The Fox and the Grapes

The Fox and the Grapes is one of the Aesop's fables, numbered 15 in the Perry Index. The narration is concise and subsequent retellings have often been equally succinct. The story concerns a fox that tries to eat grapes from a vine but cannot reach them. Rather than admit defeat, he states they are undesirable. The expression "sour grapes" originated from this fable.

The fable of The Fox and the Grapes is one of the few which feature only a single animal protagonist. There are several Greek versions as well as one in Latin by Phaedrus (IV.3) which is terse and to the point:

In her version of La Fontaine's Fables, Marianne Moore underlines his ironical comment on the situation in a final pun, "Better, I think, than an embittered whine".

Although the fable describes purely subjective behaviour, the English idiom "sour grapes" which develops from the story is now often used also of envious disparagement to others. Similar expressions exist in other languages, but in the Scandinavian equivalent the fox makes its comment about rowanberries since grapes are not common in northern latitudes.

The French fable of La Fontaine (III.11) is almost as concise and pointed as the early versions of Babrius and Phaedrus and certainly contributed to the story's popularity. A century after its publication, this was the tale with which the sculptor Pierre Julien chose to associate its creator in his statue of La Fontaine (commissioned in 1782), now in the Louvre. The poet is represented in a famous episode of his life, when he was seen one morning by the Duchess of Bouillon seated against a tree trunk meditating. When she passed the same spot that evening he was still there in exactly the same position. Julien has portrayed him in an ample cloak, with a gnarled tree on which a vine with grapes is climbing. On his knee is the manuscript of the poem; at his feet, a fox is seated on his hat with its paw on a leather-bound volume, looking up at him.

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