A fable is a brief, 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"<1> in First and Second Timothy, in Titus and in First Peter.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" (which, to be sure,
some fables may be).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.The fable is one of the most enduring forms of folk literature, spread abroad, modern researchers agree,<2>
less by literary anthologies than by oral transmission. Fables can be
found in the literature of almost every country. 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 Greek slave of the 6th century 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").<3>
Several parallel animal fables in Sumerian and Akkadian are among those that E. 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 Boo