The Fable, the Moral, and the Animal: Reconsidering the Fable in Animal Studies with Marianne Moore’s Elephants

Abstract

Does all animal literature join in the fable? A quick generic definition of a fable is a story that relates a particular instance to make a general claim about moral conduct. But ever since Aesop, the fable has been understood more specifically as a brief account of animal life, presumed to be fictional, which serves as an example that teaches about the human social order. There is one other key defining aspect of the fable: it is the literary genre in which animals speak, either in direct quotation or through behaviors that indicate shrewd reason and complex imagination. This Aesopian-style fable is the most frequently occurring form. It achieved its preeminence during the Enlightenment, used by the poets La Fontaine and Lessing, and in the Romantic era by Christopher Smart and Coleridge. Yet the fable is now most often associated with children’s literature or short poems that transmit wit and wisdom, but do not achieve to great aesthetic import. Yet the fable is an edgy and enigmatic form, and with its close ties to parable, myth, and folklore, it is not hard to find alternative genealogies. However, where, in this form, does the animal fit? Are animal fables not blatantly anthropomorphic, thus counterproductive to the increasing emphasis on the pursuit of real knowledge of animal minds along with articulating animal rights? Are fables even any good at anthropomorphizing, or are they just “textualized animals” transparently about us and aesthetically simplistic?