Brett Hopson

Cautionary Tales Brett Hopson

CAUTIONARY TALES BEGAN IN the middle ages, and were told in folklore, usually to warn people, especially children, of abounding dangers. They often encouraged conformity - stay with the herd, don't stick your neck out, be careful - but not always. They had an ambivalent attitude toward social taboos. Ultimately, they reminded people, in the time of the Plague and many other kinds of gruesome and sudden death, that hazard is everywhere, pain is real, and time passes. All the works collected here speak to modern sensibilities. They are old, and yet thought-provoking today, profound, and interesting, and worth looking at more than once. None of them are dated. They are timeless in that they could have been written yesterday, or perhaps, tomorrow. All are brief - quotes, poems, essays, short stories, or parts of longer works, but complete in their brevity, like surgeons that pass the scalpel to another doctor to close when the job is finished, or mathematical proofs that are over when the proof is made, and not when the calculations are concluded, or chess, where the losing player concedes when the outcome is determined even though many moves are left to be played because everything important has been done.