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Arnold Lobel's Fables and Traditional Fable Features 

Pack Carnes 

One of the most noticeable aspects of the modem study of folklore is 
its lack of clear and precise genre boundaries and definitions. It is 
not altogether certain that these are the necessity that some would 
have us believe. After all, a great deal of folkloristics is being done 
today in haughty disregard of this lack. Still, most of us agree that 
some such boundary markers would be a help.1 In no case—save 
perhaps that of "emerging legends"—is this lack more clearly 
demonstrated than in the fable and in the various forms that 
members of fable sets take. Arnold Lobel's fables present a specific 
case in point. This small collection of fables is clearly a literary 
collection, yet it owes much to traditional materials. This article will 
approach the traditional aspects of Lobel's Fables as an investigation 
into the nature of the intertextual relationships of highly personal 
literary creation and folklore. 

That the fable lays claim to being folklore can hardly be 
doubted. It exists as short oral narratives (jokes, proverbs, and songs, 
etc.), and fabular motifs are found in virtually every folk art form. 
But the fable is also literature.2 What's more, it is literature of a quite 
varied, yet interconnected sort. The telling and retelling of fables 
creates and demonstrates very close intertextual relationships among 
members of fable sets. Each set is defined as being a group of 
allomorphs of an identified fabular motif or narrative type. Thus the 
fable of the Fox and the Grapes (P15),3 known from classical times 
through hundreds, perhaps thousands, of literary fabular reworkings 
is also found in (predominately) oral versions as folktales in the 
complex delineated by the A- T Type 59 and has a further extended 
family covered by the Thompson Motif Index number J871. 
Moreover, the fable is clearly connected to, but not identical with, 
the proverbial phrase "sour grapes"4 and all the semantic areas 
involved in the resolution of that metaphor. The set is extendable 
through many dozens of cartoons, a very long list of "anti-fables," 
and other parodies.5 All these latter forms are connected 
theoretically through prior knowledge of the motif and prior 
introduction to the narrative type, often in the nursery. Prior 
knowledge of the "original" story line of the narrative allows satires 
and parodies of that narrative encountered later in life to be success-
fu1.6 

In the same way, a fable set is related to other fable sets by 
commonality of purpose, by form and structure, and by function, 

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Carnes 

among other features. Previous experience with the structure of the fable, 
narrative together with an epimythic "moral," for example, allows predictable 
responses to such structural features when used in another circumstance as, 
say, a joke narrative and punch line. This is a critical feature of the form and 
structure of any genre, although very often overlooked. The structure has 
meaning, of course, as the resolution of the metaphor of the narrative is in 
effect channeled and controlled to a certain extent by the secondary metaphor 
of the epimythium. 

All this needs to be measured against the background of the history of 
the fable and the position of the fable in modem society, on the one hand, and 
studied with regard to the world of children's literature and folklore on the 
other. This is especially important as the learning of fable motifs appears to 
take place primarily in the context of children's literature. Lobel, in particular, 
will take great advantage of the positioning of traditional materials in the 
nursery. 

With regard to the history of the form, generally speaking, we think of 
the fable as incredibly old, dating back to Aesop, a sixth-century B.C. 
Phrygian slave. But the fable is in fact much older than that, with beginnings 
that go back to the earliest known literature.7 The earliest known Sumerian 
fables would have been as old to Aesop as Aesop is to us. The modern fable 
is clearly different from the classical corpus, but equally clearly connected to 
it. All this makes the fable an excellent testing board for the multivalence of 
the motifs and other features of the fable, quite beyond the usual dichotomy 
of "folklore" and "literature." There are features that are to be found in the 
interstices of these categories, in the "harmonics" of the structure and content 
of the texts, such as fabular characterizations (the very specific characters of 
the lion or the fox, for example), the traditional "shape" or length or other 
structural considerations of fable texts which help us respond to a fable in a 
way unlike that of any other genre, its attempt to teach or to instruct, and the 
transparency of resolution of its metaphorical content. These considerations 
are found in classical fables, their folklore reflexes, and their modem 
(essentially literary) analogues.8 They are therefore to be found in both 
literary and orally transmitted forms.9 The fables under discussion here are at 
once firmly footed in that classical tradition and yet float free of it in their 
own way. Lobel's fables are a mixture of the traditional and the literary and 
lay claim to both heritages. The tales are his own literary creations, but the 
connective tissue is comprised of traditional features. 

