Country Mouse And The City Mouse Views

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The Country Mouse and the City Mouse Adventures is an animated TV series that aired on HBO from March 1, 1998[1] to early 2001. The show follows the adventures of two mice, Emily and her cousin Alexander, who go on adventures around the world in the early 20th century, usually to stop the evil rat No-Tail No-Goodnik.

In the original tale, a proud town mouse visits a friend (or relation) in the country. The country mouse offers the city mouse a meal of simple country foods, at which the visitor scoffs and invites the country mouse back to the city for a taste of the fine life . But their rich city meal is interrupted by a couple of dogs which force the mice to abandon their feast and scurry to safety. After this, the country mouse decides to return home, preferring security to plenty or, as the 13th-century preacher Odo of Cheriton phrased it, I'd rather gnaw a bean than be gnawed by continual fear .[2]

Henryson attributes the story to Esope, myne author where Sir Thomas Wyatt makes it a song sung by My mothers maydes when they did sowe and spynne in the second of his satires.[7] This is more in accord with Horace's description of it as 'an old wives' tale' but Wyatt's retelling otherwise echoes Henryson's: an impoverished country mouse visits her sister in town but is caught by the cat. In the second half of the poem (lines 70–112) Wyatt addresses his interlocutor John Poynz on the vanity of human wishes. Horace, on the other hand, had discussed his own theme at great length before closing on the story.

Adaptations dating from Britain's 'Augustan Age' concentrate upon the Horatian version of the fable. The reference is direct in The hind and the panther transvers'd to the story of the country-mouse and the city mouse, written by Charles Montagu, 1st Earl of Halifax and Matthew Prior in 1687.[9] This was a satire directed against a piece of pro-Stuart propaganda and portrays the poet John Dryden (under the name of Bayes) proposing to elevate Horace's 'dry naked History' into a religious allegory (page 4ff).