Fable  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

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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).

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.
• 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 (born 1922).
• Italo Calvino (1923 – 85), "If on a winter's night a traveler," 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.
• Acrid Hermit (born 1962), author of http://www.createspace.com/3340070" Misty Forest Fables. isbn 9781605859309

See also

• Allegory
• Anthropomorphism
• Apologue
• Apologia
• Fairy tale
• Fabulation
• Fantastique
• Ghost story
• Parable
• Proverb