The Ancient Fable: An Introduction (review)

Laura Gibbs

Journal of American Folklore, Volume 120, Number 475, Winter 2007,pp. 111-113 (Article)

Published by American Folklore SocietyDOI: 10.1353/jaf.2007.0010

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Book Reviews 111

The material for this book is derived from these sources. Thus, although he was implicitly in dialogue with Campbell, Paneak retained con-trol of the initial ethnographic situation, and the material slides along the continuum be-tween oral history and memoir. Although Paneak’s words are presented as he wrote or spoke them, they also exist in dialogue with the greater body of anthropological litera-ture on Alaska and particularly on the Brooks Range area. with regard to the latter academic dialogue, readers unfamiliar with this body of work may feel as if they have walked into the middle of a conversation. In a Hungry Country is a significant contribution to that conversation, although it appears incomplete on its own, par-ticularly as an introduction to the subject. on the other hand, the volume is particu-larly valuable to anyone with an interest in oral narrative, oral history, or intersemiotic trans-lation, regardless of one’s specific interest in Alaskan indigenous life. Thematically divided chapters are briefly introduced by Campbell, followed by side-by-side presentations of Paneak’s verbatim words in english and a standard english translation by Campbell. By his own admission, Campbell is not always sure of Paneak’s meaning as he restructures sentences and grammar and adds parentheti-cal additions for clarification. Being able to read both allows readers to draw their own conclusions about unclear passages while ad-ditionally providing the unusual opportunity of comparing and contrasting the verbatim and edited transcriptions of all the material. The inclusion of selected reproductions of pages of Paneak’s notebook, with his hand-drawn maps and writings, supplements the side-by-side text nicely. since Paneak died in 1975, he clearly had no direct input into the publication of his words in this volume, and the thematic control ulti-mately rested in Campbell’s hands. Campbell does his best to mitigate his influence, most ef-fectively by employing the side-by-side text format. He remains vague, however, on some details, such as what it means that some mate-rials were included and others left out or the impact of his thematic chapters on the original structure as recorded by Paneak. Throughout

the book, Campbell mentions the impact of change and adaptation on traditional life, but he does not elaborate on these issues. Though the issue of change is an interesting one, it is unclear whether Paneak would have applied it thematically to his own words. one appendix to the book identifies the plants and animals mentioned by Paneak in Paneak’s own terminology, english, Latin, and Iñupiaq. This highlights Paneak’s environmen-tal knowledge of the Nunamiut territory and is clearly included for those with an interest in ethnobotany and traditional environmental knowledge, but the volume does not otherwise specifically address this topic. The book’s most serious fault is the lack of a thorough biographical overview of Paneak’s life. Certainly, his own words provide a good deal of autobiography, particularly regarding his experience as a hunter, but the account is highly episodic. Campbell seems aware of this lack, but he suggests that the task of writing Paneak’s biography belongs to other scholars, specifically encouraging Grant spearman, who wrote the foreword to this book and who has done considerable research in this geographical area, in that endeavor. This volume does pro-vide a brief overview of Paneak’s life within the context of the history both of the Nunamiut and of anthropological research in Alaska, supplemented by a genealogical appendix. At present, any further delineation must be gleaned from the other anthropological writings with which this volume is in dialogue.

The Ancient Fable: An Introduction. By Niklas Holzberg. Trans. by Christine Jackson-Holz-berg. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002. Pp. 128, bibliography, indexes.)

Laura GibbsUniversity of Oklahoma

Niklas Holzberg’s Ancient Fable: An Introduc-tion provides a concise and clear analysis of the Greek and Roman sources for Aesop’s fables. The book surveys each of the major sources for the approximately six hundred Greek and Lat-in fables that have survived from antiquity. This

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112 Journal of American Folklore 120 (2007)

includes fables as exempla in the different his-torical periods of Greek and Roman literature; the verse fable collections of the poets Phae-drus, Babrius, and Avianus; and the prose fable collections in Greek and Latin. each of these brief sections (approximately ten pages or less) is followed by a page or so of bibliographical observations. Although the book is called an “introduction” to the fables, readers would do well to first read through a collection of Aesop’s fables in english, given that Holzberg is able to cite and analyze only a few representative fables in the course of the book. Readers who are al-ready familiar with the corpus of ancient fables will appreciate his judicious and even-handed approach in selecting specific fables for close attention. Holzberg’s main aim is to provide a critical review of prior scholarship on the fables, but he also advances some ideas and approaches of his own. His most extended argument concerns the authorship of the novelistic Life of Aesop and the Greek prose fables called the Collectio Augustana. “Dare we infer again that the author of this novel also wrote the fable book that now survives in the form of the Collectio Augusta-na?” Holzberg asks (p. 91). The author of The Ancient Fable wants to answer in the affirmative, and in order to make this argument about au-thorship he produces a very useful analysis of the structure of both the novel and the prose fable collection. In all of his interpretations, Holzberg insists on respecting the purposes and intentions of the authors under consideration, whether the anonymous author of the Life of Aesop or the poets Phaedrus, Babrius, and Avianus. In the past, many of the classical scholars who studied Aesop’s fables were less than enthusiastic about their chosen subject. For example, Holzberg cites August Hausrath’s comment that Avianus is “long-winded and boring” (p. 67) and Johann Jakob Reiske’s remark that the Life of Aesop is “pitiful entertainment for the common herd” (p. 76). Unlike those scholars who seem to have studied Aesop out of a sense of philological duty, Holzberg conveys real excitement about the fables in all their forms, and his approach to their ancient authors is consistently sympa-thetic.

