A Brief History of Fables: From Aesop to Flash Fiction (Brief Histories) [Paperback]

Aesop, the Greek 'anti-philosopher' who was flung off a cliff by humour-challenged Delphians, is a kind of literary Socrates: all subsequent literature can be read as Aesopian footnotes or variations. So argues Rourke energetically, as he whisks us past the fabulists Phaedrus, Odo of Cheriton, Marie de France, Romi (the deeply amusing Sufist) and Fontaine, then through Kafka, Joyce and Borges, and up to cultish modern 'microfiction' and 'flash fiction'. --The Guardian

'A poem should not mean,/ But be,' or so the twentieth century literati would have had us believe. Yet from the earliest of classical narratives to modern-day e-zines, literary works have been turned to political, didactic and symbolic ends. In this groundbreaking work, Lee Rourke traces the long history of a form currently enjoying a resurgence online and in the works of some of the most talented young authors in print. As we begin to emerge from modernism and its aftermath, fables - the briefest of narratives given the most expansive of significations - have gained in popularity. Author and literary critic Rourke here considers the permutations of the form, from Aesop's tortoise and hare, via Plato's socio-political works and the later ribald medieval tales, to Kafka's anthropomorphism and present-day authors including Blake Butler, Joseph Young, Shane Jones and Jonathan Lethem. A Brief History of Fables offers a bold take on the new face of literature.

Lee Rourke is the author of the critically acclaimed debut novel The Canal (winner of The Guardian's Not The Booker Prize 2010) and the short story collection Everyday. His literary criticism has been published in The Guardian, The Independent, TLS, New Statesman and Bookforum. He lives in London.