As we examine Arnold Lobel's Fables we need to remind ourselves that 
the intertextual relationships among the members of any particular fabular 
motif set are important for an understanding of that set or any member of that 

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Arnold Lobel's Fables 

set, but that this is not the only important set of relationships. Indeed, the 
interrelationships to be found among sets, though of a different order, are 
easily shown to be equally important, as there are a number of elements that 
are cross-overs from one set to another. The very shape of fables is an 
important consideration here. Just as we are conditioned to anticipate a 
punch-line after an introductory line of a joke, so too the reader/listener's 
response to fables is very much conditioned by the expectations of the 
approaching "moral."10 Arnold Lobel shares in all of these features in a way 
that allows us to approach his texts a little more closely by identifying his 
reliance upon traditional fabular characters, motifs, and structure. 

Characterization is a prime example of all of these aspects. For example, 
the fabular lion is the King of Beasts, and the fox the Trickster par 
excellence, and those characterizations are fairly consistent. The 
characterization is suprasegmental, if the segments are the individual fabular 
motifs, for the lion is the king of beasts in virtually all fables, including the 
modem parodies, which question the viability of that very aspect of 
traditional fabular lions, just as twentieth-century democracy has taken its toll 
of kings on this planet. 11 

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Carnes 

Lobel's materials are not only in the tradition of previous fables; he has 
made extensive and interesting use of other folklore materials. His fables are 
not overtly traditional fables or anti-fables; that is, they are not refashioned 
tellings of traditional common fables, or parodies of such, but they carry 
much of fable tradition with them. Lobel then has not been dependent upon 
the traditional (that is the Aesopic fables) for much of his raw materials as 
have thousands of fabulists from long before Aesop through La Fontaine and 
beyond; yet part of their tremendous success is clearly due to the fables' 
appeal to tradition. 

This is not the usual fable tradition; in fact, Lobel sometimes ignores or 
"violates" folk tradition for his effects. This is a commonly enough observed 
process to be found in genres and types that exist so comfortably in both 
"literary" and folk tradition, from folk music to Schubert, from academic 
medicine to folk healers, from Märchen to Kunstmärchen, and other binary 
operating genres. 

Lobel does not even depend entirely upon general responses to the fable 
as his pieces are certainly enhanced, if not indeed completed, by the illustra-
tions.12 In all cases, it is clear that the illustrations are more than simply 
decorations; they freeze the action at certain critical points and also provide 
particularly effective reference points or points of recognition when rereading 
the fable. Thus, from a receptor's point of view, seeing the picture, the entire 
text is recalled and re-experienced. There is also the very important 
consideration of direction. This is a very complicated event, involving both 
the intention of the author (which can be approximated here because of two 
elements, pace the zealots for the "intentional fallacy"), and the reception of 
the reader. First of all, the author channels the reader's resolution of the 
metaphor by providing the epimythium or moral tag-line. And secondly, 
since it is this point in the action that is usually the moment of the illustration, 
the illustration supports and reinforces the interpretation intended by the 
author. 

There is in the specific case of Arnold Lobel another factor of signifi-
cance here. Lobel tells us that the fables came in part after the decision to 
draw the animal characters, although he does not say that the scene depicted 
preceded the fable text proper. Lobel describes his choice of animals as 
characters in part as beginning with a list of animals that he thought it would 
be fun to draw (Hood 34-35). 

And, partly as an artifact of the particular position of the modem fable (a 
relatively new feature of which is the de-emphasis of the moral orparaenetic, 
the purely didactic element, of the fable, usually in favor of the satirical or the 
humorous), Lobel's fables float free of the popular expectations of, say, the 

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Arnold Lobel's Fables 

P373 "Ant and the Grasshopper" in that his "morals" are less demanding. 
Lobel's fables are bound to a certain extent by the traditions of the literary 
fable, but they use various folklore traditions very effectively and resonate 
with various harmonics from traditional fables and other narratives. The 
characters too, though not always the traditional Aesopic characters, are often 
highly reminiscent of more familiar fable characters (the fox, lion, ant, wolf, 
mouse and so on) and the traditional "expectations" of characterization (see 
Carnes, "Traditional Expectations"). Lobel's fables seem almost studiously 
distinct from each other with regard to characters; that is to say, not a single 
character shows up as the main character in more than one. The characters are 
all animals, in a sense a somewhat recent "traditional expectation,"13 as the 
classical corpus of fables has more fables with humans as actors (as well as 
fables with plants and inanimate objects) than those with only animals. Lobel 
might have felt constrained to present only animals as these appear to be 
more in keeping what the new "traditional" expectation for a fable today, or it 
may simply have not occurred to him to use any actors other than animals, as 
he implies in an interview about his Fables (Hood 35). 

