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Fable

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For other uses, see Fable (disambiguation). For a comparison of fable with other kinds of stories, see Traditional stories.
File:Cat guarding geese c1120 BC Egypt.jpg

Anthropomorphic cat guarding geese, Egypt, c. 1120 BCE

File:Diego Velasquez, Aesop.jpg

Aesop, by Velasquez

File:Jean-de-la-fontaine.jpg

Jean de La Fontaine

File:BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE.png

Bernard de Mandeville

John Gay - Project Gutenberg eText 13790

John Gay

File:Lessing in blue.jpg

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

File:Ignacy Krasicki.JPG

Ignacy Krasicki

File:DositejObradović.jpg

Dositej Obradović

File:Samaniego.jpg

Félix María de Samaniego

File:Tomas de Iriarte Joaquin Inza.jpg

Tomás de Iriarte y Oropesa

File:Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian.jpg

Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian

File:Ivan Krylov.jpg

Ivan Krylov

File:Abierce 1866.jpg

Ambrose Bierce

File:Wladyslaw Reymont.jpg

Władysław Reymont

File:Felix Salten 1910.jpg

Felix Salten

File:James Thurber NYWTS.jpg

James Thurber

File:GeoreOrwell.jpg

George Orwell

A fable is a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, mythical creatures, 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.

Usage has not always been so clearly distinguished. In the King James Version of the New Testament, "μύθος" ("mythos") was rendered by the translators as "fable"[1] in First and Second Timothy, in Titus and in First Peter.[2]

Definitions[]

The word "fable" comes from the Latin "fabula" (a "story"), itself derived from "fari" ("to speak") with the -ula suffix that signifies "little": hence, a "little story".

Though in its original sense "fable" denotes a brief, succinct story that is meant to impart a moral lesson, 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".

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".

History[]

The fable is one of the most enduring forms of folk literature, spread abroad, modern researchers agree,[3] 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 Erich Ebeling introduced to modern Western readers;[4] there are comparable fables from Egypt's Middle Kingdom,[5] and Hebrew fables such as the "king of trees" in Book of Judges 9:8-15 and "the thistle and the cedar tree" in II Kings 14:9.[6]

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 BCE. 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").[7] Epicharmus of Kos and Phormis are reported as having been among the first to invent comic fables.[8] Many familiar fables of Aesop include "The Crow and the Pitcher", "The Tortoise and the Hare" and "The Lion and the Mouse". In ancient Greek and Roman education, the fable was the first of the progymnasmata--training exercises in prose composition and public speaking—wherein students would be asked to learn fables, expand upon them, invent their own, and finally use them as persuasive examples in longer forensic or deliberative speeches. The need of instructors to teach, and students to learn, a wide range of fables as material for their declamations resulted in their being gathered together in collections, like those of Aesop.

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 (compiler of the "Perry Index" of Aesop's fables)has argued controversially that some of the Buddhist Jataka tales and some of the fables in the Panchatantra may have been influenced by similar Greek and Near Eastern ones.[9] 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 high 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.[10] La Fontaine's model was subsequently emulated by England's John Gay (1685–1732);[11] Poland's Ignacy Krasicki (1735–1801);[12] Italy's Lorenzo Pignotti (1739–1812)[13] and Giovanni Gherardo de Rossi (1754–1827);[14] Serbia's Dositej Obradović (1742–1811); Spain's Félix María de Samaniego (1745–1801)[15] and Tomás de Iriarte y Oropesa (1750–1791);[16] France's Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian (1755–94);[17] and Russia's Ivan Krylov (1769–1844).[18]

In modern times, while the fable has been trivialized in children's books, it has also been fully adapted to modern adult literature. Felix Salten's Bambi (1923) is a Bildungsroman — a story of a protagonist's coming-of-age — cast in the form of a fable. James Thurber used the ancient fable style in his books, Fables for Our Time (1940) and The Beast in Me and Other Animals (1948). Władysław Reymont's The Revolt (1924), a metaphor for the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, described a revolt by animals that take over their farm in order to introduce "equality." George Orwell's Animal Farm (1945) similarly satirized Stalinist Communism in particular, and totalitarianism in general, in the guise of animal fable.

Classic fabulists[]

