SOURCE: Spurgeon W. Baldwin, Jr., "The Role of the Moral in 'La Vida del Ysopet con sus Fabulas Historiadas'," in Hispania, Vol. XLVII, No. 4, December, 1964, pp. 762-65.

In the following essay, Baldwin informs the reader that the moral in the fables of the Spanish Aesop under consideration is usually presented as a negative warning of punishment in a direct statement outside the story directed toward peasants more often than toward the aristocracy.

The first collection of fables to appear in Spain, made up primarily but not exclusively of fables attributed to Aesop, was printed at Zaragoza in 1489, and was given the title: La Vida del Ysopet con sus fabulas historiadas. This collection is available to us in a facsimile reproduction, with a prologue by Emilio Cotarelo y Mori, published by the Real Academia at Madrid in 1929. Although the Zaragoza edition is a translation of a volume printed in...