Animal Fables

Stories in which animals speak and act as people, so that their moral lands on the reader ungloved.

Core Themes

• Character types fixed by species: the cunning fox, the vain crow, the patient tortoise, the greedy wolf.
• A closing moral makes each fable portable — a lesson that survives its story.

Notable Examples

• Aesop's fables of Greece, the Indian Panchatantra and its Arabic grandson Kalila wa Dimna.
• The Jataka animal births of the Buddhist tradition, and Reynard the Fox of medieval Europe.

Related Concepts & Sources

Sacred Animal, Jataka Tales, Moral Order