CHARLES W. ELIOT
In
[Aesop’s
Fables], the form of the old animistic story is used without any belief in the identity of the personalities of men and animals, but with a conscious double meaning and for the purpose of teaching a lesson. The fable is a product not of the folk but of the learned; and though at times it has been handed down by word of mouth, it is really a literary form.
—from The Harvard Classics: Folk-lore and Fable (1909)