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.

Characteristics

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.

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