Fable, short literary composition in prose or verse, conveying a universal cautionary or moral truth. The moral is usually summed up at the end of the story, which generally tells of conflict among animals, which are given the attributes of human beings. The fable differs from the parable, also a short narrative designed to convey a moral truth, in that the fable is concerned with the impossible and improbable, whereas the parable always deals with possible events. Both fables and parables are forms of allegory.
One of the earliest and also the most notable collection of animal fables is that of Aesop, reputedly a freed Greek slave who lived in the 6th century bc. Aesop circulated his fables orally and they were transmitted in this manner for a considerable time. Greek and Roman writers subsequently wrote down versions of Aesop's fables in either prose or verse. A Latin edition by the Byzantine monk Maximus Planudes is the source from which the best-known fables of modern Europe have ...more