The Fabulist in the Fable Book

344 Pages·2015·1.96 MB·English

by  Craig Miyahira

UCLA
UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Title
The Fabulist in the Fable Book
Permalink
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1np9w796
Author
Mann, Kristin Leilani
Publication Date
2015

Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation
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The Fabulist in the Fable Book

A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the
requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy
in Classics

by

Kristin Leilani Mann

2015
© Copyright by
Kristin Leilani Mann
2015
ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERETATION

The Fabulist in the Fable Book

by

Kristin Leilani Mann
Doctor of Philosophy in Classics
University of California, Los Angeles, 2015
Professor Kathryn Anne Morgan, Co-Chair
Professor Amy Ellen Richlin, Co-Chair

Four fable books survive from Greco-Roman antiquity: (1) the Life and Fables of Aesop (1st-2nd
century CE), a collection of Greek prose fables; (2) Phaedrus’s Fabulae Aesopiae (1st century
CE), a collection of Latin verse fables; (3) Babrius’s Μυθίαμβοι Αἰσώπειοι (1st century CE), a
collection of Greek verse fables; and (4) Avianus’s Fabulae (4th-5th century CE), a collection of
Latin verse fables. The thesis of this dissertation is that in each of these fable collections, the
fabulist’s presence in the fable book – his biography, his self-characterizations, and his
statements of purpose – combine to form a hermeneutic frame through which the fables may be
interpreted. Such a frame is necessary because the fable genre is by nature multivalent: fables
may be interpreted in many different ways, depending on their context. For embedded fables
(that is, fables embedded in a larger narrative or speech), the fable’s immediate context
influences the fable’s interpretation. In the fable books, however, there is no literary context; the
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fables stand as isolated narratives. The fabulist himself, I argue, takes the place of this missing
context, and thus provides the reader with an interpretive framework. Such a framework does not
outright control the interpretation of the fables (the fables remain multivalent), but it does
provide a field of plausible interpretations. Furthermore, because each fable book has a different
hermeneutic frame, each text is unique, despite using much of the same material. Thus, in the
Life and Fables of Aesop, the Life serves as a guide for how to use the Fables that follow, a guide
that is aimed at low or powerless individuals. Phaedrus’s collection demonstrates the usefulness
of fables as a form of coded speech, for slaves and for other disempowered individuals.
Babrius’s collection explores the usefulness of fables in education, and teaches the readers how
to think about and apply fable wisdom correctly. Finally, Avianus’s fable collection is concerned
not only with the boundaries of genre – with what is and is not appropriate for the fable genre –
but also with the nature of display and ornamentation itself, an important issue in late antique
culture. These four fable books have not, on the whole, received much scholarly attention, and
there has been little attempt to read them as coherent works of literature in their own right. By
considering the overall purpose and hermeneutic frames of each of these collections, this
dissertation fills an important gap in scholarship.

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The dissertation of Kristin Leilani Mann is approved.
Alex C. Purves
Joseph F. Nagy
Kathryn Anne Morgan, Committee Co-Chair
Amy Ellen Richlin, Committee Co-Chair

University of California, Los Angeles
2015

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments …………………………………………………………………………….... vi

Vita …………………………………………………………………………………………… viii

Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………..……… 1

Chapter 1
The Life and Fables of Aesop: An Instruction Manual for the Low ………………….. 36

