Fable
The fable is one of the oldest literary forms - much, much older than the
novel or the short story. A fable is usually short, written in either verse or
prose, and conveys a clear moral or message. The earliest fables still preserved
date back to 6th Century Greece B.C.E. The author of these fables,
Aesop, used animal characters to stand for human "types." For example, a fox
character might embody the human characteristics of cunning and cleverness.
Though Aesop's animal fables were ostensibly about animals, they were really
instructional tales about human emotions and human behavior.
The animal fable has remained a popular art form in Western literature. In
recent centuries, the French writer La Fontaine published a series of animal
fables--Fables Choisies (1668-94)--which earned him the reputation of
world master of the form. The most popular animal fables of the 20th
Century are the Just So Stories (1902) written by Rudyard Kipling.
Kipling's fables were adapted by Disney in the movie The Jungle Book.
Orwell admired Kipling--he wrote an essay explaining the value he saw in
Kipling's work--and the Just So Stories would seem to have influenced
the form of Animal Farm. Orwell took the short animal fable and
expanded it to the length of a short novel.
See the fable at work in allegory.
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