Fable
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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 mankind.
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.
- 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 C.E.), author of Fabulae.
- Phaedrus (15 BCE – 50 CE), Roman fabulist, by birth a Macedonian.
- Walter of England c.1175
- Marie de France (12th century).
- 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).
- John Gay (English) (1685 – 1732)
- Ignacy Krasicki (Polish, 1735 – 1801).
- 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).
- Ivan Krylov (Russian, 1769 – 1844).
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