The animals he chooses, however, are only in part traditional. King Lion 
is, of course, as are the frogs, the bear, and even the crab and the camel, but 
many are not. The lobster occurs as a character in no "canonical" (Le., 
Aesopic) fable of which I am aware, nor does the rhinoceros or the kangaroo. 
The use of these characters proclaims Lobel's independence from some of the 
traditional constraints of the Aesopic fable as much as his title and the 
familiar structuring of his stories claim the advantages of it.14 Yet Lobel has 
taken from all along the fable tradition. 

To begin with, his characters are perhaps even more closely akin than 
the average Aesopic fable character is to what fabular characters truly are or 
are meant to be: costumed humans. It does us no real good to see only a lion 
in the fables about the King of Beasts; we need to recognize the metaphor and 
see in that creature something of ourselves. Lobel, with one significant 
exception, does not let us forget that, even though his creatures act well 
within the boundaries of their natural characteristics.15 In this Lobel is close 
to his contemporary fabulists: William March [Campbell], James Thurber, 
Wolfdietrich Schnurre, Gerhard Branstner, Helmut Arntzen, Jean Anouilh, 
and Hoshi Shin'ichi, among others. There is little pretext here. Thurber's 
version of the tortoise and the hare has the tortoise ironically remind us that 
there is a fable about a tortoise and a hare; he "read in an ancient book" a 
story in which a tortoise beat a hare in a race and never read anything about a 
hare that beat a tortoise in a race, and thinks therefore that he could beat a 
hare and sets out to find one, to challenge him to a race. The tortoise loses, 
naturally 

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(Thurber, Fables 83). Helmut Arntzen's lamb runs away from the stream 
when he sees the wolf. The wolf protests that he would not harm the lamb, but 
the lamb runs away, saying "thank you very much, but I've read my Aesop" 
(64). These are not animals at all, simply humans in sheep's clothing, so to 
speak. Much of Lobel's appeal comes from this sort of thing. His characters 
are not much in the way of allegorical frogs and camels; they are people that 
we all recognize, and that is naturally, precisely the point. 

Lobel's opening fable demonstrates this clearly. "A Crocodile in the 
Bedroom" (2) begins with a Kafka-like (not Kafkaesque, but Kafka-like) 
opening: "A Crocodile became increasingly fond of the wallpaper in his 
bedrooin."16 That situation is the problem. The crocodile stared at the ordered 
patterns of flowers and leaves (well-illustrated in the accompanying drawing 
which catches this aspect of the fable and not its moral or the "action"). The 
crocodile becomes so accustomed to the order that the comparative disarray 
of even the "ordered" growth of Mrs. Crocodile's garden is abhorrent to him. 
Overcome with distaste for the untidiness everywhere around him, he returns 
to his room, takes to his bed, and (we assume) slowly slips from life. Without 
making too much of the similarity, the moral is as much like Kafka as 
anything else: "Without a doubt there is such a thing as too much order." 

There is of course nothing crocodilian about this character at all. Any 
other creature would have done as well, but Lobel has chosen a character that 
seems, to judge by its natural appearance, to be about as far as could be from 
a sentient creature capable of even the limited aesthetic responses needed for 
the narrative, his own statement about choosing characters that were "fun to 
draw," notwithstanding. We are set up for this by the title which serves in the 
office of a promythium, but one is still completely unprepared for the ill- 
fitting match of character and narrative. One would have expected in a 
traditional tale a more naturally orderly creature: a raccoon, a social insect, 
perhaps. The choice of the crocodile as an exponent of aesthetics makes this 
modem fable turn the traditional fable on its ear and outfits it with a finely 
tuned sense of humor that approaches the grand paradox of Disney's having a 
dragon friendly to children.17 

Characterization in ''The Ducks and the Fox" (5), on the other hand, is 
completely straightforward. The fox is sly and plans to catch and eat the 
ducks, a familiar response of foxes toward ducks both in the natural and the 
fabular worlds. The ducks are silly and only just barely recognize the fox as 
enemy, but they are beguiled by him in the traditional Aesopic and Märchen 
manner. The fox very nearly talks the two ducks into his sack, just as the fox 
talks the crow out of the cheese in the innumerable versions of their classical 

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Arnold Lobel's Fables 

fable. The ending is thoroughly modem and fits very well even with silly 
ducks. The fable has a traditional conflict between, incidentally, two clearly 
opposite forces (as is the usual case in fables). However, the ending appears 
contrived-perhaps for the sake of the moral tag line or epimythium. The 
epimythium does seem more typical of Lobel's (and our) own time: "At 
times, a change of routine can be most helpful." The irony generated by the 
distance between what sounds like a slogan of the jogging 70s and 80s, on the 
one hand, and the understatement of the moral, on the other, is highly 
effective, indeed much more so here than in many of his other morals. 

