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fable

 
('bəl) pronunciation
n.
  1. A usually short narrative making an edifying or cautionary point and often employing as characters animals that speak and act like humans.
  2. A story about legendary persons and exploits.
  3. A falsehood; a lie.

v., -bled, -bling, -bles.

v.tr.
To recount as if true.

v.intr. Archaic
To compose fables.

[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin fābula, from fārī, to speak.]

fabler fa'bler n.

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Narration intended to enforce a useful truth, especially one in which animals or inanimate objects speak and act like human beings. Unlike a folktale, it has a moral that is woven into the story and often explicitly formulated at the end. The Western fable tradition began with tales ascribed to Aesop. It flourished in the Middle Ages, reached a high point in 17th-century France in the works of Jean de La Fontaine, and found a new audience in the 19th century with the rise of children's literature. Fables also have ancient roots in the literary and religious traditions of India, China, and Japan.

For more information on fable, visit Britannica.com.

Roget's Thesaurus:

fable

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noun

  1. A narrative not based on fact: fiction, story. See real/imaginary.
  2. An entertaining and often oral account of a real or fictitious occurrence: anecdote, story, tale. Informal tall tale, yarn. See words.
  3. A traditional story or tale that has no proven factual basis: legend, myth. See belief/unbelief, real/imaginary, religion.


n

Definition: fantasy, story
Antonyms: truth

fable, a brief tale in verse or prose that conveys a moral lesson, usually by giving human speech and manners to animals and inanimate things (see beast fable). Fables often conclude with a moral, delivered in the form of an epigram. A very old form of story related to folklore and proverbs, the fable in Europe descends from tales attributed to Aesop, a Greek slave in the 6th century BCE: his fable of the fox and the grapes has given us the phrase ‘sour grapes’. An Indian collection, the Bidpai, dates back to about 300 CE. The French fabulist La Fontaine revived the form in the 17th century with his witty verse adaptations of Greek fables. More recent examples are Kipling's Just So Stories (1902), Thurber's Fables of Our Time (1940), and Orwell's Animal Farm (1945).

adjectives: fabular, fabulous.

See also allegory, exemplum.

Short comic tales making a moral point about human nature, usually through animal characters behaving in human ways. The great majority are first recorded in Ancient Greece or India; they became very popular in medieval Europe in both oral and literary versions, especially those about the trickster Reynard the Fox. By now, many are regarded as traditional English tales, their foreign origins forgotten.

fable, in literature, an anecdote with a moral in which the characters are animals behaving as humans. The fable was a popular literary genre in Greece, as in other countries, at all times. Quintilian observes that it appeals particularly to the simple and uneducated. It is not found in Homer, but occurs in Hesiod (see WORKS AND DAYS) and Archilochus. By the end of the fifth century BC Greek fables were generally attributed to Aesop; they were probably written in prose. A collection of ‘Tales of Aesop’ was made by Demetrius of Phalerum. The earliest surviving collection of fables is that of Babrius, probably of the second century AD, written in choliambic verse (see METRE, GREEK 5 (iii)). It enjoyed wide popularity.

Latin authors frequently refer to fables which we know from Aesop. The earliest Latin collection was that of Phaedrus, of the first century AD, written in iambic verse (see METRE, GREEK 5).

fable, brief allegorical narrative, in verse or prose, illustrating a moral thesis or satirizing human beings. The characters of a fable are usually animals who talk and act like people while retaining their animal traits. The oldest known fables are those in the Panchatantra, a collection of fables in Sanskrit, and those attributed to the Greek Aesop, perhaps the most famous of all fabulists. Other important writers of fables include Jean de La Fontaine, whose fables are noted for their sophistication and wit, the Russian poet Ivan Krylov, and the German dramatist and critic Gotthold Lessing, who also wrote a critical essay on the fable. In England the tradition of the fable was continued in the 17th and 18th cent. by John Dryden and John Gay. The use of the fable in the 20th cent. can be seen in James Thurber's Fables for Our Time (1940) and in George Orwell's political allegory, Animal Farm (1945). The American poet Marianne Moore wrote poems quite similar to fables in their use of animals and animal traits to comment on human experience; she also published an excellent translation of The Fables of La Fontaine (1954).

