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Information about Fable

For other uses, see Fable (disambiguation). For a comparison of fable with other kinds of stories, see Myth, legend, fairy tale, and 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 humankind.

Usage has not always been so clearly distinguished. In the King James Version of the Bible, the translators rendered "μύθος" ("mythos") as "fable" in the New Testament,[1] in First and Second Timothy, Titus and First Peter.

Definitions



The word "fable" comes from the Latin "fabula" ("a story"), from "fari" ("to speak").

Used in a pejorative sense, a "fable" may refer to a deliberately invented or falsified account. A non-authorial person who, wittingly or not, tells "tall tales", may be termed a "confabulator". In its more general sense, though, the word "fable" refers simply to a genre of short stories designed to impart a moral lesson.

An author of fables is termed a fabulist, while the word "fabulous" means "pertaining to fables". A character referred to as "fabulous" (such as The Lone Ranger) simply means that he was fictional, in the traditional meaning of the word. In recent decades the word's metaphorical meanings have often been taken as literal. "Fabulous" has acquired a meaning equivalent to "outstanding".

Characteristics

Fables can be described as a didactic mode of literature. That is, whether a fable is handed down from generation to generation as oral literature or constructed by a literary tale-teller, its purpose is to teach a lesson or value, or to give sage advice. Fables also provide opportunities to laugh at human folly, when they provide examples of behavior to avoid rather than to emulate.

Fables frequently have animals as their central characters, and they are often given anthropomorphic characteristics, such as the ability to speak and to reason. For instance, medieval French fabliaux might feature Reynard the fox, a trickster figure, and offer a subtext mildly subversive of the feudal order of society. The ancient Aesop, too, had presented a wide range of animals as the protagonists of his short fables, including his famous tortoise and hare who engage in a race, and the fox who rejects grapes that are out of his reach as being sour. Similarly, the 18th-century Polish fabulist Ignacy Krasicki employs animals as the title actors in his verse fable, "The Lamb and the Wolves." In the same way, he uses plants in "The Violet and the Grass."

Personification may also be extended to things inanimate, as in Krasicki's "Bread and Sword." An example of personified forces of nature may be found in his "The Stream and the River."

Divine beings may also appear in fables as active agents in human life. For instance, Aesop's Fables feature most of the Greek pantheon, including Zeus and Hermes.

History

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. Fables that originated in India were carried into Persia and from there spread into Greece and the Western world from the fourth century BCE. 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 Book of Judges 9 and "the thistle and the cedar tree" in II Kings 14:9.[6] Many other familiar ones include “The Crow and the Pitcher,” “The Hare and the Tortoise,” and “The Lion and the Mouse.”

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. 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.

Epicharmus of Kos and Phormis are reported as having been among the first to invent comic fables.[7]

Fables had a further long tradition through the Middle Ages, and became part of European 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. La Fontaine's model was subsequently emulated by Poland's Ignacy Krasicki (1735-1801) and Russia's Ivan Krylov (1769-1844).

In modern times, the fable has been trivialized in children's books. Yet it has also been fully adapted to modern adult literature. For instance, James Thurber used the ancient style in his books, Fables for Our Time and The Beast in Me and Other Animals. George Orwell's Animal Farm satirizes Stalinist Communism in particular, and totalitarianism in general, in the guise of animal fable. Felix Salten's Bambi is a Bildungsroman — a story of a protagonist's coming-of-age — cast in the form of a fable.

Classic fabulists

Modern fabulists

Notable fables

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. ^ Enzyklopädie des Märchens (1977), see "Fabel", "Äsopica" etc.
3. ^ Burkert 1992:121
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. ^ P.W. Buckham, p. 245

References

  • Buckham, Philip Wentworth [1827]. Theatre of the Greeks. 
  • King James Bible; New Testament (authorised).

See also

External links

A fable is a story intended to illustrate a moral.

