We explain what a fable is, how its history was and what are the characteristics of its structure, characters, themes, narration and more.
What is a fable?
A fable It is a type of short story endowed with an explicit and moralizing lesson, that is, with a final teaching known as moral or fable. It's about a literary genre very old, whose characters they are usually animals and objects endowed with human speech and feelings.
The word fable It comes from the Latin I will fable, translatable as "to speak", so that a fable was, initially, gossip, something that was told or talked about often. However, over time this word came to have meanings similar to "play" or "story". Hence, today we have words like “fabulous”, which we use to say that something is so good that it seems to be taken from a fable.
Fables were widely cultivated in the antiquity classical, and many of the ancient Greek fables (such as those of Aesop) have survived to this day. Even so, this type of story did not cease to be cultivated throughout the medieval and the Renaissance, thanks to outstanding fabulists such as the French Jean de La Fontaine (1621-1695) or Jean-Pierre de Claris de Florian (1755-1794), and many other later authors.
Next we will see the main characteristics of a fable.
Characteristics of the fable
1. These are short stories
Fables are usually texts of little or very little length, which tell a series of more or less fantastic events in a very simple way. It is usual for a fable to run from a few lines to a few pages, just enough to engage the reader and lead him to the final moral. This is also due to the fact that they were originally texts destined to be recited or remembered, usually to children and young people or to a public with little formal instruction, as an instrument of education moral, ethical or religious.
2. They have a final moral
The distinctive feature of the fable is, in general, its pedagogical or moralizing message that serves as its closure and that usually consists of a teaching for social, emotional or spiritual life, imparted through a fictional or fantastic example. This moral is almost always given explicitly, that is, it is explained by the narrator of the fable so that it is understood by the reader.
3. They constitute a popular literary genre
Fables belong to the world of literature, but not of the cultured literature and demanding with its readers, but of the popular forms that incarnate in a simple way the moral values Y social of one society determined. In this way, Western fables can differ greatly from those from the East, since the religious, cultural and social perspectives of one civilization do not always coincide with those of others.
However, numerous compendiums of fables have been edited and published since the Renaissance years, and the work of the great fabulists of history is today considered a valuable artistic and historical expression.
4. They have a linear and simple structure
The stories contained in the fables are not usually very complicated, without time jumps or artifices that complicate the understanding of the story. message. That is, they are normally governed by a classic structure:
- Start. The description of an initial situation, of relative equilibrium.
- Complication. The narration of a series of events that complicate the picture.
- Outcome. The resolution of the conflict or narrative knot and the establishment of the lesson to learn.
The moral is usually always in the last segment of the fable, although in some cases it is also stated at the beginning of the story.
5. His characters are usually animals and humanized objects
The fables are mostly carried out by animals, although endowed with human traits such as speech and thought. These animals usually respond to a set of cultural archetypes of very ancient origin, and according to which each animal is attributed a set of predominant traits or characteristics.
For example, predators (tigers, lions, among others) tend to be proud and arrogant, while large herbivores (cows, rhinoceroses, among others) are rather calm and benevolent. Likewise, small and fast animals (rabbits, foxes, among others) are credited with cunning and intelligence.
It can also happen that in the fable appear gods either deities of different type.
6. They are narrated in the third person
In general, the established narrator for fables is the third person. omniscient, that is, a narrator who is linked to what he tells as a witness, but who at the same time is capable of knowing what the different characters think, feel or plot. In this way, the narrator can express all the details of the story.
7. His storytelling is timeless
The narrative contained in fables always occurs in an ancestral, mythical or timeless space, that is, they are not framed in any known historical moment, at any specific time, but rather they usually occur in a distant place and time, imprecise, sometimes before the world as we know it.
8. His subjects are usually human vices
Since they are stories with a clear pedagogical intention, fables usually deal with issues related to vices, harmful attitudes and moral defects of humanity, such as selfishness, greed, lies or laziness. These vices are criticized throughout the fable and are generally attributed to a specific animal, in order to offer an example and a counterexample. For example, in the fable of the ant and the grasshopper, the first is attributed a cautious and industrious attitude, and the second laziness and comfort.
9. They can be written in verse or prose
The fables of antiquity were usually written in verse rhymed, a trait inherited from the days when there was no writing and it was necessary to have some kind of memorization mechanism to be able to recite them correctly and completely. This way of writing them was preserved for a long time, but eventually it became normal for them to also be written in prose, without rhyme or versification, in the manner of the stories modern.
10. There are two basic types of fable
Depending on their structure and the way of presenting the moral, fables can be classified into two types:
- Agonal fables. They are those in which two opinions, attitudes towards life or ways of thinking are raised, one of which is punished and the other rewarded.For example: the fable of the ant and the cicada.
- Etiological fables. They are those that include a religious, mythical or foundational content belonging to a specific culture, generally linked to the creation of the world and/or humanity. For example: Aesop's fable about quadrupeds and birds.
Other forms of classification can distinguish between fables featuring animals, gods, people, among others.