Ivan Krylov’s fable “The monkey and the spectacles”: the sources of the plot

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Absract: The paper reconstructs the literary context of I.A. Krylov’s fable “The Monkey and the Spectacles”. Unlike many fables stemming from Aesop, “The Monkey and the Spectacles” has an original plot. Until today the range of its known sources has been limited to variants of ATU 1331A* “Buying Spectacles”, with human personae, and N. V. Nevedomsky’s fable “The Squirrel”, without the theme of vision crucial to Krylov’s idea. The paper shows that the combination of a zoomorphic persona and the visual theme embodied in the image of an optical device is present in several texts possibly known by Krylov. These are J.-P. Claris de Florian’s fables “The Cat and the Opera-Glass” and “The Monkey Showing the Magic Lantern” (the latter translated into Russian by V.A. Zhukovsky), the fable “A Mole and Spectacles”, known in versions by R. L’Estrange, J. Addison etc., and a passage from F.A. Emin’s magazine “Mail from Hell” where the behaviour of fops who use lorgnettes without any real need, just because it is fashionable, acts as an example of “monkey-ish” imitation. However important these sources might be, what is new in “The Monkey and the Spectacles” is not only the combination of motifs but also the satirical intent. Only some of the possible source-texts treat the topic of ignorance and enlightenment, and, as opposed to those, Krylov radically changes the idea. ATU 1331A* variants ridicule low-class characters allegedly lacking reason to apprehend learning and so thought unworthy of it; Krylov, on the contrary, aims his satire against high-ranking obscurants who reject and impede enlightenment, as they cannot understand its value.
Keywords: I.A. Krylov, fable, literary connections
Category: Vol 78, NO 4 (2019)
DOI: 10.31857/S241377150006110-4
Pages: 37-47
Author: Lev Trakhtenberg
Information about the author: Affiliation: Lomonosov Moscow State University Address: Russian Federation, Moscow

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