FABLE

narrative form, usually featuring animals that behave and speak as human beings, told in order to highlight human follies and weaknesses. A moralor lesson for behaviouris woven into the story and often explicitly formulated at the end. The Western tradition of fable effectively begins with Aesop (6th century BC), about whom little is known. Modern editions contain up to 200 Aesop fables, but there is no way of tracing their actual origins. Among the classical authors who developed the Aesopian model were the Roman poet Horace, the Greek biographer Plutarch, and the Greek satirist Lucian. Fable flourished in the European Middle Ages, as did all forms of allegory, and a notable collection of fables was made in the late 12th century by Marie de France. The medieval fable gave rise to an expanded form known as the beast epica lengthy, episodic animal story replete with hero, villain, victim, and an endless stream of heroic endeavour, parodying epic grandeur. The most famous of these is a 12th-century group of related tales called Roman de Renart whose hero is Renart, or Reynard, the Fox (German: Reinhart Fuchs), symbol of cunning man. In the Renaissance, Edmund Spenser made use of this kind of material in Mother Hubberd's Tale (1591). John Dryden's poem The Hind and the Panther (1687) revived the beast epic as an allegorical framework for serious theological debate. The fable has traditionally been of modest length, however, and the form reached its zenith in 17th-century France in the work of Jean de La Fontaine, whose theme was the folly of human vanity. His first collection of Fables in 1668 followed the Aesopian pattern, but his later ones, accumulated during the next 25 years, satirized the court and its bureaucrats, the church, the rising bourgeoisieindeed the whole human scene. His influence was felt throughout Europe, and in the Romantic period his outstanding successor was the Russian Ivan Andreyevich Krylov. The fable found a new audience during the 19th century in the rise of literature for children. Among the celebrated authors who employed the form were Lewis Carroll, Kenneth Grahame, Rudyard Kipling, Hilaire Belloc, Joel Chandler Harris, Beatrix Potter, and, though not writing primarily for children, Hans Christian Andersen, Oscar Wilde, Antoine Saint-Exupry, J.R.R. Tolkien, and James Thurber. A more sobering modern use of fable is to be found in George Orwell's Animal Farm (1945), a scathing allegorical portrait of Stalinist Russia. The oral tradition of fable in India may date as far back as the 5th century BC. The Paca-tantra, a Sanskrit compilation of beast fables, has survived only in an 8th-century Arabic translation known as the Kalilah wa Dimnah, after two jackal-counselors to the lion king. It was translated into many languages including Hebrew, from which in the 13th century John of Capua made a Latin version. In China the full development of fable was hindered by traditions of thought that prohibited the Chinese from accepting any notion of animals behaving and thinking as humans. Between the 4th and 6th century, however, Chinese Buddhists adapted fables from Buddhist India as a way to further the understanding of religious doctrines. Their compilation is known as Po-y ching. In Japan the 8th-century histories Koji-ki, (Records of Ancient Matters) and Nihon-shoki (Chronicles of Japan) are studded with fables, many on the theme of small but intelligent animals getting the better of large and stupid ones. The form reached its height in the Kamakura period (11921333). In the 16th century, Jesuit missionaries introduced Aesop's fables into Japan, and their influence has persisted into modern times.