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V. Spahn, Nos. 7, 15, and 17, 1950?

 Item — Box: CFC Postcards Box 1
Identifier: CFC2021.0039.1-3

Scope and Contents

From the Collection:

The Carlson Fable Collection is a gathering of primary fable materials at Reinert Alumni Memorial Library at Creighton University. It grew out of the personal collection of fable materials gathered by Rev. Gregory Carlson, S.J. and was given to the Creighton Libraries in 1996. There are more than 10,000 books and approximately 8,000 artifacts in the collection.

From plates to stamps, from cards to whiskey decanters, from toys to posters, you'll find just about anything you can imagine here. Please explore all that is to offer here in my fables Catalogue of Objects.

This is the largest online catalog of fable related objects on the internet. Many are from Aesop's Fables but you will find La Fontaine, Velazquez and Krylov also represented in this collection.

Dates

  • 1950?

Extent

3 Cards (Fables of La Fontaine. Twenty-three (out of a series apparently of twenty-four) full-color postcards displaying favorite La Fontaine fables, with young people playing appropriate human roles. V. Spahn signs the cards. Card #17 is missing.)

Language of Materials

French

Abstract

The text of the fable takes up most of the message-space on the verso of the cards. Under the picture is "Fables de la Fontaine" in Italics at he lower left and a block-print title at the lower right. The modes of translating the fables into children's life are fascinating here. The emphasis is not on simple "cuteness." The children can play the fable straight, as in "L'Huitre et les Plaideurs" and GGE. FC is thus about one child stealing a ball while another sits up a tree and watches his ball stolen. Or a child can assume an unpleasantly animalistic role, as when TMCM shows an imperious girl chasing two boys away from a table full of food. The picture opens up whole new categories of interpretation when "The Wolf Become a Shepherd" shows a child picking up play sheep on the lawn. Again, there are whole new interpretations at work when FK shows a girl in a bathing suit with a frog clinging to her shoulder. Is she queen of the frogs? A few cards perhaps hardly make sense. What does the boy falling into the water have to do with OR? The set hits a low point, I believe, when it offers a black male child wearing feathers as "Le Geai Paré des Plumes du Paon." Perhaps the cards are meant simply as fun and not to be interpreted at all. Card #15 adds a false number to its fable title: "XIV." All the cards here seem to have been sent or addressed to the same party--but never to have been mailed with a stamp. Finally getting #17, TH, in June of 2022 completes the set.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Extra copies of #7 and #15 for €1 apiece from Akpool, Berlin, August, '18. TH for €4 from collecman through Ebay, June, '22.

Source

Repository Details

Part of the Creighton University Libraries, Archives & Special Collections Repository

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