shadow of his long ears and feared that his spoons might be mistaken for horns. Like the bulls, goats, rams and fallow deer, he decides to leave the country, fearing for his life.
La Fontaine took the theme from a fable of Aesops , but gave it its own twist. Aesop's moral was: A prudent person will not only preserve his innocence, but also avoid the consequences of an apparent assault by his oppressors. There is no explicit morality in La Fontaine's version. The rabbit's fear is so unreasonable that La Fontaine pokes fun at those who see similarities where there are none. He plays with the theme about imperfect resemblance. His allusions are aimed at the arbitrariness of the king, at exile, at a judge whom the heretics know, and ultimately at an asylum ( Petites Maisons in Saint-Germain des Prés), anything that could threaten the exiles.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Lafontaine's Fables. Pp. 217–218 , accessed June 10, 2020 .
- ↑ Aesopus: Select Fables of Esop ... 1761 ( google.de [accessed on June 10, 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. 64 ( google.de [accessed on June 10, 2020]).
- ↑ Les Oreilles du lièvre - La Fontaine - Commentaire. Retrieved June 10, 2020 .