Aesop and Mediterranean Wisdom in China

Processes of Circulation and Transformation

Prof. Dr. Giulia Falato

For centuries, Aesop’s fables have been one of the cornerstones of rhetorical education in Italy and across Europe. Their role in teaching the fundamentals of oratory and argumentation is firmly established by intellectual authorities such as Aristotle (Rhetoric) and Quintilian (Institutio Oratoria). While their prominence in Europe—especially during the Renaissance—is unquestioned, their journey into Eastern pedagogical traditions is far less widely known. Recent scholarship increasingly suggests that Aesopic materials may have reached China well before the Jesuit translations, possibly as early as the sixth century through intercultural exchanges along the Silk Road. While the exact modalities and extent of this early circulation remain under investigation, there is no doubt that the genre later gained new visibility and institutional relevance through missionary mediation, exerting a lasting influence on Chinese literature, translation practices, and educational thought. This study examines a selection of Chinese translations of Aesop’s fables produced by both Western and Chinese authors between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries. These translations serve as case studies to identify the processes of circulation, adaptation, and transformation that Aesopic texts underwent in China. Through an analysis of translation strategies and varying degrees of domestication and reinterpretation, the paper highlights the dual role of these fables: on the one hand, as vehicles for transmitting “Mediterranean wisdom” to the East; on the other, as cultural intermediaries through which Confucian thought and the Chinese political system were, in turn, reinterpreted and presented to Enlightenment Europe.