Lobel's use of traditional characterization is best seen in "King Lion and 
the Beetle" (7). This fable is far from an Aesopic one, but it is firmly 
dependent upon the reader/listener' s response to such fables, upon the reader/ 
listener's being responsive to fables in general and having heard Aesopic 
fables before. Although the fable itself is a new one, the incremental 
characterization of the Lion wherever he appears in fables is assumed. The 
Lion is the King of Beasts-from the two classical versions of the "Lion's 
Share" fable to the "Aged Lion and Fox," and a host of others through the 
modem Lion in the Ass's skin cycle of Helmut Arntzen and the Lion's Share 
fable by James Thurber. Here Lobel does not depend upon his audience's 
knowing any particular fable as much as knowing about the general fabular 
lion's characterization. The lion's role in society and his comical vain 
insistence upon his "kingliness" is the point of the fable and causes the lion's 
(literal) downfall. His vanity, expressed physically with robes, heavy jewels 
and a crown, causes the lion to fall into the mud, down to the level of the 
beetle from whom he demands acknowledgment. None of Lobel's other 
fables depends upon traditional characterization as much as this one does. 

There are, however, examples of unexpected behavior within what 
appears to be a number of more "natural" characterizations. This sometimes 
bizarre behavior is elusive and ill-defined, but highly effective. "The Bear 
and the Crow" (16) is a case in point. Behind the highly effective 
composition of the narrative as a fable, the characterization stands out as 
particularly vivid, in part because of the use of a traditional fabular actor in 
an uncommon role. The crow, the deceived in most fables, becomes the 
deceiver here. The bear, although not unknown as a gullible creature in 
fables, is more obvious in that role in the cyclical animal tale. Emphasis upon 
the characterization here, however, no matter how interesting, must not draw 
the reader away from the point of the fable, from the fact that we are all not 
just creatures in fables, but creatures of fashion in the literal sense. Those 
who allow themselves to be talked into the bear's situation have brought it 
upon themselves, even though the crow is not altogether blameless. The 
epimythium is weaker here than in 

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most of Lobel's fables and is indeed not really needed at all. A well-chosen 
epimythium can often add to even a well-told story, much as an emblem 
enhances the effect of a proverb or motto. In Lobel's case, the illustrations are 
equally effective and often surpass the epimythium in drawing the attention of 
the reader to the point of the fable. 

A particular striking example of that is to be found in "The Baboon's 
Umbrella" (12). There are two characters: the baboon, who complained that 
he was unable to close his umbrella, and his obliging friend the gibbon, who 
suggested the cutting of large gaping holes in it. The action is easily foreseen 
as the rain begins to fall. The baboon and the gibbon here are not disturbingly 
out of character at all. Although they are not drawn from standard fabular 
characters, they do function quite well as actors. This is a very well-
constructed fable, and a great deal of its strength and appeal comes from the 
moral tag line: "Advice from friends is like the weather. Some of it is good 
and some of it is bad." I rather suspect that Lobel purposely sidestepped the 
obvious line available to him in constructing his moral with "fair weather" 
and "friends," but he has certainly felt the need for a moral couched in a 
quasiproverbial phrase. 

The natural characteristics of animals is the third source of elements 
from which a fabulist can draw for his work. This is as old as the originator of 
the Tortoise and the Hare fable, in which the actual speed of the hare is 
matched to the actual slowness of the tortoise. Modem fabulists in general 
have made more use of this aspect than was the case in earlier literary fables, 
but Lobel uses it most effectively. In fact Lobel parodies the very process in 
his fourth fable: "The Crab and the Lobster" (8). We are so accustomed to 
looking for metaphors in fables (and allowing for the convention that animals 
speak), we are taken aback when the actors in a fable actuality are the 
creatures that they are and moreover are in fact in possession of their natural 
characteristics. As the two crustaceans set sail on the sea, they encounter a 
storm and the boat begins to sink. The lobster answers the crab's horrified 
cries with: 

Of course, we are sinking. This old boat is full of holes. 
Have courage, old friend. Remember, we are creatures of the sea. 

Of course they are. The marvel here is that we, too, as fable readers, are not 
accustomed to having fable creatures operate in their own natural elements, 
as natural creatures, or falling back upon natural abilities to save them-
selves.18 Even the crab seems to have forgotten that although he is playing a 
costumed human in the fable, he can still live under water. The epimythium, 
"Even the taking of small risks will add excitement to life," is effective again 
for its irony. There are, of course, no risks involved at all. 

