Talk:The Dog and Its Reflection

The dog in shadow is an awful name, change it baxck —Preceding unsigned comment added by 157.228.134.178 (talk) 13:25, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Inconsistent page name and title etc.

The page is named The Dog and the Shadow, The title and text refers to The Dog and its Bone, yet, it seems to be a story about a dog and its reflection.

Inconsistencies

• the/its
• shadow/bone/reflection

Can anyone who knows the historical and current usage sort this out? Good grief. Dizzley (Peter H) (talk) 22:31, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

The fable seems to be known by many different titles. "The Dog and the Bone" and "The Greedy Dog" are among the titles I've seen. I see that Perry Index has it as "The Dog with the Meat and his Shadow". But it doesn't really have anything to do with the modern English meaning of "shadow" - I doubt even a dog would be able to mistake one of these for an actual dog! I can imagine that there are also variations in whether the dog is a "he", a "she" or an "it".

I see that there's still a bit of inconsistency: the page title is "The Dog and Its Reflection" but the lead has it as "The Dog and its Reflection". And the Commons link uses "The Dog and the Bone". So it still needs a bit of sorting out. Furthermore, the article should explicitly address the variety of names by which the story is known, but otherwise use the same title consistently. I might try and do this later. — Smjg (talk) 12:22, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Chasing up the various titles by which the fable has been known would require some justification, since they seem to have varied fairly widely over 2,500 years. There never was an original text by Aesop, but retellings of the Greek oral tradition seem to have used the first three words ("A dog [that was] carrying [a piece of] meat") to refer to it. There were later a stack of Latin retellings, but when La Fontaine related the story he preferred to underline the moral by calling it "The dog that left its prey for the shadow". Caxton (1484) keeps to the meaning of the Greek title - Of the dogge and of the pyece of flessh - while later English authors seem to have been influenced by La Fontaine. The word he used (ombre) could be translated 'reflection' too at the time, and was so used by Caxton.

I agree that there should be consistency over WP and will try and sort that out myself (as a former editor of the article back in 2010, before I'd really learned my way around). The best way to address variations in title would be by reviewing the publication history and what the fable was called there. What should be avoided is giving the impression that the fable ever had a fixed title. Those that referred to it usually mentioned the salient facts of the story for reader recognition. Sweetpool50 (talk) 13:40, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Deleting "Popular Culture"

Various references have come and gone under this heading. Bearing in mind that this is supposed to be an encyclopaedia entry, it is not sufficient to list just any mention of the fable. It needs to be relevant and of some importance. Mzilikazi1939 (talk) 11:25, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Mirror test

I see that the article doesn't mention this at the moment, despite it seemingly being very relevant. I see that dogs have so far failed the mirror test. In Aesop's time, there had no doubt been no serious studies of this, but I am made to wonder whether Aesop or his contemporaries believed a dog would be able to recognise him/herself in a mirror, either naturally or by learning from an experience like this. When I say "mirror" here I'm referring without distinction to a natural mirror such as a body of water or a manufactured mirror (which apparently existed as early as 6000 BC going by that article).

Of course, you could argue that Aesop anthropomorphised his animals to a degree and, as such, he didn't intend his portrayals of them to be representative of the traits of actual animals. Still, it's interesting to think about the fable in the light of this. I can imagine that people have analysed the fable in the light of the mirror test, and wonder if we can find a good such analysis to write about / link to here. — Smjg (talk) 21:41, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

IMO, the proposal would be WP:OFFTOPIC and WP:OR, unless there is a reliable source that specifically makes the point. In the rare case of The Crow and the Pitcher, a Classical writer specifically commented on the truth of that fable in a work on natural history. To expect that any article plainly on a fable should note its departures from reality seems not very fruitful. Sweetpool50 (talk) 10:00, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

@Sweetpool50: How do you mean it would be off topic? And how would "find a good such analysis" ever constitute OR? There's a big difference between finding an analysis and performing the analysis ourselves. The only situation in which I can see OR being possibly relevant is if the person who wrote the analysis is the person putting it onto WP, which would probably be the exception rather than the rule.

I wasn't claiming that any article about a fable should note its departures from reality. For instance, if it has talking animals which everyone knows don't talk in the real world, this departure from reality would be obvious and therefore not need to be explicitly noted. I was just saying it would be nice in this particular case if we can find an analysis comparing this fable with reality. — Smjg (talk) 18:01, 6 October 2024 (UTC)