Words to the Wise

This book argues that, rather than producing standalone collections of Aesopian fables, women writers of the first seventy-five years of the eighteenth century took components of the fable and embedded them in other forms, resulting in the fabular hybrid. This strategy allows them to claim the moral authority implied in the writing of fables, in order to resist the demeaning description of women’s lives and abilities in the male-authored fables directed towards women. In addition to the witty Aesop, the text also draws on The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments and Scheherazade’s successful reform of Schahriar that saves her life and the lives of the other women of her country. The critical framework is built on both modern feminist criticism and historical studies of the fable and The Arabian Nights. I intentionally include a variety of forms, the novel, the oriental tale, satire, and plays, in order to display the breadth of female writers’ use of the fabular hybrid. I also want to avoid privileging the novel, which feminist literary history has done for too long. Taking a wide view of the varieties of forms in which women wrote in the eighteenth century is vital to understanding their contribution to literary history.