FABLE (Lat. tabula, a narrative, especially a fictitious one), in literature, a term applied originally to every imaginative tale, but confined in modern use to short stories, either in prose or verse, which are meant to inculcate a moral lesson in a pleasant garb. Imaginary persons, animals and inanimate objects are introduced as the actors and speakers. The fables consist properly of two parts — the symbolical repre sentation and the application or the instruction intended to be deduced from it, which latter is called the moral of the tale, and is indispen sable to it.
Herder divides fables into (1) Theoretic, intended to form the understanding; thus a phenomenon of nature, as illustrative of the laws of the universe, is used to exercise the understanding. (2) Moral, which contain rules for the regulation of the will. We do not learn morality from the brutes, but view the great family of nature, and observe that she has connected the happiness of all living creatures with the unchangeable, eternal law of effort, and take example from the observance of this law by the lower orders of creation. (3) Fables of fate or destiny. It cannot always be made evident how one thing follows as a necessary consequence from another; here then comes in play that connection of events which we call fate, or chance, and which shows that things follow, at least after, if not from one another, by an order from above. Thus the eagle carries
with her plunder a coal from the altar, which sets fire to her nest, and thus her unfledged brood becomes the prey of animals which she has already robbed of their young.
The oldest fables are supposed to be the Oriental; among these the Indian fables of Pilpay or Bidpai, and the fables of the Arabian Lokman, are celebrated. /Esop is well known among the Greeks, and was imitated by Phmdrus among the Latin writers. Bodmer has pub lished German fables of the time of the Minne singers. The first known German fabulist is Stricker, who belongs to the first half of the 13th century, but the famous medimval beast epic of 'Reinecke Fuchs' (see REYNARD THE Fox) has a much more remote origin. Boner, who lived at the close of the 14th century, shows in his 'Edelstein' the true spirit of fable. Burkard Waldis may be mentioned in the 16th century. The most successful of German fable writers is undoubtedly Lessing. In the 17th century Gay among the English, and La Fon taine among the French, were distinguished. The writer last named made fable the vehicle of wit, and carried it to its highest stage of perfection. Among the most interesting modern productions in this department of literature the tables of the Russian, Ivan Kriloff, deserve special mention. See ALLEGORY; MYTH.