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Aesopic fables were highly valued in medieval and renaissance Europe for their ethical qualities, and many collections were assembled for educational use. The first of these were compilations in manuscript form and in Latin. An early and prominent example of these school texts was the compilation created in about 400 A.D. by Flavius Avianus, who rewrote in Latin verse 42 of the Greek fables from the Babrius collection. Although his stories lacked the compactness and the sharp focus of the best fables, his collection was nonetheless very influential in medieval Europe, and was often used in schools.
The development of movable-type printing, beginning about 1450, greatly facilitated the publication of fable collections in vernacular languages throughout Europe. In fact, apparently the first book printed in the German language was a collection of fables. (The famous Gutenberg Bible of 1455 was in Latin.) This collection was the work of Ulrich Boner, a Swiss Dominican monk, who in about 1350 compiled a manuscript collection of fables titled Der Edelstein (The Precious Stone) and attributed to Aesop and Flavius Avianus. After circulating for more than a century in manuscript form, Der Edelstein was printed as a book in 1461, and is reputed to be the first book printed in the German language.
Another German-language author, Heinrich Steinhöwel (1412 1483), contributed even more to the European distribution of Aesopic fables in the vernacular. His Esopus, a bilingual collection of fables in Latin and German, was published in about 1476 and soon became, relatively speaking, an international bestseller. This book was translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, and Czech. The French-language version of Steinhöwel’s Esopus was translated into English and published in 1484 by William Caxton, the pioneering English printer. Thus a collection of Aesopic fables was also among the very first books published in the English language.
The popularity of fables attributed to Aesop from the Middle Ages onward led quite naturally to new literary creations in the same tradition. One such work was the so-called Gesta Romanorum (Deeds of the Romans), written in Latin by an anonymous English scribe about 1330. Only a few of the 283 recorded “deeds” relate to the Romans. Instead, the work presents a mixture of anecdotes, legends, and fables, all with appended morals, called “applications.” About a dozen of the stories are animal fables, similar in content, form, and function to those of Aesop.
Medieval imitations of Aesop led to a new word in French, ysopet (also spelled isopet), referring to a collection of freshly minted fables in the Aesopic tradition. The most famous of these ysopets are the Fables of Marie de France, numbering 103 and composed in French verse between about 1160 and 1190. Although she is celebrated as the greatest woman author of the Middle Ages, almost nothing is known about the person Marie de France, except that she lived in French-speaking Norman England.
The re-creation of Aesopic fables in verse form was brought to its highest level some 500 years later by another French-language poet, Jean de La Fontaine (1621-1695). In about 240 poems, published in twelve books between 1668 and 1694, La Fontaine captured the essence of the Aesopic tradition with wit and charm. In fact, many readers of our era know Aesopic fables primarily through the graceful renditions of La Fontaine. The didactic nature of the fable, its pragmatic this-worldly view, and its roots in classical antiquity appealed to many other gifted European writers of the Age of Reason. Three additional names stand out: John Locke (1632 1704) and John Gay (1685-1732) from England, and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781) from Germany.
The nineteenth century produced two writers of beast stories deserving special notice. Possibly the greatest nineteenth-century author to rewrite Aesopic fables was Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), who incorporated both traditional and original material into fables and fairy tales for primers and readers that he wrote in the 1870s to teach Russian peasants’ children how to read. From a different world, but still drawing on the same traditional material, was Joel Chandler Harris (1848-1908), whose Uncle Remus stories contain many episodes also found in Aesopic fables. The prevailing view that African-American folklore provided much of Harris’s raw material opens up the possibility that Africa may have played a substantial, but largely unheralded role in the development and transmission of Aesopic fables from the earliest times. Remember that according to some sources the man Aesop was a native of Ethiopia.
Many writers in the twentieth century have written imitations and parodies of traditional fables for their own social-critical purposes, but no one more successfully than the American humorist James Thurber (1894-1961) in his witty and ironic Fables for Our Time (1940). Also following in the satirical spirit of Aesop, if not imitating his terse style, was George Orwell (1903-1950), whose Animal Farm (1945) is often referred to as a “political fable.”
The preceding list of editors and authors, covering more than 2,000 years of time and extending across the length and breadth of Europe, and beyond, illustrates the timeless appeal of the Aesopic tradition. Many additional names could be added to the list. Aesopic fables are a cultural legacy whose importance can hardly be overstated.