A
fable is a succinct story, in prose or verse, that features
animals,
plants,
inanimate objects, or
forces of nature which are
anthropomorphized (given
human qualities), and that illustrates a
moral lesson (a "moral"), which may at the end be expressed
explicitly in a pithy
maxim.
A fable differs from a
parable in that the latter
excludes animals, plants, inanimate objects, and forces of nature as actors that assume speech and other powers of humankind.
The descriptive definition of "fable" given above has not always been closely adhered to. In the
King James Version of the
New Testament, "
μύθος" ("
mythos") was rendered by the
translators as "fable" in
First and
Second Timothy, in
Titus and in
First Peter.
Definitions
The word "fable" comes from the
Latin "
fabula" (a "story"), itself derived from "
fari" ("to speak").
In a
pejorative sense, a "fable" may be a deliberately invented or falsified account of an event or circumstance. Similarly, a
non-authorial person who, wittingly or not, tells "
tall tales," may be termed a "
confabulator." In its original sense, however, "fable" denotes a brief, succinct story that is meant to impart a moral lesson.
An author of fables is termed a "
fabulist," and the word "
fabulous," strictly speaking, "pertains to a fable or fables." In recent decades, however, "fabulous" has come frequently to be used in the quite different meaning of "excellent" or "outstanding".
Characteristics
Fables can be described as a
didactic mode of literature. That is, whether a fable has been handed down from generation to generation as
oral literature, or constructed by a literary tale-teller, its purpose is to impart a
lesson or
value, or to give sage
advice. Fables also provide opportunities to
laugh at human
folly, when they supply examples of behaviors to be avoided rather than emulated.
Fables frequently have as their central characters
animals that are given
anthropomorphic characteristics such as the ability to reason and speak. In
antiquity,
Aesop presented a wide range of animals as
protagonists, including
The Tortoise and the Hare which famously engage in a race against each other; and, in another classic fable, a fox which rejects grapes that are out of reach, as probably being sour ("
sour grapes").
Medieval French fabliaux might feature
Reynard the Fox, a
trickster figure, and offer a subtext mildly subversive of the
feudal social order. Similarly, the 18th-century Polish fabulist
Ignacy Krasicki employs
animals as the title actors in his striking verse fable, "
The Lamb and the Wolves." Krasicki uses
plants the same way in "
The Violet and the Grass."
Personification may also be extended to
things inanimate, as in Krasicki's "
Bread and Sword." His "
The Stream and the River," again, offers an example of personified
forces of nature.
Divinities may also appear in fables as active agents.
Aesop's Fables feature most of the Greek
pantheon, including
Zeus and
Hermes.
History
The fable is one of the most enduring forms of
folk literature, spread abroad, modern researchers agree, less by literary anthologies than by oral transmission. Fables can be found in the literature of almost every country.
Several parallel animal fables in
Sumerian and
Akkadian are among those that E. Ebeling introduced to modern Western readers; there are comparable fables from Egypt's
Middle Kingdom, and Hebrew fables such as the "king of trees" in
Book of Judges 9 and "the thistle and the cedar tree" in
II Kings 14:9. Many other familiar ones include “The Crow and the Pitcher,” “The Hare and the Tortoise,” and “The Lion and the Mouse.”
The varying corpus denoted
Aesopica or
Aesop's Fables includes most of the best-known western fables, which are attributed to the
legendary Aesop, supposed to have been a slave in
ancient Greece around
550 BC. When
Babrius set down fables from the
Aesopica in verse for a
Hellenistic Prince "Alexander," he expressly stated at the head of Book II that this type of "myth" that Aesop had introduced to the "sons of the Hellenes" had been an invention of "Syrians" from the time of "
Ninos" (personifying
Nineveh to Greeks) and
Belos ("ruler").
Epicharmus of Kos and Phormis are reported as having been among the first to invent comic fables.
Hundreds of fables were composed in
ancient India during the
first millennium BC, often as
stories within frame stories. These included
Vishnu Sarma's
Panchatantra, the
Hitopadesha,
Vikram and The Vampire, and
Syntipas'
Seven Wise Masters, which were collections of fables that were later influential throughout the
Old World. Ben E. Perry has argued that some of the
Jataka tales and some of the fables in
Panchatantra may have been influenced by similar
Greek and
Near Eastern ones. Earlier
Indian epics such as
Vyasa's Mahabharata and
Valmiki's
Ramayana also contained fables within the main story, often as
side stories or
back-story. The most famous fables from the
Middle East were the
One Thousand and One Nights, also known as the
Arabian Nights.
Fables had a further long tradition through the
Middle Ages, and became part of European literature. During the 17th century, the
French fabulist
Jean de La Fontaine (1621–1695) saw the soul of the fable in the
moral — a rule of behavior. Starting with the Aesopian pattern, La Fontaine set out to satirize the court, the church, the rising
bourgeoisie, indeed the entire human scene of his time. La Fontaine's model was subsequently emulated by
Poland's
Ignacy Krasicki (1735–1801) and
Russia's
Ivan Krylov (1769–1844).
In modern times, the fable has been trivialized in children's books. Yet it has also been fully adapted to modern adult literature. For instance,
James Thurber used the ancient style in his books,
Fables for Our Time and
The Beast in Me and Other Animals.
George Orwell's
Animal Farm satirizes
Stalinist Communism in particular, and
totalitarianism in general, in the guise of animal fable.
Felix Salten's
Bambi is a
Bildungsroman — a story of a
protagonist's coming-of-age — cast in the form of a fable.
Classic fabulists
Modern fabulists
- Italo Calvino (1923 – 85), "If on a winter's night a traveler," etc.
- Ramsay Wood (born 1943), author of Kalila and Dimna: Fables of Friendship and Betrayal.
Notable fables
- Panchatantra by Vishnu Sarma (also known as Kalila and Dimna, Kalilag and Damnag, The Lights of Canopus, Fables of Bidpai, and The Morall Philosophie of Doni)
- Life & Death to the Happies, and Other American Amphigories (2007) by Philip Malachowski
See also