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The natural crowing of roosters at dawn, and their folktale proclivity to 
do so, is well-exploited in Lobel's "The Young Rooster" (37). This is 
especially effective, for the conflict comes about precisely of the fact that the 
young rooster does not seem able to "crow up the sun," as his first day "on 
the job" is cloudy and overcast. This results in failure for the young rooster 
who is now discouraged. All the barnyard animals decry the disastrous lack 
of sun. The bull, in an attempt to help, provides the rooster with the 
marvelously incongruent fact that the sun is 93,000,000 miles away, a 
statement that is not likely to have occurred in any Aesopic fable (and 
inserted, I rather suspect, for precisely that reason). 

The mouse in the "The Mouse at the Seashore" (10) is another character 
chosen for its natural qualities. Once the premise of the fable is accepted, 
then the dangers encountered are those that a mouse would be likely to run 
into: a cat, a bird, and dogs-all of which attack him. He loses his way and is 
bloodied time and again, but the sight of the sea is worth it all. The 
epimythium is an overstatement made redundant by the charming illustration 
of the mouse sitting on the sand dune watching the sun set over the sea. Here, 
then, the fact that the fable is not about mice at all is clear. The natural 
enemies pitted against the mouse misdirect the reader into thinking that 
indeed the story is about a mouse, but the final scene and the exquisite 
illustration bring us back to our world, resolve the metaphor, and remind us 
that we are talking about us, in a way that is completely consistent with the 
Aesopic tradition. 

In contrast to the fables discussed above, there are a number of instances 
in which Lobel has purposefully strayed from the natural characteristics of 
certain animals, but has stayed in sight of their roles in traditional folk 
literature and, in some instances, in children's literature. The resulting effect 
is mixed. The hippopotamus in "The Hippopotamus at Dinner" (38) is 
perhaps an obvious choice on the surface for gluttony, but the hippo is not in 
fact a glutton, just a bulky animal whose dimensions are translated into 
obesity when compared to a human scale of girth. It is the nature of the hippo 
to be overtly fat from the human point of view, but it does not follow that he 
would "over-order" in a restaurant. The situation takes advantage of some 
characteristics of hippos, real or imagined: hippos seem (to humans) to be fat, 
and that seems to imply overeating. This is one of Lobel’s "weakest" fables, 
and the epimythium: "Too much of anything often leaves one with a feeling 
of regret," does not save it from being relatively ineffective. The motif is a 
common one in folk literature: the hippo overeats and then cannot leave the 
table (cave, hollow tree, etc.), having grown too large. It is significant that 
this precise motif is found in children's literature in a number of instances, the 
chapter in Winnie the Pooh with Pooh and the honey pot being but one 
example.19 

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Carnes 

, 

Further, the wolf, in the somewhat misnamed ''The Hen and the Apple 
Tree" (11), plays an even more traditional folk-literature role, that of 
assuming a disguise in order to obtain his prey. Although this is not a 
behavior of wolves observable in nature, it is clearly one common 
characteristic of wolves in folk literature. The Märchen "Little Red Riding 
Hood" is only one example; there are fabular disguised wolves as well: "Wolf 
and the Kid" (P572), which has of course a much later Märchen reflex, in 
Grimm no. 5, for example. The innovative twist Lobel gives his wolf here is 
twofold: first, the wolf is disguised as an apple tree, and second, in an even 
more anti-traditional feature, the hen sees through the disguise. The wolf, 
quite uncharacteristically, "knew that he had been outsmarted," an unusual 
insight for the plastic characters of the fable; but that having been said, the 
fable ought to end there, rather than with the too obvious "It is always 
difficult to pose as something else." It is that line, one suspects, that Lobel 
was writing toward. It is clearly designed for the children for whom the 
"moral" is intended. 

There are also the somewhat abstracted natural characteristics of animals 
that are chosen for fables here. The ostrich is popularly believed to be afraid 
and thus the "Shy Lover" Ostrich is a natural secondary overtone (21). The 
camel is clearly one of the most unlikely animals to be chosen to play the part 
of a ballerina and, therefore, is an excellent choice for a fable in which the 
main actor is shown not being able to do what she wanted to do well, but "she 
will dance just for herself" (22). Actually, there is an Aesopic fable about a 

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camel dancing, P83 "Ape and Camel," known from the earliest Greek prose 
tradition, in which the camel tried to dance and was so ridiculed that he was 
forced to leave the gathering of the animals. 

