Week 14 Reading A: Italian Stories: The Man, the Serpent, and the Fox

Image result for snake under a rock
(Northern-Watersnake-2-Returning-to-Rock from Wikimedia Commons)


For part A of this week's reading notes, I chose to focus in on the story of the Man, the Serpent, and the Fox. I chose this story specifically because of the characterization within it. In the story there are two figures that represent cunning typically in stories: the fox and the serpent. Both are known in folklore to be personified as witty. Here we see a serpent trick a man into freeing him so that he may eat the man. They go ask a few different people whether the serpent should be allowed to. Two characters say yes: the greyhound and the horse. Both believe they are to die because of man, so both perhaps hold a grudge towards man for this. The greyhound believes those who do good will find evil, so it is simply the man's fate. The horse believes he is wronged for aging, so he thinks the man should die because he was wronged by man. These grudges are not directly mentioned, but seem to be implied through the writing. I especially love the personification of the serpent and the fox though, and the ending was surprising. These personifications are ones we have given animals somehow through time, and it fascinates me as to how they got them. So I focused in on this story because it characterizes them in this way, that humans have somehow developed.


Bibliography:

  • Story from Otranto, Apulia, in Italy. Found at UnTextbook 

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