2nd ORAL PRESENTATION

My research project: THE ANIMALS IN AESOP’S FABLES

First of all, I will start by telling you the structure that I will follow during my presentation. I will start with the introduction to my project, where I explain the topic of the project, the personal motivation, the goals and the method. Then I will go on to the body of my project, but because of time, I will only explain briefly. Finally, I will tell you the conclusions, which is the part that I consider the most important.

INTRODUCTION

With this project I wanted to do a complete investigation of the animals which appear in the Aesop’s fables, specially giving importance to their behavior and significance in these fables.

I was motivated especially because all the fables are related to animals. Also, I thought that the topics of the fables were so interesting because they talk about situations of human beings, but using animals as the examples

When I had to choose the topic of the project, I knew that I wanted to do it related to a classical subject, and then, it was my tutor who gave me this idea.

The objectives that I proposed at the beginning of the project were:

- To know the more important characteristics of the classic fable in relation to its characters, its structure, etc.

- Find information about the author of the fables, Aesop, and of the period when he lived.

- Find out which were the most representative characteristics of each animal that the ancient Greeks observed in the animal’s behavior.

- Classify which animals had got positive or negative connotations and explain why.

In order to find out all the necessary information, I followed a specific method.

- Make a careful reading of the two hundred and seventy-three fables noticing the behavior that the author gives to each animal.

- During the reading I completed a table, where I wrote the animals characteristics, (I will show you this table and how it works.)

- I found out information of every real species to compare it with the behavior of the same animal in the fables.

- Compare the characteristics that the ancient Greeks gave to the animals, with the ones that we give them currently.

BODY

First, I started the project by giving an introduction to the genre of the fable in relation to its parts, its characters and their functions. In this part, I also talked about the general topic of the fables.

Secondly, I included information about the author and the period in which he lived, paying attention to some legends which talk about him; because there isn’t much definite information related to Aesop.

Then, I did the most extensive part, which was to look at the name of each animal in Catalan and its scientific name in Latin. To look also at an explanation of the real species, especially its habitat, its alimentation and its behavior, and finally the behavior of this animal in the fables where it appears.

Finally, I made the conclusion, where I explained the results of my study and some important deductions that I made with the information. These parts I explained with graphs:- which are the animals who appear most frequently, and also, which are the most representative characteristics of each one.

CONCLUSIONS

I divided the conclusions in two parts: First, with a graph, I talked about how frequently each animal appeared. And I could conclude that the animals which appear the most are the carnivores, because, I think, that they have a more evident behavior as they always appear hunting for prey to eat, which are more varied. I have to say that in this graph there are just those animals which appear four times minimum, because it was impossible to create a graph with eighty seven animals!

The other group of the conclusions is called “the most representative characteristics of each animal”. Here I did groups of adjectives, because many of them are close in meaning. With this part, I could conclude that the carnivore animals always appear with adjectives that give bad connotations, and that’s because their nature makes that they often appear hunting and being cruel with their prey.

PERSONAL CONCLUSION

After completing this project, I can see that I’ve fulfilled the goals that I proposed at the beginning of this study, but I have to say, that I would have liked to make a section related to the animal’s names lexicon, but it wasn’t possible, because it’s a very extensive project.

Finally, I will say that I’m very happy with my research project, because I’ve also learnt a lot of interesting things like: - the structure of a fable, the behavior of some animals, or simply their scientific name. I’m proud of the work, and to have met the objectives that I raised at the start of my research project.