Bibliography

See H. J. Blackham, The Fable as Literature (1985) and bibliography comp. by P. Carnes (1985).


Poetry Glossary:

Fable

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A poetic story that illustrates a moral or teaches a lesson, usually in which animals or inanimate objects are represented as characters.

Word Tutor:

fable

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pronunciation

IN BRIEF: A very short story, usually dealing with animals, that teaches a lesson.

pronunciation The old fable of the hare and the tortoise is just as good now, and just as true, as when it was first written. — C.A. Stoddard.

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Random House Word Menu:

categories related to 'fable'

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Random House Word Menu by Stephen Glazier
For a list of words related to fable, see:

  See crossword solutions for the clue Fable.
Anthropomorphic cat guarding geese, Egypt, c. 1120 BCE

A fable is a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, mythical creatures, 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 New Testament, "μύθος" ("mythos") was rendered by the translators as "fable"[1] in First and Second Timothy, in Titus and in First Peter.[2]

Contents

Definitions

The word "fable" comes from the Latin "fabula" (a "story"), itself derived from "fari" ("to speak") with the -ula suffix that signifies "little": hence, a "little story".

Though in its original sense "fable" denotes a brief, succinct story that is meant to impart a moral lesson, in a pejorative sense, a "fable" may be a deliberately invented or falsified account of an event or circumstance. Similarly, a non-authorial person who, wittingly or not, tells "tall tales," may be termed a "confabulator".

An author of fables is termed a "fabulist," and the word "fabulous," strictly speaking, "pertains to a fable or fables." In recent decades, however, "fabulous" has come (by reference to the exaggerations of e.g. wealth or beauty in fables) to mean "outstanding" and more loosely, "excellent".

History

The fable is one of the most enduring forms of folk literature, spread abroad, modern researchers agree,[3] less by literary anthologies than by oral transmission. Fables can be found in the literature of almost every country.

Several parallel animal fables in Sumerian and Akkadian are among those that Erich 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 9:8-15 and "the thistle and the cedar tree" in II Kings 14:9.[6]

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 slave in ancient Greece around 550 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").[7] Epicharmus of Kos and Phormis are reported as having been among the first to invent comic fables.[8] Many familiar fables of Aesop include "The Crow and the Pitcher", "The Tortoise and the Hare" and "The Lion and the Mouse". In ancient Greek and Roman education, the fable was the first of the progymnasmata--training exercises in prose composition and public speaking—wherein students would be asked to learn fables, expand upon them, invent their own, and finally use them as persuasive examples in longer forensic or deliberative speeches. The need of instructors to teach, and students to learn, a wide range of fables as material for their declamations resulted in their being gathered together in collections, like those of Aesop.

African Oral Culture [1] has rich story telling tradition. As it has been for thousands of years, people of all ages in Africa continue to interact with nature including plants, breathtaking animals and earthly structures such as rivers, plains and mountains. Grandparents have enormous respect in African societies and they fill the new role of story telling during post-retirement years. Children and to some extent adults, are mesmerized by good storytellers when they become animated in their quest to tell a good fable.

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. Ben E. Perry (compiler of the "Perry Index" of Aesop's fables)has argued controversially that some of the Buddhist Jataka tales and some of the fables in the Panchatantra may have been influenced by similar Greek and Near Eastern ones.[9] 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. The most famous fables from the Middle East were the One Thousand and One Nights, also known as the Arabian Nights.