Fable may also refer to:
  • Fable (Kelvin Tan single), a single released by Kelvin Tan Weilian in 2005
  • Fable (album), an album by Faye Wong
  • Fable

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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
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Plantae
Haeckel, 1866[1]

Divisions

Green algae
  • Chlorophyta
  • Charophyta
Land plants (embryophytes)
  • Non-vascular land plants (bryophytes)

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Animate means that which lives or moves, as opposed to inanimate, that which doesn't live or move.
It may refer to:
  • Animate, a Japanese retail chain
  • Animation, an optical illusion of motion created by the consecutive display of images of static elements

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Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical universe, material world or material universe. "Nature" refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general.
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moral is a message conveyed or a lesson to be learned from a story or event. The moral may be left to the hearer, reader or viewer to determine for themselves, or may be explicitly encapsulated in a maxim.
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Explicit can mean:
  • very specific, clear, or detailed
  • containing material (e.g. language or film footage) that might be deemed offensive or graphic, e.g. sexually explicit material
  • the final words of a text, which are immediately followed by a colophon

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A saying is something that is said, notable in one respect or another.

Another definition: a saying “is the simple, direct term for any pithy expression of wisdom or truth.
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For a comparison of parable with other kinds of stories, see .
A parable is a brief, succinct story, in prose or verse, that illustrates a moral or religious lesson.
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King James Version

Full name: King James Version
Authorized Version

Abbreviation: KJV or AV

Complete Bible published: 1611

Textual Basis: Textus Receptus, 57% deviation from Nestle-Aland 27th edition (NT)
Translation type: 2% paraphrase rate
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The Bible is
  • Part of
(see The Hebrew Bible below)
  • Part of a series on Christianity
(see The New Testament below)


Bible
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Translator has different meanings in the English language:
  • A person who performs translation of phrases and ideas into different languages (for example Russian translation)

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New Testament (Greek: Καινή Διαθήκη, Kainē Diathēkē) is the name given to the final portion of the Christian Bible, written after the Old Testament.
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The First Epistle to Timothy is one of the three Pastoral Epistles, traditionally attributed to Saint Paul and part of the New Testament of the Bible. It consists mainly of counsels to Saint Timothy regarding the forms of worship and organization of the Church, and the
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The Second Epistle to Timothy is one of the three Pastoral Epistles, traditionally attributed to Saint Paul, and is part of the canonical New Testament.

Authorship and Date


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Titus
Emperor of the Roman Empire

Colossal head of Titus (Glyptothek)
Reign 24 June, 79 –
13 September, 81
Full name Titus Flavius Vespasianus
Caesar Augustus
Born 30 November 39
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The First Epistle of Peter is a book of the New Testament. It has traditionally been held to have been written by Saint Peter the apostle during his time as bishop of Rome. The letter is addressed to various churches in Asia Minor suffering religious persecution.
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Latin}}} 
Official status
Official language of: Vatican City
Used for official purposes, but not spoken in everyday speech
Regulated by: Opus Fundatum Latinitas
Roman Catholic Church
Language codes
ISO 639-1: la
ISO 639-2: lat
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A word is a term of derision, or a phrase is pejorative, if it implies contempt or disapproval. The adjective pejorative is synonymous with derogatory, derisive, and dyslogistic.
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A liar is one who tells lies.

The name Liar may refer to:
  • Liar (band), a metalcore band from Belgium
  • Liar (Harisu album), a 2002 album by South Korean entertainer Harisu
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For folklore, see tall tale.


Tall Tale, also known as Tall Tale: The Unbelievable Adventures of Pecos Bill is a 1995 family Western movie starring Patrick Swayze, Nick Stahl, Oliver Platt, Roger Aaron Brown, Scott Glenn,
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Confabulation is the confusion of imagination with memory, and/or the confusion of true memories with false memories.

Berlyne (1972) defined confabulation as “…a falsification of memory occurring in clear consciousness in association with an organically derived
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The Lone Ranger was an American, long-running, early radio and television show created by George W. Trendle (with considerable input from station staff members), and developed by writer Fran Striker.
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Oral literature corresponds in the sphere of the spoken (oral) word to literature as literature operates in the domain of the written word. It thus forms a generally more fundamental component of culture, but operates in many ways as one might expect literature to do.
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lesson is a structured period of time where learning is intended to occur. It involves one or more students (also called pupils or learners in some circumstances) being taught by a teacher or instructor.
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Value is a concept that describes the beliefs of an individual or culture. A set of values may be placed into the notion of a value system. Values are considered subjective and vary across people and cultures.
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Advice may refer to:
  • Advice (opinion), an opinion or recommendation offered as a guide to action, conduct.
  • Advice (constitutional), in constitutional law, a frequently binding instruction issued to a constitutional office-holder

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