Who Is Harriet Spielberg's Instructing The Children

In the ancient world, Fables were not meant to be for children. Their pedagogical intent was supposedly addressed to an illiterate population, which needed to be taught the values of the society and how to behave in it. In fact, the concept of Fables as children-oriented literature is recent and have its roots in the eighteenth-century, even though there are some proofs of older fables intended to educate children .

Harriet Spielberg is the author of “Instructing the Children: Advice from the twelfth-century Fables of Marie the France”, an article published in 1989, in volume 17 of Children Literature (pp. 25-26). Spielberg’s thesis can be summarized as follow: some of Marie de France’s fables were, in the middle ages, imagined and intended for children and have a didactic purpose for their education. The article debates that, albeit some of Marie de France contents seem to be unsuitable for a children audience , fables such as “The Wolf and the Kid” and “The Doe and Her Fawn” could “serve as an example that parents could present to their children” (pp 38).

This critique aims to examine the arguments given,

In the original text of “The Monkey King”, the King’s proud seem to be directed more to its court, of which its family is part, than to his mentioned son (“Of me and my wife, let’s hear - / and of my son, whom you seen here”). As the Monkey is trying to imitate the human nature and to be a king, and as the animal has observed the costume of the court during its life, in presenting its court to the two men the Monkey is trying to find some sort of validation for its parody of a real court. Again, it seem to be a matter of social mobility (a Monkey couldn’t grow to be a real king) and to nurture against