Fable

For other uses, see Fable (disambiguation). For a comparison of fable with other kinds of stories, see Traditional story.
Anthropomorphic cat guarding geese, Egypt, c. 1120 BCE
Aesop, by Velázquez
Jean de La Fontaine
Bernard de Mandeville
John Gay
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Ignacy Krasicki
Dositej Obradović
Félix María de Samaniego
Tomás de Iriarte y Oropesa
Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian
Ivan Krylov
Ambrose Bierce
Władysław Reymont
Felix Salten
James Thurber
George Orwell

Fable is a literary genre. 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 such as verbal communication), and that illustrates or leads to an interpretation of a moral lesson (a "moral"), which may at the end be added 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]

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.

Ante-Aesopic fable

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 most recent study on the ante-Aesopic fables or the fables in ancient Near Eastern languages by Akimoto discovers the rich fable traditions in ancient Mesopotamia and Anatolia; for example, the Ninurta-uballitsu Assyrian fable collection which is the oldest known fable collection with the compiler's autograph and the completion date 883 BCE, the Hurrian-Hittite bilingual fable collections are embedded in a long myth and the storyteller tells after each fable his/her own moral.[7]

Aesopic or Aesop's fable

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").[8]Epicharmus of Kos and Phormis are reported as having been among the first to invent comic fables.[9] 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.

Africa

African oral culture[10] has a rich story-telling tradition. As they have for thousands of years, people of all ages in Africa continue to interact with nature, including plants, breathtaking animals and earthly structures such as rivers, plains and mountains. Grandparents enjoy enormous respect in African societies and fill the new role of story-telling during retirement years. Children and, to some extent, adults are mesmerized by good story-tellers when they become animated in their quest to tell a good fable.

India

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.[11] 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.

Europe

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.[12] La Fontaine's model was subsequently emulated by England's John Gay (1685–1732);[13] Poland's Ignacy Krasicki (1735–1801);[14] Italy's Lorenzo Pignotti (1739–1812)[15][verification needed] and Giovanni Gherardo de Rossi (1754–1827);[16][verification needed] Serbia's Dositej Obradović (1742–1811); Spain's Félix María de Samaniego (1745–1801)[17] and Tomás de Iriarte y Oropesa (1750–1791);[18][verification needed] France's Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian (1755–94);[19] and Russia's Ivan Krylov (1769–1844).[20]

Modern era

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 Further Fables for Our Time (1956), and in his stories "The Princess and the Tin Box" in The Beast in Me and Other Animals (1948) and "The Last Clock: A Fable for the Time, Such As It Is, of Man" in Lanterns and Lances (1961). Władysław Reymont's The Revolt (1922), 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

Modern fabulists

Notable fables

See also

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. ^ Kazya Akimoto, Ante-Aesopica: Fable Traditions of Ancient Near East (Vanderbilt University 2010: ProQuest)
  8. ^ Burkert 1992:121
  9. ^ P. W. Buckham, p. 245
  10. ^ Atim Oton (October 25, 2011). "Reaching African Children Through Fables and Animation". Huffingtonpost.com. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/atim-oton/arits-fables-kids-series_b_1001656.html. Retrieved May 8, 2012. 
  11. ^ Ben E. Perry, "Introduction", p. xix, in Babrius and Phaedrus (1965)
  12. ^ Translations of his 12 books of fables are available online at oaks.nvg.org
  13. ^ His two collections of 1727 and 1738 are available in one volume on Google Books at books.google.co.uk
  14. ^ His Bajki przypowiesci (Fables & Parables, 1779) are available online at ug.edu.pl
  15. ^ "His ''Favole e Novelle'' (1785) is available on Google Books". Books.google.co.uk. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6CSQZlaZjE0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=pignotti+++favola&source=bl&ots=n8Mlm8LQld&sig=ubnkrD47WARSbDJKUXgNCj7_Vgo&hl=en&ei=8DhNTP-rOt3NjAeEtLDYDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBUQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false. Retrieved May 8, 2012. 
  16. ^ "His ''Favole'' (1788) is available on Google Books". Books.google.co.uk. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=rKoTAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=pignotti+++favola&source=gbs_similarbooks_s&cad=1#v=onepage&q&f=false. Retrieved May 8, 2012. 
  17. ^ 9 books of fables are available online in Spanish at amediavoz.com
  18. ^ "His ''Fabulas Literarias'' are available on Google Books". Books.google.co.uk. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Zr0DAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Tom%C3%A1s+de+Iriarte+y+Oropesa+fabulas&source=bl&ots=WbHNxf22GV&sig=zrfOpn4x0K8bAykQBwrXmq_zHfQ&hl=en&ei=mElNTMGZO5mW4gbNyLCaDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CCUQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false. Retrieved May 8, 2012. 
  19. ^ His five books of fables are available online in French at shanaweb.net
  20. ^ 5 books of fables are available online in Russian at friends-partners.org

References

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