Some of Lobel's fables have characters and situations that are not 
standard, not traditional, and not specie-specific. Lobel is not the first to use 
animals this way, but he is surely the first to write a fable about a vain 
rhinoceros (a capsule "Emperor's Clothes," A-T 1620; TMI K445) or a 
peculiar fable about an elephant and his son (32) that has nothing to do with 
elephants and does not show any general or specific characteristic of el-
ephants. "The Pelican and the Crane" (35) also owes nothing to the natural 
traits or physical attributes of pelicans and cranes, but succeeds extremely 
well. Lobel pays the price of his independence in this regard: he must 
characterize his actors to set up the moral. The grand advantage of using 
traditional characteristics and traditional traits of fabular characters is the 
shorthand and "instant characterization" afforded by that tradition. The fable 
is best when very short, and that is accomplished in the easiest fashion by 
letting traditional characterization supply those features for which the animal 
was selected. When using an animal that is not somehow characterized in 
traditional literature, the author has to create some of that characterization 
himself. That is difficult in the short space allowed a fable. In the "Pelican 
and the Crane," Lobel has to set the stage and establish the characters early 
on. In the first line, we read "The Crane invited the Pelican to tea." We know 
nothing about Lobel's general idea of cranes and pelicans, nor this specific 
fable crane and this specific fable pelican as yet. "No one invites me 
anywhere," says the pelican, and we ought to be on our guard for the reason 
for that statement. That is, naturally, the very point: 

 "Entirely my pleasure," said the Crane to the Pelican, passing 
him the sugar bowl. "Do you take sugar in your tea?" 
 "Yes, thank you," said the Pelican. He dumped half the sugar 
into his cup, while spilling the other half on the floor. 

That is the element of characterization we need. The pelican continues with: 
"I seem to have no friends at all." The crane then asks if he takes milk. Some 
of the milk goes in the tea, but most ends up on the floor-and our suspicions 
are confirmed. A third clumsy act is needed to make the point most 
effectively, and pelican does this by stuffing so large a pile of cookies into 
his mouth that his shirt is covered with cookie remnants. This is the point of 
the action shown us in the illustration. The moral tag-line: "When one is a 
social failure, the reasons are as clear as day," could easily be entered in 
pencil under William March [Campbell]'s fable no. 22, "Polecat and His 
Friends." The 

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Carnes 

polecat in this fable was indignant at the manner in which he was treated by 
the other animals, and he complained bitterly to an old tortoise about the 
"undemocratic snobs" and the fact that they never invited him to any of their 
parties. The old tortoise at the end is forced to point out: "well, after all, you 
do stink a little" (March [Campbell] 42-43). Campbell's polecat does stink, 
and this aspect of the animal actor results in the clever finale. But Lobel has to 
create the unsavory manners of the Pelican, as manners, good or bad, are not 
commonly attributed to pelicans. 

There are other features outside of characterization in this collection that 
tie these fables to traditional materials, such as the idea of gold (and diamonds 
and pearls) at the end of the rainbow as the central motif for "Frogs at the 
Rainbow's End" (14) or the Märchen tendency for "threes" in the Pelican and 
Crane fable and elsewhere throughout the collection. The collection depends 
to a great extent upon such traditional features, and that is as it should be. 
Such ties facilitate reception of the work for both children and adults (see 
Carnes, "Fable and Proverb" 56-61). But these fables are literature, and 
everywhere there is the distinctive hand of the craftsman using traditional 
materials to aid, not to dictate, the development of his materials. 

If today' s fable has any true "direction" at all, then it is to be found as a 
vector of the work of such fabulists as Thurber, Schnurre, and Lobel. Its 
function is close to the necessity to point out society's little faults, not the 
grand socio-economic schemes, and its responses are from us on a medium-
burner level, because these are all we have time for. They are successful, no 
longer quite on the rhetorical level of the traditional Aesopic fable, nor on the 
poetic-genre level of the seventeenth-century La Fontaine or his eighteenth-
century followers, nor even on the somewhat "higher" moral plane of the 
fable of the sixteenth century, but on the level of common knowledge and 
utility, and especially on the plane of traditional, familiar materials presented 
in a somewhat untraditional manner, mostly for fun. 

Lake Forest College 
Lake Forest, IL 

Notes 

1. The call for example issued a quarter of a century ago by Alan Dundes is as valid 
today as then, even though Dundes himself has sharpened a number of genre lines 
in many categories and has worked extraordinarily well with many areas and with 
many types of materials without such delimitations. The surprising lack of 
definitions and clear-cut categories--with the fable a specific case in point--is 

14 



 

Arnold Lobel's Fables 

best seen in the introduction to Dan Ben-Amos, ed., Folklore Genres, and the 
bibliography cited there. 

2. The fable in fact is generally defined as such. See, for example, Smith, which has 
not been much improved upon, save by increasingly allowing more freedom to the 
form in Perry, Aesopica, and Leibfried, all of which leave out the oral component, 
some aspects of the structure, or the essentials of context and the like. 

