FABLE (from Lat. fabula, narrative, from fari, to speak; connected with Gk. codvat, phanai, to say. Skt. bha, to shine). A word of twofold signification. First, it is employed by some writers in a general sense to denote any fictitious narrative, as, for example, the incidents in an epic or dramatic poem. At one time. _also, when the myths of the Greeks and Romans were thought to be satisfactorily accounted for by re garding them as conscious inventions of the an cient poets and priests, it was customary to speak of them as fables. but this application of the term is now abandoned by scholars. (See According to the second and more fre quent signification of the word, it denotes a spe cial kind of literary composition, either prose or verse, in which a story of some kind is made the vehicle for conveying a universal truth. It dif fers from a parable in this respect, that while the latter never transcends in conception the bounds of the probable or the possible, the former always and of necessity does. The peculiarity of the structure of the fable consists in the trans ference to inanimate objects, or. more frequently, to the lower animals, of the qualities of rational beings. By the very novelty and utter impossi bility of the representation, the interest of the bearer or reader is excited, and thus its sym bolic meaning and moral become transparent to him, at least if the fable is well contrived. The ancient fabulists were simple, clear, and earnest in their representations. They seem to have sprung up in the East, and India was in all prob ability their home. From the rich collections of fables in the Sanskrit Pancatantra and //ito padega (qq.v.) came, it would seem, the _Esopie beast-stories. Other celebrated Oriental collec tions of fables, based (tiredly upon the Sanskrit, are those of Bidpai (q.v.). or Pilpai, and of the Arabian Lokman. Among t he t :reeks. the greatest name is that of -E-sop (q.v.), whose fables, at a much later period, were versified by Bahrius (q.v.). .Among the Romans. Ph(edrus cleverly imi tated .F.sop, but with eousiderable modifications, Ilms giving a certain amount of independent value to his work. It is perhaps wort h mentioning here that the well-known fable of the Town Mouse and Country Mouse, told by Horace, is of purely Boman origin, and is probably the only one in existence of which this can be affirmed.
Leaving the classical period, and before enter ing on the Dark Ages, we encounter the name of Aphthonius, who flourished in the early part of the fourth century, and who wrote indifferent fables in Greek prose; and still later, the name of Flavius Avianus, who composed forty-two, no better, in Latin elegiacs. During the Dark Ages the fable in various forms a mwars to have been cultivated in the monasteries, although nothing meritorious has survived; but later in the Middle Ages it acquired fresh life and vigor. The oldest known German fabulist is Stricken, who lived about the middle of the thirteenth century; but the famous mediaeval fable of Heineke Fuchs, or the History of Reynard the Fox (q.v.), stretches in some of its numerous primitive forms much further back. In later times Most nations have cultivated the fable with more or less success. We may mention among the English, Gay; among the Germans, Hagedorn, Gellert, and Les sing; among, the Italians, Pignotti; among the Russians, Kryloff; and above all among the French, La Fontaine (q.v.). Many of Andersen's wonder stories are fables, in which the weak nesses of human nature are treated with an ex quisite humor and sarcasm, not inferior to those of La Fontaine.
The stories of Brer Rabbit and the other ani mals by Joel Chandler Harris (q.v.) do not be long under thc fable proper, as they are not the invention of the writer, but are valuable records of the folk-lore (q.v.) of the Afriean-Americans. The same is true of similar stories gathered from the 'Indian tribes.
Consult: Lessing, Leber das Wesen der Fabel (17110); Robert, Fables inadites des douxieme, treiziame, et guator,-..4ame sir'eles, et fables de La Fontaine rapproehees de eelles de tons les ((Wears (Paris, 1825) ; Loiseleur Deslongchamps, Rssai sin- les fables indiennes et sir leer introduction en Europe ( Paris, 1838) ; Beehstein, ythe, Sage, Mare and Fabel int Leber:. and Bewusstsein des deutschen Volkes, 3 vols. (Leipzig, 1854-55) ; Benfey, Pantschatantra (Leipzig, 1859) ; Schlenk er. Collection of Tenure Traditions, Fables, and Prorerbs (London, 1861) ; Bleck, Reynard the Fox in South Africa (London, 18114) ; Hervieux, Les fahnlistes folios depuis le siècle d'Auguste jusqu'a la fin du moyen age, 5 vols. (Paris, 1884 99) ; Weddigen, Das Wesen and (lie Theo•ie der Fabel (Leipzig. 1893).