Fables had a further long tradition through the Middle Ages, and became part of European high 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.[10] La Fontaine's model was subsequently emulated by England's John Gay (1685–1732);[11] Poland's Ignacy Krasicki (1735–1801);[12] Italy's Lorenzo Pignotti (1739–1812)[13] and Giovanni Gherardo de Rossi (1754–1827);[14] Serbia's Dositej Obradović (1742–1811); Spain's Félix María de Samaniego (1745–1801)[15] and Tomás de Iriarte y Oropesa (1750–1791);[16] France's Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian (1755–94);[17] and Russia's Ivan Krylov (1769–1844).[18]

In modern times, while the fable has been trivialized in children's books, it has also been fully adapted to modern adult literature. Felix Salten's Bambi (1923) is a Bildungsroman — a story of a protagonist's coming-of-age — cast in the form of a fable. James Thurber used the ancient fable style in his books Fables for Our Time (1940) and Further Fables for Our Time (1956), and in his stories "The Princess and the Tin Box" in The Beast in Me and Other Animals (1948) and "The Last Clock: A Fable for the Time, Such As It Is, of Man" in Lanterns and Lances (1961). Władysław Reymont's The Revolt (1922), a metaphor for the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, described a revolt by animals that take over their farm in order to introduce "equality." George Orwell's Animal Farm (1945) similarly satirized Stalinist Communism in particular, and totalitarianism in general, in the guise of animal fable.

Classic fabulists

Modern fabulists

Notable fables

See also

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. ^ Strong's 3454. μύθος muthos moo’-thos; perhaps from the same as 3453 (through the idea of tuition); a tale, i.e. fiction ("myth"):—fable.
    "For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty." (2nd Peter 1:16)
  3. ^ Enzyklopädie des Märchens (1977), see "Fabel", "Äsopica" etc.
  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. ^ Burkert 1992:121
  8. ^ P. W. Buckham, p. 245
  9. ^ Ben E. Perry, "Introduction", p. xix, in Babrius and Phaedrus (1965)
  10. ^ Translations of his 12 books of fables are available online at oaks.nvg.org
  11. ^ His two collections of 1727 and 1738 are available in one volume on Google Books at books.google.co.uk
  12. ^ His Bajki przypowiesci (Fables & Parables, 1779) are available online at ug.edu.pl
  13. ^ His Favole e Novelle (1785) is available on Google Books
  14. ^ His Favole (1788) is available on Google Books
  15. ^ 9 books of fables are available online in Spanish at amediavoz.com
  16. ^ His Fabulas Literarias are available on Google Books
  17. ^ His five books of fables are available online in French at shanaweb.net
  18. ^ 5 books of fables are available online in Russian at friends-partners.org

References

External links


Translations:

Fable

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - fabel, løgnehistorie, handling
v. tr. - fortælle opdigtede historier, fortælle løgnehistorier
v. intr. - fortælle fabler

Nederlands (Dutch)
fantaseren, fabeltje, fabel, plot

Français (French)
n. - (Littérat) fable, légende, apologue, histoire (moraliste), histoire (un mensonge), conte de fée
v. tr. - raconter/dire des fables, parler/décrire à la manière d'une fable
v. intr. - inventer, fabuler, (fig) raconter des histoires

Deutsch (German)
n. - Fabel, Märchen
v. - (er)dichten, fabulieren, erfinden

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - μύθος, θρύλος

Italiano (Italian)
storia, favola

Português (Portuguese)
n. - fábula (f)

Русский (Russian)
басня, ложь, излюбленная тема, предание

Español (Spanish)
n. - cuento chino, fábula, leyenda
v. tr. - inventar, contar falsamente
v. intr. - contar fábulas, fingir, mentir

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - fabel, saga, osanning, handling

中文(简体)(Chinese (Simplified))
寓言, 谎言, 神话, 煞有介事地讲述, 虚构, 作寓言

中文(繁體)(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 寓言, 謊言, 神話
v. tr. - 煞有介事地講述
v. intr. - 虛構, 作寓言

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 우화 , 전설, 꾸민 이야기
v. tr. - 꾸며내다
v. intr. - 우화를 짓다

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 寓話, 伝説, 作り話

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) خرافه , حكايه على لسان الحيوان‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮משל, אגדה, בדותה‬
v. tr. - ‮תיאר תיאור בדוי‬
v. intr. - ‮סיפר או כתב בדותות‬


 
 

 

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