It’s often forgotten that being memorized is the best way to be remembered. For centuries, British schoolchildren had to learn to recite the first 20 lines of Geoffrey Chaucer’s general prologue from the “Canterbury Tales.” Then that got thrown out. Now, Chaucer has, for most people, joined that long list of vague names inhabiting a…

In “Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama,” the hefty volume once used by my Advanced Placement English Literature classes, X.J. Kennedy opens with a discussion of the fable. Naturally, he mentions that most famous practitioner of this genre, Aesop (circa 620–560 B.C.) Little is known of the life of Aesop other than he…