Talk:The Blind Man and the Lame

Parable

"The Blind Man and the Lame" is not a "fable" but a parable. Please see the definitions of the two literary forms, in their respective Wikipedia articles. Nihil novi (talk) 20:49, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

I have completed a copyedit of "The Blindman and the Lame". I think that most readers will agree that most of my edits improve the article's clarity and accuracy.

Mzilikazi1939, even if, as you say, "The story appears almost invariably in Western language sources described as a fable [emphasis added]", I see no benefit in perpetuating this misapprehension. I would like to appeal to you and to fellow-editors to consider adopting the standard understanding of the difference between a fable and a parable.

I would also respectfully suggest altering the spelling of the title to the form that Mzilikazi1939 used in writing me about this parable: "The blind man and the lame", with the space between "blind" and "man".

Nihil novi (talk) 22:05, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for suggesting the move to "The blind man and the lame". I too was thinking this was necessary. Could you do that for me?

Since it was perfectly obvious that I was still working on the article, it might have been more courteous to wait until I had finished and had time to clean up after myself before copy editing. English is my first language, by the way.

The trouble with the fable/parable distinction for this story (as for The Elm and the Vine), is that it changes genre over its history. To my mind, the word 'parable' is most commonly used in a religious context, whereas the story as it develops, though it has occasionally had religious connotations, approximates more to the secular fable. Again, a fable is capable of alternative readings while a parable is less flexible. To insist on your own understanding of the word against two and a half centuries of alternative usage is confusing and quixotic, if not arrogant. Mzilikazi1939 (talk) 22:34, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

Move: Done.

Nihil novi (talk) 03:31, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the move. Thinking the problem out, it struck me that the early poems consisted simply of rhetorical tropes with a background of humorous stories, followed in Renaissance times by pictorial emblems. The rewrite tries to reflect that. But the 18th century was essentially an age of fable and the stories based on this imagery appeared in collections that invariably described themselves as fables (Krasicki's apart, perhaps). No matter what restrictive definitions say, this preference for the term by the writers themselves has to be respected. Mzilikazi1939 (talk) 02:04, 23 March 2015 (UTC)