3. Fables here are identified by "Perry number," that is, the number of that fable as 
found in Ben Edwin Perry's monumental Aesopica. I use Perry numbers to 
indicate the set of fables, one element of which (and often the earliest known 
member) is to be found in Perry. Obviously that set could be designated by other 
schemes. Wherever possible, the set designate includes the tale type number, as 
well as the corresponding motif index numbers, from Aarne-Thompson, here 
designated A-T, and Thompson, here TMI, respectively. 

The sets extend far beyond the fable forms of course; clearly the proverbial 
phrase "sour grapes" belongs to the same set as the fable "Fox and Grapes (as in 
Perry, Aesopica, no. IS), and the folktale equivalents found under A-T 59 are also 
members of that set. See Carnes, ''The Fable and the Anti-Fable," for a more 
complete discussion of fable sets and their members, especially with regard to the 
fables and their "anti-fable," analogues. 

4. See Stahl, reprinted in Carnes, Proverbia in Fabula, and the introduction to that 
volume. For details of the relationship of the phrase to the fable, see Carnes, 
"Fable and Proverb." 

5. The term anti-fable is coined on analogy of Wolfgang Mieder's "Anti-Sprichwort" 
and refers to the burlesques or travesties constructed upon those Aesopic motifs 
that can be assumed to be part of the cultural baggage of the reader. Examples 
include James Thurber's "Turtle and the Hare" (P226, A-T275A; TMI Kl 1.3), in 
which the Rabbit wins (See Carnes, Fable Scholarship 5-9). In the version of this 
narrative type by the Japanese Science-Fiction writer Hoshi Shin'ichi, the rabbit 
does not win, as the turtle has the rabbit arrested for speeding, and the turtle wins 
by default. For Hoshi Shin'ichi and his concept of the anti-fable, see Carnes, "The 
Fable and the Anti-Fable." Jokes cast in fabular form, with narrative and "moral" 
are legion, for examples and discussion, see Gerth, and Carnes, "The Fable Joke." 

6. In contrast, however, this does not mean that prior knowledge of the fable is 
essential in order to understand the proverbial phrase associated with that fable. 
Rather stringent testing has revealed that knowledge of the fable was absent in the 
majority of those who recognized phrases such as "Lion's Share," "Out of the 
Frying Pan, Into the Fire," "Sour Grapes," and the like. Most receptors did not 
know the fable source, nor recognized it after being told. It is significant that 
virtually none of these understood the phrase in the so-called "standard" metaphor 
resolution. For details, see Carnes, "Introduction," Proverbia in Fabula, and 
"Fable and Proverb," 55-76. 

15 



 

Carnes 

7. See, for example, the materials in Lambert, and Jason and Kempinski. The Jason 
and Kempinski article attempts to date the earliest known narratives. Their dates 
are fairly firm, depending upon a conservative estimate of the earliest recorded 
written record. In some cases, the dates are easily extendible one or two thousand 
years, even assuming that there was no significant period of oral transmission, 
which there clearly was. Of the five they identified as the earliest narratives, all are 
or are potentially fables, and one or two of the earliest are known today as jokes 
and as fables. 

8. The modern forms are of three types, although the distinction ought not to be too 
finely drawn. There are essentially modern fables which are written more or less as 
classical fables are, and then there is another closely associated category which 
consist of parodies of classical forms, i.e., the above mentioned "anti-fables." Most 
modern fabulists write fables of both of these sorts. The third category is that into 
which all of Lobel's fables fall. They are essentially "new" fables in that they use 
for the most part "new" motifs and narratives (although there is borrowing all 
along the tradition). Most modern fabulists write some "new" fables, even those, 
like Thurber and Ambrose Bierce, who "specialize" in antifables. 

9. I do not wish to restrict myself to these two categories, but they will do if 
considered only provisionally. There are a number of other possibilities, such as 
printed commercials, advertisements, "xerox-lore" (now commonly "faxlore"), 
and quite a few other venues. 

10. This is actually fairly modern. The consolidation of the macro-structure of the 
fable into the "standard" form today was leveled out in the Middle Ages on 
analogy of examples from classical times (see Perry, "The Origin of the 
Epimythium"). There have been a number of attempts to change these formal 
structures throughout the ages, but the modern fable has been fairly consistent in 
favor of the moral tag line. Lobel suggests that he thought first of not having 
epimythia: "they simply seemed very much out of date." But in the end, he 
decided that fables seemed somehow not complete without them (Hood 35). 
There are in fact a few modern fabulists who use no epimythia (Wolfdietrich 
Schnurre, for example), and one very important modern fabulist who uses only 
promythia(usually in badly rhyming couplets), the (once East) Berliner, Gerhard 
Branstner. It is important to note that the use of the moral tag-line is so strongly 
ingrained in most modern fabulists, that some, such as Thurber add epymithia to 
other genres, such as re-cast Märchen, which of course never had them, and 
which were not told for the purpose of the moral as fables were. See Thurber's 
version of "Little Red Riding Hood," entitled ''The Little Girl and the Wolf' 
(Thurber, Fables 4-5), discussed in Carnes, Fable Scholarship 5-6. Evenjokes 
that are masquerading as fables (see Carnes, ''The Fable Joke") have pseudo-
epimythia "punchlines." 

