Opening-Up Aesop's Fables : heteroglossia in Slade & Toni Morrison and Pascal Lemaître's "The Ant or the Grasshopper?"

Fables, characterized by their featuring animals and containing a moral, are among the earliest forms of storytelling. With its aim to simultaneously teach and entertain, playfully imparting wisdom, fabulist thinking has been used as a complex medium of political analysis and resistance against tyranny or royal negligence, for example (see Patterson, 1991). Although they occupy a marginal position, fables are still present in children's literature. While new fables are being written, old ones are retold in a variety of ways. "The Ant and the Grasshopper" has become a master-narrative that has been adapted throughout the ages. First written by the slave Aesop in 6th century B.C., it was famously retold by Lafontaine in a version that emphasized language playfulness, avoiding the direct moral ending. Many more popular rewritings have given it a ludico-parodic twist, even a vulgar subject (the grasshopper becomes a whore, for instance, Genette 40). This famous fable already contained eternal political oppositions between the provident one and the carefree one, the human dilemma between deep-rooted anticipation and a passionate happy-go-lucky attitude. Recent web adaptations that turn the grasshopper into the poor taking advantage of the welfare system illustrate how the fable has been used in conservative circles to convey a Manichean contrast between the hard-working rich and the lazy poor, promoting a tendency to blame the victim. More recent children's literature adaptations confirm its value. Amy Lowry Poole's version (2000) transposes it to a Chinese Emperor's palace setting to emphasize how the grasshopper can appreciate the beauty around her, something the ants fail to do. Mark White's retelling (2004) adapts it to a children's audience: "There's a time for play and a time for work," the ant says (24). Other works like Leo Lionni's Frederick use a similar trope and theme but with different titles. Last but not least, comics have also adapted the famous fable to the dialogue of image/text. While Jessica Abel's adaptation depicts the grasshopper walking all over her friend, Harvey Kurtzman's beatnik version pokes fun at the 1960s beat generation. The non-conformist be-bop grasshopper eventually deciding to move away from empty talking is paralleled by the ant's realization that he needs culture (or power, or women, it is not clear which).