The purpose of this play is to dramatize the fable of a city mouse and her cousin in the country, and the differences in their lifestyles. Through visits to each other's respective homes, the mice discover that there is more to life than what their own environment has to offer.

A la fin du XVIème siècle, les Européens découvrirent le Pays du Soleil Levant et ils apportèrent la civilisation occidentale. Les Japonais eurent besoin de développer le travail de traduction d’oeuvres étrangères. Dans ces conditions, Les Fables d’Ésope furent traduites et devinrent le premier texte occidental connu au Japon grâce aux missionnaires chrétiens. Cette oeuvre a été nommée Les Fables d’Isoho et intégra rapidement la culture japonaise pendant la période d’isolationnisme. Malgré cette situation politique défavorable pour le texte étranger, les fables ésopiques avaient survécu en tant qu’unique texte littéraire occidental pendant presque 200 ans. Même après la réouverture du pays, la popularité de cette oeuvre n’a pas changé. Nous avons donc regardé comment cette première littérature occidentale laissa des traces dans la culture japonaise. Nous avons ensuite comparé plusieurs ouvrages ésopiques afin de comprendre pourquoi ces fables réussirent à être acceptées dans ce pays et comment les traducteurs et les auteurs adoptèrent ces textes grecs dans un pays si lointain. La réception des fables ésopiques ne se limite pas au monde littéraire mais se retrouve aussi dans le cadre pédagogique. C’est pourquoi nous avons également analysé des manuels scolaires pour savoir comment et dans quel but les Japonais employèrent les fables selon la société, l’époque, la politique et la culture. / By the end of the 16th century, European people discovered the land of the rising sun and brought Western culture. Japanese people needed to improve the translation of foreign languages. In that context and thanks to christians missionaries, the Aesop’s Fables were the first Western literature to be translated in Japan. During Japan’s isolationist foreign policy, the translated version took the name of Isoho’s Fables and became quickly a part of Japanese culture. Despite this unfavorable environment for foreign texts, the Aesop’s fables remained a unique piece of foreign literature for almost 200 years. Even nowadays, they are still recognized as famous stories. Therefore, we first took a look at its impact on Japanese culture. Then, we compared several esopian books to understand why those Greek texts managed to get accepted in this faraway country, as well as how translators and writers succeeded on adapting them. Aesopian’s fables were not only present in literature, but they were also used at school. That is why, we have also analysed textbooks in order to discover how and why Japanese people have used the Aesop’s Fables throughout ages, societies, politics and culture.

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<p>In my thesis, “Commandeering Aesop’s Bamboo Canon: A 19th Century Confederacy of Creole Fugitive Fables,” I ask and answer the ‘Who? What? Where? When? Why?” of Creole Literature using the 19th century production of Aesopian fables as clues to resolve a set of linguistic, historical, literary, and geographical enigmas pertaining the ‘birth-place(s)’ of Creolophone Literatures in the Caribbean Sea, North and South America, as well as the Indian Ocean. Focusing on the fables in Martinique (1846), Reunion Island (1826), and Mauritius (1822), my thesis should read be as an attempt capture the links between these islands through the creation of a particular archive defined as a cartulary-chronicle, a diplomatic codex, or simply a map in which I chart and trace the flight of the founding documents relating to the lives of the individual authors, editors, and printers in order to illustrate the articulation of a formal and informal confederation that enabled the global and local institutional promotion of Creole Literature. While I integrate various genres and multi-polar networks between the authors of this 19th century canon comprised of sacred and secular texts such as proclamations, catechisms, and proverbs, the principle literary genre charted in my thesis are collections of fables inspired by French 17th century French Classical fabulist, Jean de la Fontaine. Often described as the ‘matrix’ of Creolophone Literature, these blues and fables constitute the base of the canon, and are usually described as either ‘translated,’ ‘adapted,’ and even ‘cross-dressed’ into Creole in all of the French Creolophone spaces. My documentation of their transnational sprouting offers proof of an opaque canonical formation of Creole popular literature. By constituting this archive, I emphasize the fact that despite 200 years of critical reception and major developments and discoveries on behalf of Creole language pedagogues, literary scholars, linguists, historians, librarians, archivist, and museum curators, up until now not only have none have curated this literature as a formal canon. I also offer new empirical evidence in order to try and solve the enigma of “How?” the fables materially circulated between the islands, and seek to come to terms with the anonymous nature of the texts, some of which were published under pseudonyms. I argue that part of the confusion on the part of scholars has been the result of being willfully taken by surprise or defrauded by the authors, or ‘bamboozled’ as I put it. The major paradigmatic shift in my thesis is that while I acknowledge La Fontaine as the base of this literary canon, I ultimately bypass him to trace the ancient literary genealogy of fables to the infamous Aesop the Phrygian, whose biography – the first of a slave in the history of the world – and subsequent use of fables reflects a ‘hidden transcript’ of ‘masked political critique’ between ‘master and slave classes’ in the 4th Century B.C.E. Greece.</p><p>This archive draws on, connects and critiques the methodologies of several disciplinary fields. I use post-colonial literary studies to map the literary genealogies Aesop; use a comparative historical approach to the abolitions of slavery in both the 19th century Caribbean and the Indian Ocean; and chart the early appearance of folk music in early colonial societies through Musicology and Performance Studies. Through the use of Sociolinguistics and theories of language revival, ecology, and change, I develop an approach of ‘reflexive Creolistics’ that I ultimately hope will offer new educational opportunities to Creole speakers. While it is my desire that this archive serves linguists, book collectors, and historians for further scientific inquiry into the innate international nature of Creole language, I also hope that this innovative material defense and illustration of Creole Literature will transform the consciousness of Creolophones (native and non-native) who too remain ‘bamboozled’ by the archive. My goal is to erase the ‘unthinkability’ of the existence of this ancient maritime creole literary canon from the collective cultural imaginary of readers around the globe.</p> / Dissertation

The thesis is monitored a movement of woodblock printings of graphic Erhard Schön from Nuremberg to Morava. And then the movement to Prostějov, Olomouc and later to Skalice where they were used until the 19th century. These woodcuts were created during the 1620s and they were taken by the printer Jan Günther in the 1640s. Thesis briefly presented a chapbook, its history of development and splitting. This thesis clarifies a historical connections between printer offices in the above mentioned cities. Special focus on pilgrimage woodblock printings Aesop's fables between the printer offices in Prostějov, Olomouc and Skalice from 16th to 20th century.