Jabberwocky (1977) is a comic medieval film by Monty Python's resident animator, Terry Gilliam. It stars Michael Palin as a young cooper who is forced through a series of clumsy, often slapstick misfortunes to hunt down a terrible dragon after the death of his father. The name is taken from the nonsense poem Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll.
The film, Gilliam's first as a solo director, was not well received by critics or audiences, although it has since become something of a cult film. Despite its lack of initial success, Jabberwocky strongly established Gilliam's distinctive visual style and dark sense of humour.
The film is close in setting and comic style to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, on which Gilliam had worked. As well as Palin, fellow Python Terry Jones and notable Python contributor Neil Innes also appeared in Jabberwocky, giving it a distinctly Python-esque feel, with many scenes (such as the "hide and seek" jousting tournament) heavily reminiscent of Holy Grail. For its American premiere the film was initially advertised as Monty Python's Jabberwocky, despite protests from Gilliam.
Fables and Parables
Fables and Parables (Bajki i przypowieści, 1779), by Ignacy Krasicki, is a noted work in a long international tradition of fable-writing that reaches back to antiquity.
Emulating the fables of the ancient Greek Aesop, the Macedonian-Roman Phaedrus, the Polish Biernat of Lublin, and the Frenchman Jean de La Fontaine, and anticipating Russia's Ivan Krylov, the Pole Krasicki populates his fables with anthropomorphized animals, plants, inanimate objects, and forces of nature, in masterful epigrammatic expressions of a skeptical, ironic view of the world.
That view is informed by Krasicki's observations of humanity and of national and international politics in his day, notably the predicament of the expiring Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Just seven years earlier (1772), the Commonwealth had experienced the first of three partitions that would, by 1795, totally expunge the Commonwealth from the political map of Europe.
There was once a young man whose temperance never flagged;
There was an old man, too, who never scolded or nagged;
There was a rich man who shared his wealth with the needy;
There flourished an author, for renown never greedy;
There was a customs man who did not steal; a cobbler who shunned alcohol;
A soldier who did not boast; a rogue who did not brawl;
There was a politician who never thought of self;
There was a poet who never put lies on his shelf.
"No, you'll never convince me that that's the right label!"
"Nevertheless, I will call all of this a fable."
Emulating the fables of the ancient Greek Aesop, the Macedonian-Roman Phaedrus, the Polish Biernat of Lublin, and the Frenchman Jean de La Fontaine, and anticipating Russia's Ivan Krylov, the Pole Krasicki populates his fables with anthropomorphized animals, plants, inanimate objects, and forces of nature, in masterful epigrammatic expressions of a skeptical, ironic view of the world.
That view is informed by Krasicki's observations of humanity and of national and international politics in his day, notably the predicament of the expiring Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Just seven years earlier (1772), the Commonwealth had experienced the first of three partitions that would, by 1795, totally expunge the Commonwealth from the political map of Europe.
There was once a young man whose temperance never flagged;
There was an old man, too, who never scolded or nagged;
There was a rich man who shared his wealth with the needy;
There flourished an author, for renown never greedy;
There was a customs man who did not steal; a cobbler who shunned alcohol;
A soldier who did not boast; a rogue who did not brawl;
There was a politician who never thought of self;
There was a poet who never put lies on his shelf.
"No, you'll never convince me that that's the right label!"
"Nevertheless, I will call all of this a fable."
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