Thoughts on the Feast of Tongues

Structure of the Fable – repetitive in two parts.
Seems to be a fool – but really ends up using the occasion to engineer a clever rhetorical discourse: Theme – appearance / reality / foolishness – deeper wisdom
So – using the strangeness of the tongues- Aesop – a slave – gains a "voice" in a community where he wouldn't otherwise have the power or right to speak. In this sense, the animal tongues, dead and prepared – afford him a voice.

The communion of the meal – a gathering that isn't as "formal" as a philosophical discourse or a scholarly gathering (like class). The meal symbolizes hospitality / communion / fellowship / the opportunity for Exantus to show his wealth – and thus, Exantus is able to dictate the terms of the feast – first order the "best meat" and then the "worst meat". Yet this gathering turns into a philosophical discourse- where questions of value "what is good" and who gets to evaluate – a slave in this case – comes to the fore. So food, is used, as the site for discussion about abstract values: and indeed, we often evaluate food and build systems of value around food.

Yet what of the animals? In all this speaking, the most prominent symbol – the disembodied tonges that are themselves mute symbols that are interpreted BY Aesop (to his own gain), that cannot speak because they are dead, that cannot be EXPECTED to speak because they are "animal" force their way into the tale. They are the strange centerpiece of a fable that features animal (parts) without giving the animal voice. And in this tale about speech, and how speech is itself slippery and creative, the silent animal tongues appear to be mute witnesses to the cleverness of human speech. In speaking about the tongues, does Aesop speak on behalf of animals? For it is HUMAN nobility and mischief that he speaks about. How can an animal tongue, sold as meat in the market represent the human tongue, which is, in Aesop's own speech so demonstrably different from the mute tongue that IS meat. Indeed, Aesop never "bites his tongue" while presenting these animal tongues for food (the scholars commend or condemn the tongues but do they eat it?) – the occasion to consume meat allows him to transform these animal tongues into metaphors for human tongues.

LOGOS – Aesop's "cleverness" – his "logic" on display.
ETHOS – the "fable" – does it show us a deeper moral truth? Does it refer to something culturally identifiable and significant?
PATHOS – do we find it in how Aesop the slave, becomes the protagonist? Or can we find it in the disembodied tongues of silent animals – does that move us?

Some post lesson thoughts: While most students seemed to understand the main thrust of the fable, very few were willing to venture thoughts about how animal tongues feature in complicated ways in the passage. I had to do some heavy-handed explication given this unwillingness, although my leading questions did, on a few occasions open up the text a little for the kids. It occurred to me that while we often speak about food from a "human" perspective - ie does this taste good etc, or if you're Guy Fieri, "This is money!" - the "Feast of Tongues" suggests how food can become the basis for philosophical speculation, without departing too far from the embodied presence of the dead animal parts in front of you.  Anyway, while I'm not sure what the intellectual impact of all this was, they kids certainly were enthusiastic about the speaking activity.