Fable, as defined by Dr Johnson in his Life of Gay, is, 'in its genuine state, a narrative in which beings irrational, and sometimes inanimate—arbores loquuntur, non tantum fere—are, for the purpose of moral instruction, feigned to act and speak with human interests and passions.' It is thus almost synonymous with the apologue, and closely allied to the allegory and the parable, but it need not be at all probable in its incidents, its essential motive being merely a moral or didactic end effected by any means, while its composition is due to more or less conscious literary art. In earlier times the name was frequently used as synonymous with myth, but this sense was dropped when a deeper insight into the mental condition of primitive man had revealed how small a factor conscious fiction was in the making of so composite a product as the mythology of a people. It is usual again to differentiate the parable from the fable as especially conveying spiritual truths, and not transgressing possibility and the actual order of nature; but, leaving out of sight the special examples in the New Testament, it is impossible to make so sharp a distinction between moral and religious truths. In the earlier stages of the history of every people the human intellect has employed itself in rudimentary metaphysical speculations, and hence a host of myths have arisen everywhere of themselves to account for natural phenomena, the origin of man, and the like, which in many cases have been preserved. These myths are of course quite innocent of moral, and, indeed, in the hopeless confusion of a composite mythology, are usually strangely inconsistent with considerations of morality, being survivals of an irrational state of mind to which they seemed natural enough. Side by side with this process in the mind of many peoples, a rudimentary literary faculty early began to exercise itself, giving rise to real fables. One large class, indeed the most important, whether from the point of view of quality or of quantity, takes the form of fables about beasts, with whom primitive man has no difficulty in feeling a sense of affinity. These again develop with progressive culture and a growing moral sense into the didactic apologue, and thus reach the class of fables proper, as being essentially due to conscious literary art. These, unlike the myths that have grown spontaneously as an attempt to find concrete expression for those ideas and impressions about the relations between man and the physical world that lie at the basis of religion, lend themselves early to transmission, and have actually, as we shall see, travelled round the world. The folklore of even the rudest people contains many complex elements, but it is only as culture begins to advance that we find the beginning of the literary fable proper, although it remains true that a large number of the folk-tales are more or less perfect fables. While this is true, it is no less so that it is merely in half-civilised communities that the fable attains its greatest perfection. We find the moral apologues so dear to the oriental mind ranging in a thousand forms, from the scriptural example of Jotham to the elaborate and involved examples in the Arabian Nights.
The old French Fabliaux have little in common with fables beyond a name of similar origin, being short tales in verse, essentially satirical, or rather representing human things under the light of a ludicrous or only half-serious mockery. Of the genuine fables of medieval times the greater number were associated with the name of Æsop, whom it is usual for classical scholars to place in the 6th century B.C. Certainly his name occurs frequently in classical literature as that of a fabulist, but the so-called Æsopic fables that have come down to us are far from being Greek in character, to any great extent at least. The collection formed by Planudes of Constantinople in the first half of the 14th century has much in common with the metrical Greek fables of Babrius, who lived most likely in the 1st century B.C., and again with the Latin fables of Phædrus, a freedman of Augustus, because the ultimate source of many fables of these and other fabulists was the same—the Buddhist birth-stories and other Indian tales, which had long before been gradually finding their way westwards through Arab or still more obscure channels. Many of our Greek fables are substantially identical with the Buddhist Jātakas, and can be explained on no theory but that of simple transmission, often within even historical times. This much at least is certain, that a considerable part of the Æsopic fable reached the Greeks from the East, however obscure our knowledge of the methods of transmission may yet be. The medieval examples of the fable follow closely the two Latin versions (1) of Avianus, comprising fables in distichs, rendered at a later period into prose, and almost all borrowed from the immediate Greek originals bearing the name of Æsop; and (2) to a still greater extent a prose version of the fables of Phædrus, represented in the prologue as a translation into Latin of the Greek fables of Æsop by a certain Emperor Romulus for his son Tiberinus. The Latin Romulus was enlarged about the 11th century by a number of fables of quite a different character, bearing in the highest degree the stamp of the middle ages, and often of Christianity (as in that of the wolf who learns to read), coming in great part from India, by way of Byzantium, most frequently badly told, usually very obscure, but often original, well invented, and of a very popular character, as in that of the cat that has put on a stole in order to baptise a rat which wishes to remain a Pagan. The collection as thus increased originated without doubt in England, and at an early date was rendered in English, and associated without reason with the name of Alfred. It was from this lost English version that it was translated, in the reign of Henry II., by Marie de France, into elegant but somewhat dry French verses. She gave her work the name of Isopet, the title of all medieval collections of fables, itself really a mere familiar diminutive of the name of Æsop, to whom all apologues were always attributed. About the same time an author whose name is unknown rendered into Latin distichs the first three books of Romulus, comprising fifty-eight fables, to which he added two stories, one from an unknown source, the other borrowed from the Disciplina Clericalis of Petrus Alphonsus, a converted Jew, whose work—a book of moral instruction, filled with stories of Arab (and ultimately Indian) origin—must have been put together about the close of the 12th century. According to custom, this collection of fables was connected with the name of Æsop; its pretentious style brought it great success, and we have extant two verse translations of the 13th and 14th centuries, the Isopet de Lyons and the Isopet II. de Paris—the last called also the Isopet-Avionnet, because the translation of Æsop therein follows that of Avianus. Another redaction, by Alexander Neckam (12th century), in Latin distichs, was twice translated into verse in the Isopet de Chartres and the Isopet I. de Paris. Of these translations the most interesting, because the freest, is the Isopet de Lyons; all alike abound in misconstructions, to which the obscure language of their models lent itself too easily, and from which the rhymers extricate themselves as best they can.
