A brief verse or prose narrative or description, whose characters may be animals (“The Cicada and the Ant”) or inanimate objects (“The Iron Pot and the Clay Pot”) acting like humans; or, less frequently, personified abstractions (“Love and Madness”) or human types, whether literal (“The Old Man and the Three Young Men”) or metaphorical (“The Danube Peasant”). The narrative or description may be preceded, followed, or interrupted by a separate, relatively abstract statement of the f.’s theme or thesis.
I. HISTORY
Despite suggestions that the Panchatantra (transcribed ca. 3d c. A.D.) is the fountainhead of the European f., the genre probably arose spontaneously in Greece with Hesiod’s poem of the hawk and the nightingale (8th c. B.C. ), followed by Archilochus’ fragments on the fox and the eagle (7th c. B.C. ). The first collection of Gr. fs. is attributed to Æsop (6th c. B.C. ) and is known to us through Maximus Planudes’ 14th-c. ed. of a prose text transcribed by Demetrius of Phalerum (4th c. B.C. ). Phaedrus and Bab rius were the first to cast the f. into verse; their works attained such popularity that fs. became part of the regular school exercises.
Phaedrus (1st c. A.D.), the first fabulist we may reckon a poet, imitated Æsop in Lat. iambic senarii, but also invented many new fs., recounted contemp. anecdotes, and introduced political allusions. Babrius, writing in Gr. (2d c. A.D.), went further by inventing racy epithets and picturesque expressions while enlarging the formula of the genre in the direction of satire and the bucolic; his Muthiamboi aisopeioi , originally in 10 books, is in choliambics, the meter of the lampoon. A famous collection by Nicostratus, also of the 2d c., is now lost. Avianus (4th c. A.D. ) paraphrased and expanded Babrian models, which he enriched with Virgilian and Ovidian phraseology for mock-heroic effect. Romulus , a 10th-c. prose tr. of Phaedrus and Babrius, was later versified and enjoyed celebrity into the 17th c. But the best medieval fabulist was Marie de France, who composed 102 octosyllabic fs. (ca. 1200), combining Gr. and Lat. themes with insight into feudal society, fresh observation of man and nature, and Gallic irony. The Ysopets (13th and 14th c.) were Fr. verse trs. of older Lat. fs.
The European beast epic (q.v.), in particular the Roman de Renart , owes much to many fs. as told in antiquity and in their Med. Lat. forms (notably Babrius and Avianus), and to Marie. It in turn influenced many fs., esp. those in the Ysopets and in Robert Henryson’s late 15th-c. Moral Fabillis of Esope—an innovative version in lowland Scots English. Beast epic differs from f. not only in magnitude and in its exclusively animal cast of characters but also in its single, mock-heroic modality. Bestiary (q.v.) differs from f. in its emphasis on the symbolic and allegorical meanings of the features or traits attributed to its subjects, animals both legendary and real.
The Fs. choisies et mises en vers of Jean de La Fontaine (1621–95) are both summative and innovative. In the first two collections (1668), the Fr. poet adapted subjects and techniques from trs. of Phaedrus, Babrius, and Avianus, incl. Gilles Corrozet’s Fs. du très ancien esope phrygien (1542), which anticipated La Fontaine’s use, in the same poem, of vers mêlés (q.v.). The second collection and subsequent additions (1678–79; 1693) contained materials from Indie sources, incl. Le Livre des lumières , a 1644 tr. of fs. based on an 8th-c. Ar. version of the Panchatantra . Two features distinguish La Fontaine’s Fs . from their predecessors: first, they make thematically significant use of pastiche and parody across a wide spectrum of modes and genres; and second, they are systematically philosophical, setting forth, extending, and revising an epicureanism derived from Lucretius and Gassendi.
La Fontaine was widely imitated during the 17th and 18th cs.: in France, by Eustache le Noble (1643–1711) and J.-P.-C. de Florian (1754–94); in England, by John Gay (1685–1732); in Spain, by Tomás de Iriarte (1750–91); and in Germany, by C. F. Gellert (1715–69). G. E. Lessing (1729–81) modeled his fs. on Æsop.
In the first two decades of the 19th c., the Rus. Ivan Adreyevich Krylov (1769–1844) won wide acclaim for his trs. of La Fontaine and his original fs., still read for their satire and realism of matter and lang. The verse f. trad, was carried on in America by Joel Chandler Harris, who drew on Afro-Am, trads. in his Uncle Remus collections (1881–1906).
II. TYPES
All fs. are didactic in purpose but may be subdivided by technique into three categories, the assertional, the dialectical, and the problematic. Assertional fs. plainly and directly expound simple ideas through a harmonious union of precept and example. The Esopic trad.—ancient and modern—is in the main assertional. Certain versions of the Panchatantra and other Indian collections are dialectical. They present assertional fs. in a sequence where each is clarified, nuanced, or even corrected by those that follow. Problematic fs. feature moral dilemmas or enigmatic presentation. Among the devices used to “problematize” a are omission of the thesis statement, unreliable or playful narration, subtle allusion to other literary works, verbal ambiguity, abstruse metaphors, and symbolism. Many fs. by La Fontaine, Bierce, and Thurber are because of one or more of these devices problematic.
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