Fables

Join us in the Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies for a fascinating public lecture!

In 1548 Burkard Waldis published his version of an Aesopian Fable collection. The title promises Aesopian fables “completely renewed” with a hundred “new fables” never published before. What the ‘new’ entails is never established by the author, but an analysis of the text shows that it challenges our modern understanding of the fable. Waldis presents tales that follow a typical fable format: short little stories with animals followed by a short sentence with a moral lesson.