Besides these special collections of fables, the best and most original examples, whether in French or Latin, are often to be found in the works of the moralists, the preachers, and even the historians, as, for example, in the Récits du Ménestrel de Reims (1260), a collection of semi-popular and current hearsay traditions, having for its point of departure the first Crusade, and loosely connected with the Holy Land, France, England, and Flanders. From the 12th century there were often inserted in sermons Exempla, or short tales, sometimes edifying in themselves, sometimes having the character of parables or even merry stories, from which the preacher at the end extorted a moral. These were stories merely Christianised for the ends of edification, and were very frequently nothing more or less than time-honoured fables. The collection in French by the English Franciscan Nicole Bozon (13th century) is particularly rich in such fables told in a lively and popular manner. Side by side with these fables transmitted by the clergy there circulated among the people many beast-fables, which, like the primitive examples of African and other savage peoples, are destitute of any moral aim, but unlike these are due to conscious literary art in depending mainly upon a sympathetic and humorous observation of certain animals, whose adventures conform to their supposed character and their known habits. A great many of these stories have for their theme the struggles between the wolf, the stronger, and the fox, the more cunning, which ends always in the former being worsted. The great innovation which developed out of these a kind of beast-epic was the individualising of the heroes and giving to them proper names; the figures with which we are concerned are no longer a wolf and a fox, but Isengrim and Raganhard, with their wives Richild and Hersind (later Isengrin, Renard, Richent, Hersent). Around these principal personages the action centres, and beside them we find a crowd of secondary actors: Noble the lion, Grimbert the badger, Belin the ram, Chanteclair the cock, Couard the hare, Tibert the cat, and Bernard the ass, who throughout preserve their characters and play consistent parts. This ingenious and artistic transformation may have originated in the north of France about the 11th century, but quickly spread over western Europe in Latin, German, and Flemish versions, and, both from the intrinsic interest of the theme, and its adaptability to satirical purposes, as well as its admirable artistic treatment, exercised a powerful influence over the popular imagination from the dark ages to the age of Goethe.
The pure fable of medieval times followed closely its venerable originals, as we find them still in our Panchatantra, Hitopadesa, and Kalilah wa Dimnah; but our modern examples have little beyond what is external in common with these, for the fable has long ceased to be a natural form for literary expression in prose or verse. The fables of Prior, Moore, and Gay are lively and often graceful poems, but they have usurped a name to which they really possess no claim. Nor are Dryden's so-called Fables fables at all, however effective as poems they may be. Quite different is the case of the great master of fabulists, the inimitable La Fontaine, who possessed one merit rarer even than his exquisite blending of humour and pathos and his matchless perfection of form, in that 'infantine familiar clasp of things divine' in which lies hid the real essence of the fable. No successor has discovered the secret of that exquisite naiveté on which depends his charm, although the imitators of this new form in literature have been countless in number. Gellert's German fables (1746) were among the most popular of these, and first attracted the great Lessing into imitation. The latter published his famous Fabeln in 1759, together with a striking essay on the history and meaning of the fable in literature, the conclusions of which were mostly much more subtle than always sound. Of more recent fables the best are a few examples among the exquisite prose fairy-tales of Hans Christian Andersen and the examples in verse of the Russian Krilof: everywhere else the making of fables would appear to be an art that is lost without hope of recovery.
See the articles ÆSOP, BEAST-FABLES, BIDPAI, FABLIAUX, FOLKLORE, MYTHOLOGY, and REYNARD; also Max Müller's essay 'On the Migration of Fables,' in vol. iv. (1880) of Chips from a German Workshop; W. G. Rutherford's dissertation on 'The History of Greek Fable,' in his edition of Babrius (1883), which is good so far as it goes; but especially O. Keller's 'Untersuchungen über die Geschichte der Griechischen Fabel,' in the Jahrbücher für klassische Philologie (1861-67); Leopold Hervieux, Les Fabulistes Latins depuis le Siècle d'Auguste jusqu'à la fin du Moyen Age (2 vols. 1884); and the admirable chapter by Gaston Paris, in La Littérature Française au Moyen Age (1888).