Chapter 2
Phaedrus: Fables as Covert Speech ………………………………………...………... 100

Chapter 3
Babrius: Fables as Education ……………………………………………….……...…179

Chapter 4
Avianus: Dressing up the Fable Genre …………………………………...………..…247

Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………..………..318

Bibliography ………………………………………………………………………..…...……322
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Acknowledgments
I am deeply indebted to my professors at UCLA for helping me bring this project to
fruition. In particular, I would like to thank the co-chairs of my dissertation committee, Kathryn
Morgan and Amy Richlin, for all of their help, support, and advice during this process. They
both agreed to be my co-chairs, even though this wide-ranging project on the fable collections
did not fall neatly into their areas of specialization, and I am grateful for their invaluable
comments and advice, the bibliography they introduced me to, and for their reading and
rereading of my drafts. I would also like to thank the other members of my committee – Alex
Purves and Józsi Nagy – for their feedback and for the many insightful conversations about
fables that I had with them. I have also had the good fortune to receive help from non-committee
members, in particular Mario Telò, who talked with me about fable bibliography and approaches,
and Francesca Martelli, who introduced me to paratext theory and gave vital feedback on my
introduction.
I am also very grateful for the help I received from scholars outside of UCLA who
offered new perspectives and insights. Ellen Finkelpearl not only talked with me about my
project and about the wider world of animal studies, but also invited me a dinner with her and
Claire Nettleton to talk about our work on animals. Dana Fields allowed me to read her not yet
published work on the fable collections. James Uden listened to my talk in Boston, gave me
helpful notes, and mailed me his article on Avianus, an article which proved crucial to my
chapter. I am grateful to them all. I would also like to thank the Classics Department at the
University of Southern California for inviting me to participate in their seminar on Leslie
Kurke’s Aesopic Conversations, and to Leslie Kurke for coming and talking about her book.
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In seminars and conferences over the years, I have had the opportunity to presents parts
of my dissertation as talks. As such, I would like extend my thanks to David Blank, in whose
seminar I gave a talk about Babrius and Plutarch; to Boston University, whose graduate students
hosted a conference at which I spoke about Aesop and Babrius, and the Society for Classical
Studies, at whose conference I spoke about Phaedrus. Thanks to these opportunities, I not only
clarified my arguments, but also received feedback from numerous scholars.
I am grateful to the organizations who helped fund my dissertation work: UCLA graduate
division, for offering me College of Letters and Science Fellowships in 2008-2009 and 2011-
2012, a Graduate Research Mentorship in 2010-2011, and a Dissertation Year Fellowship in
2014-2015. I would also like to thank the Mellon Foundation, for offering me a Mellon
Fellowship in 2012. The Dissertation Year Fellowship came about as a result of my winning the
Distinguished Teaching Award, which would not have been possible without Bob Gurval and
Sarah Morris, who nominated me and then assembled my portfolio, nor without Kathryn
Morgan, Mario Telò, and many of my past students, who wrote letters of support.
I also extend warm thanks to my family and friends – to Grace Gillies, for letting me talk
through my chapters on multiple occasions and for always offering her support and advice; to
Alex Lessie, for insightful conversations about our projects; to Paul Waite, for making sure that I
kept a sense of humor through it all; and to Mik Larsen, for his feedback on my writing sample,
for long conversations about fables, and for the healthy competition that allowed my work to stay
on track. Finally, I would like to thank my family, for their love and encouragement during my
graduate school career, and especially my partner, Mandy, for all of her support and love.

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VITA
2008 B.A. (summa cum laude), Classics and English
Northwestern University
Evanston, Illinois

2008-2009 College of Letters and Science Fellowship
University of California, Los Angeles

2009-2010 Teaching Assistant
Department of Classics
University of California, Los Angeles

2010 M.A., Classics
University of California, Los Angeles

2010-2011 Graduate Research Mentorship
University of California, Los Angeles

2011-2012 College of Letters and Science Fellowship
University of California, Los Angeles

2012 Mellon Fellowship
University of California, Los Angeles

2013-2014 Teaching Assistant
Department of Classics
University of California, Los Angeles

2014 UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award for Teaching Assistants
UCLA Classics Department Distinguished Teaching Award

2014-2015 Dissertation Year Fellowship
University of California, Los Angeles

PRESENTATIONS
Mann, Kristin (March, 2010) View and Display in Herodotus. Paper presented at the
annual meeting of the Classical Association of the Pacific Northwest / Classical
Association of the Canadian West.

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