Holzberg also has good intentions towards his audience, regularly distinguishing between topics he considers suitable for a general intro-duction and questions that must be set aside for a “specialized study” (p. 65). Yet while this book is meant to provide a general introduction to the fables, many of the chapters will be dif-ficult for readers whose interests are in folklore rather than in classics. Holzberg seems to expect that his audience will have a solid background in Greek and Latin literature, and his analyses of the individual fables usually depend on a highly literary interpretation of their Greek or Latin style. english-speaking readers may also be frustrated by attempts to look up the fables referenced in the text. Generally, Holzberg cites the fables using their Aes. number, based on Ben e. Perry’s Aesopica of 1952 (University of Illi-nois Press). Yet when you consult Perry’s text, you will find that all the explanatory materi-als—even the instructions for using the in-dexes!—are given in Latin. english-speaking readers need to know that they can also find an english version of the Aesopica numeration system in Perry’s Babrius and Phaedrus (Har-vard University Press, 1965), which also in-cludes references to motif numbers for many of the fables, a feature not found in the Aeso-pica. By cataloging and annotating the work of classical scholars who have studied the fables over the past two hundred years, Holzberg is able to make their often highly technical analy-ses accessible to a general audience. Yet his ef-forts cannot change the fact that classical schol-arship on the fables has focused almost exclusively on the textual tradition and on the representation of the fables in classical litera-ture and rhetoric. Holzberg can offer almost nothing about the ways in which these ancient fables might indirectly provide some insight into the popular culture of ancient Greece or Rome. As for comparative studies of the fables, Holzberg makes a few brief remarks about Babylonian sources and some observations about the Book of Ahiqar, but he does not touch on the question of parallels between the Aeso-pic fables and the ancient Indian fable tradition recorded in the Panchatantra and Buddhist jataka tales, a topic already explored by the folk-

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lorist Joseph Jacobs in The Fables of Aesop (Da-vid Nutt, 1889, not cited by Holzberg). By in-cluding the Aesopus Latinus, Holzberg brings us up to the brink of the Middle Ages, but he does not unfold the fascinating story of how the Latin fables of the Middle Ages were refash-ioned into entirely new collections by both secular and religious authors, and sometimes combined with popular fables or with fables borrowed from medieval Arabic sources. In short, there are many more studies of Aesop waiting to be written, and Holzberg’s Ancient Fable will provide an invaluable resource for those future scholars, supplying them with a sympathetic and solid introduction to the his-tory of Aesop’s fables in the Greek and Roman worlds.

Rap Music and Street Consciousness. By Cher-yl L. keyes. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002. Pp. 304, bibliography, photographs, tran-scriptions, index, glossary.)

Dawn M. NorfleetIndependent Scholar

Rap Music and Street Consciousness is a com-prehensive history of hip-hop from its incep-tion in the 1970s as a local “youth arts mass movement” (p. 1) to its current status as a worldwide phenomenon. The book focuses on rap music and the musical aspect of hip-hop, summarizing major developments and issues relevant to rap music in the larger context of hip-hop culture and popular entertainment. seeking to balance the perspectives of schol-arly researcher with that of cultural insiders, keyes places hip-hop in its broad context, with-out which the history would be a rather un-wieldy combination of facts, legends, and ru-mors. The book is divided into two parts, begin-ning with “The sociocultural History and Aes-thetics of Rap Music.” This section discusses the cultural forces from outside the United states that influenced hip-hop’s immigrant founders, from west African bardic retentions to the traditions of Jamaican public dances be-fore the 1970s. The study also cites the rapping

radio personalities in the United states and the musical poets of the 1960s and 1970s as key influences on the birth of hip-hop. This section discusses the recorded contributions of ac-knowledged forefathers of hip-hop culture (kool DJ Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, and Grand-master Flash) and ends with developments at the turn of the century. The bulk of the his-torical discussion focuses on the period be-tween the mid-1970s and 1990. The second part, “The Critical Perspectives of Rap Music and the Hip-Hop Nation,” ana-lyzes major controversies and discussions within the hip-hop community, including con-spiracy theories believed by hip-hoppers and the impact of commercialization. Topics in-clude the role of women in a field that celebrates male perspectives and the stories surrounding the deaths of icons Tupac shakur and The No-torious B.I.G. in the mid-1990s. one of the many strengths of the book is its coherent dis-cussions of potentially confusing stories in hip-hop, such as the much-publicized friction be-tween the “east Coast” and “west Coast” hip-hop communities (pp. 167–71). keyes care-fully separates facts from rumors but insight-fully acknowledges the importance of both in constructing hip-hop history. A weakness of the book concerns its defini-tion of the “Hip-Hop Nation.” keyes states, “The Hip-Hop Nation comprises a commu-nity of artists and adherents who espouse street performance aesthetics as expressed through the four elements of hip-hop. At the hem [sic] of the nation’s ideology is Afrika Bambaataa, the organizer and founder of the Zulu Nation” (p. 157). This loose definition gives hip-hop a quasi-organizational status and makes it diffi-cult for readers unfamiliar with the culture to draw distinctions between the Hip-Hop Nation, the Zulu Nation (a specific organization where a membership form is required), and the hip-hop community, which most commonly refers to the informal association of people whose aesthetics are primarily shaped by hip-hop. Is the Hip-Hop Nation (capitalized in the text) different from the hip-hop community (not capitalized)? Furthermore, not all those who consider themselves members of the hip-hop community necessarily acknowledge—or are

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