| 翻訳と辞書 |
| Washing the Ethiopian white ： ウィキペディア英語版 |
Washing the Ethiopian white
Washing the Ethiopian (or at some periods the Blackamoor) White is one of Aesop's Fables and is numbered 393 in the Perry Index. The fable is only found in Greek sources and the impossibility of such an attempt became proverbial at an early date. It was given greater currency in Europe during the Renaissance by being included in Emblem books and then entered popular culture. There it was often used to reinforce outright racist attitudes.
==The fable and its meaning==
The story concerns the owner of a black slave who imagines that he has been neglected by his former master and tries to wash off the blackness. Some versions mention that this goes on so long that the poor man is made ill or even dies of a cold. In early times, the Greek word Άιθιοψ (Aithiops) was used of anyone of black colour; in one version it is mentioned that the man (who there is washing himself in a river) is from India.
The usual meaning given the fable is that a person's basic nature cannot be changed or, as Thomas Bewick has it in his tale of "The Blackamoor", ‘What’s bred in the bone will never come out of the flesh’. He goes on to comment that 'when men aspire to eminence in any of the various arts or sciences, without being gifted with the innate powers or abilities for such attainments, it is only like attempting to wash the Blackamoor white.'〔''Memorial edition of Thomas Bewick's works'', London 1885 (Vol.IV, pp223-4 )〕
In the 18th and 19th centuries, the fable was used to underline the perception of the black man's 'natural' inferiority, both moral and social. So, while Bewick's generalising conclusion seems innocent enough, its uglier subtext becomes apparent when referred back to the allusion to the fable in ''The Pilgrim's Progress'' (1678). There the travellers come across the characters Fool and Want-Wit 'washing of an Ethiopian with intention to make him white, but the more they washed him the blacker he was. They then asked the Shepherds what that should mean. So they told them, saying, Thus shall it be with the vile person. All means used to get such an one a good name shall in conclusion tend but to make him more abominable.'
抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
■ウィキペディアで「Washing the Ethiopian white」の詳細全文を読む
スポンサード リンク
| 翻訳と辞書 : 翻訳のためのインターネットリソース |
Copyright(C) kotoba.ne.jp 1997-2016. All Rights Reserved.
|
|