The Oxford Companion to English Literature, 6Th Edition
F Faòer ffoo^r of Modem Verse, The, an anthology FABIUS (Quintus Fabius Maximus) (d. 203 BC), nick published in 1936, edited by M. *Roberts, which did named Cunctator (the man who delays taking action), much to influence taste and establish the reputations of was appointed dictator after Hannibal's crushing a rising generation of poets, including *Auden, *Mac- victory at Trasimene (217 BC). He carried on a defensive Neice, *Empson, *Graves, Dylan Thomas. In his campaign, avoiding direct engagements and harassing introduction, Roberts traces the influences of *Clough, the enemy. Hence the expression 'Fabian tactics' and G. M. *Hopkins (himself well represented), the French the name of the *Fabian Society (1884), dedicated to ^symbolists, etc. on modern poetry, defines the 'Euro the gradual introduction of socialism. pean' sensibility of such writers as T. S. *Eliot, *Pound, and * Yeats, and offers a persuasive apologia for various fable, a term most commonly used in the sense of a aspects of *Modernism which the reading public had short story devised to convey some useful moral resisted, identifying them as an apparent obscurity lesson, but often carrying with it associations of the compounded of condensed metaphor, allusion, intri marvellous or the mythical, and frequently employing cacy and difficulty of ideas, and verbal play. The poet, animals as characters. * Aesop's fables and the *'Rey- he declared, 'must charge each word to its maximum nard the Fox' series were well known and imitated in poetic value': 'primarily poetry is an exploration of the Britain by *Chaucer, *Henryson, and others, and *La possibilities of language.' Fontaine, the greatest of modern fable writers, was imitated by *Gay.
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