  • Aesop (mid-6th century BCE), author of Aesop's Fables.
  • Vishnu Sarma (ca. 200 BCE), author of the anthropomorphic political treatise and fable collection, the Panchatantra.
  • Bidpai (ca. 200 BCE), author of Sanskrit (Hindu) and Pali (Buddhist) animal fables in verse and prose, somethimes derived from Jataka tales.
  • Syntipas (ca. 100 BCE), Indian philosopher, reputed author of a collection of tales known in Europe as The Story of the Seven Wise Masters.
  • Gaius Julius Hyginus (Hyginus, Latin author, native of Spain or Alexandria, ca. 64 BCE - 17 CE), author of Fabulae.
  • Phaedrus (15 BCE – 50 CE), Roman fabulist, by birth a Macedonian.
  • Walter of England c.1175
  • Marie de France (12th century).
  • Vardan Aygektsi (died 1250), Armenian priest and Fabulist
  • Berechiah ha-Nakdan (Berechiah the Punctuator, or Grammarian, 13th century), author of Jewish fables adapted from Aesop's Fables.
  • Robert Henryson (Scottish, 15th century), author of The Morall Fabillis of Esope the Phrygian.
  • Leonardo da Vinci (Italian, 1452–1519).
  • Biernat of Lublin (Polish, 1465? – after 1529).
  • Jean de La Fontaine (French, 1621 – 95).
  • Bernard de Mandeville (English, 1670–1733), author of The Fable of the Bees.
  • John Gay (English, 1685–1732).
  • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (German, 1729–81).
  • Ignacy Krasicki (Polish, 1735 – 1801), author of Fables and Parables (1779) and New Fables (published 1802).
  • Dositej Obradović (Serbian, 1742–1811).
  • Félix María de Samaniego (Spanish, 1745–1801), best known for "The Ant and the Cicade."
  • Tomás de Iriarte (Spanish, 1750 – 91).
  • Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian, (French, 1755 – 94), author of Fables (published 1802).
  • Ivan Krylov (Russian, 1769–1844).
  • Hans Christian Andersen (Danish, 1805–75).

Modern fabulists[]

  • Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910).
  • Nico Maniquis (1834–1912).
  • Ambrose Bierce (1842 – ?1914).
  • Sholem Aleichem (1859–1916).
  • George Ade (1866–1944), Fables in Slang, etc.
  • Władysław Reymont (1868–1925).
  • Felix Salten (1869–1945).
  • Don Marquis (1878–1937), author of the fables of archy and mehitabel.
  • Franz Kafka (1883–1924).
  • Damon Runyon (1884–1946).
  • James Thurber (1894–1961), Fables For Our Time.
  • George Orwell (1903 – 50).
  • Dr. Seuss (1904 – 91).
  • Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904 – 91).
  • José Saramago (1922–2010).
  • Randall Kenan (born 1963).
  • Italo Calvino (1923 – 85), Cosmicomics etc.
  • Arnold Lobel (1933 – 87), author of Fables, winner 1981 Caldecott Medal.
  • Ramsay Wood (born 1943), author of Kalila and Dimna: Fables of Friendship and Betrayal.
  • Bill Willingham (born 1956), author of Fables graphic novels.
  • Rafael Pombo 1833 - 1912 Colombian fabulist, poet and writer.

Notable fables[]

  • The Jataka Tales
    • Henny Penny
  • Aesop's Fables by Aesop
    • The Boy Who Cried Wolf
    • The Cock and the Jewel
    • The Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs
  • Panchatantra by Vishnu Sarma
  • Baital Pachisi (also known as Vikram and The Vampire)
  • Hitopadesha
  • Seven Wise Masters by Syntipas
  • One Thousand and One Nights (also known as Arabian Nights, ca. 800–900)
  • The Fable of the Bees (1714) by Bernard de Mandeville
  • Fables and Parables (1779) by Ignacy Krasicki
  • The Emperor's New Clothes (1837) by Hans Christian Andersen
  • Bunt (Revolt, 1922) by Władysław Reymont
  • Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated (1940) by James Thurber
  • Animal Farm (1945) by George Orwell
  • 99 Fables (1960) by William March
  • Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1970)
  • The Thief of Always (1992) by Clive Barker
  • The Princess and the Tin Box by James Thurber

See also[]

References[]

Notes[]

  1. ↑ For example, in First Timothy, "neither give heed to fables...", and "refuse profane and old wives' fables..." (1 Tim 1:4 and 4:4, respectively).
  2. ↑ Strong's 3454. μύθος muthos moo’-thos; perhaps from the same as 3453 (through the idea of tuition); a tale, i.e. fiction ("myth"):—fable.
    "For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty." (2nd Peter 1:16)
  3. ↑ Enzyklopädie des Märchens (1977), see "Fabel", "Äsopica" etc.
  4. ↑ Ebeling, Die Babylonishe Fabel und ihre Bedeutung für die Literaturgeschichte (1931).
  5. ↑ E. Brunner-Traut, Altägyptische Tiergeschichte und Fabel (1970)
  6. ↑ Both noted by Walter Burkert, The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Early Archaic Greek Culture (1992), p 121 note 4.
  7. ↑ Burkert 1992:121
  8. ↑ P. W. Buckham, p. 245
  9. ↑ Ben E. Perry, "Introduction", p. xix, in Babrius and Phaedrus (1965)
  10. ↑ Translations of his 12 books of fables are available online at oaks.nvg.org
  11. ↑ His two collections of 1727 and 1738 are available in one volume on Google Books at books.google.co.uk
  12. ↑ His Bajki przypowiesci (Fables & Parables, 1779) are available online at ug.edu.pl
  13. ↑ His Favole e Novelle (1785) is available on Google Books
  14. ↑ His Favole (1788) is available on Google Books
  15. ↑ 9 books of fables are available online in Spanish at amediavoz.com
  16. ↑ His Fabulas Literarias are available on Google Books
  17. ↑ His five books of fables are available online in French at shanaweb.net
  18. ↑ 5 books of fables are available online in Russian at friends-partners.org

External links[]

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