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Arnold Lobel's Fables 

11. The point is easily made: Thurber's "Lion's Share" fable (Thurber, "Further 
Fables" 23-2) has King Lion lose all the booty in the form of taxes and hunting 
licenses. Helmut Arntzen's lion (6) does not fare any better: he is informed that, 
although he is still technically "King of the Beasts," he is now only a constitu-
tional monarch in a parliamentarian democracy. Modern jokes about the fall of 
King Lion are legion (see Carnes,"The Fable and the Anti-Fable" 26-27, for 
examples). 

12. Much work is needed on the reaction to folk elements when accompanied by 
illustrations. A number of modern fabulists illustrate their own work, and not 
only for children's books. In addition to Lobel, James Thurber, Wolfdiedrich 
Schnurre, James Kniss-who write fables especially for children-all illustrated 
their fables themselves. There is need for studies of the interaction of both 
"texts," i.e., the fable narrative and illustration. The history of fable illustration 
remains unwritten, but a marvelous start has been made for illustrations through 
the seventeenth century in Hodnett 57-72 and 168-222, although none of these 
ideas are discussed. 

13. This is an artifact of survival only. Very few fables from the Greek prose   
tradition have survived into the very limited corpus of Aesopica alive today. 

14. In a sense, this is necessary. In nothing more than this is an important ethos 
between literature and folklore clearly seen. The traditional, the folklore artifact 
claims unity with others of its kind and in that it finds its existence and its appeal. 
Literature, on the other hand, claims and insists upon its distinctiveness, away 
from the group, away from tradition. The virtue of the one is the anathema of the 
other. Modern fabulists are just as likely to use many non-traditional characters 
in non-traditional fabular motifs as to use the more familiar forms. 

15. Lobel says much the same thing in his interview with Susan Hood, an editor of 
the journal Instructor. There he describes his characters as representative of 
himself. 

16. A number of modern fabulists seem to be drawn to Franz Kafka (who wrote 
fables himself, or, perhaps more properly, he wrote one true fable, and a number 
of other pieces that are "fabular" in nature, but not Aesopic in type). One of the 
most striking examples of this Kafka connection is found in the seventeenth 
fable, "La Cucaracha Sonadora," in Augusto Monterroso' s fable collection. In 
this fable" ...a Cockroach named Gregor Samsa dreamed that he was a cockroach 
named Franz Kafka who dreamed that he was a writer who wrote about a clerk 
named Gregor Sarnsa, who dreamed that he was a Cockroach" (Monterroso 59). 

17. Many modern fables do this, in contrast to the classical corpus. Wolfdietrich 
 Schnurre uses a rabbit as an example for vainglorious behavior (9); a rooster is 

17 



 

Carnes 

made the vehicle for a moral about seeing "with the sun" and not against it, in 
Branstner (no. 16), and so on. 

18. The irony created by the distance we normally create as a response to the 
structure of a fable to its characters and content, keeps us from remembering that 
these characters, after all, live at the bottom of the sea. This is similar to the 
cartoon figure of Daffy Duck, who, falling from a tall mountain and plunging 
down to "certain death," suddenly remembers that he is a duck and, as such, can 
fly. 

19. This is P24 (TMI K1022.1), with the classic forms represented by Babrius 86, and 
it is A-T 41 (see, for example, no. 73 in the Grimm collection) usually with a fox 
or bear, instead of a hippo. 

Works Cited 

Anouilh, Jean. Fables. Paris: La Table Ronde, 1962. 
Arntzen, Helmut. Kurzer Prozefi Aphorismen und Fabeln. Munich: Nymphenberg, 

1966. 
Ben-Amos, Dan, ed. Folklore Genres. Austin: U of Texas P, 1976. 
Bierce, Ambrose. Fantastic Fables. New York: Putnam, 1898. Rpt: New York: 
 Dover, 1970. 
Branstner, Gerhard. Der Esel als Amtsmann oder Das Tier ist auch ein Mensch: 
 Fabeln. Berlin: Der Morgen, 1977. 
Carnes, Pack. ''The American Face of Aesop: Thurber's Fables and Tradition." 

Moderna Sprak 80 (1986): 3-17. Rpt. in Carnes, Pack. Proverbia in Fabula: 
Essays on the Relationship of the Proverb and the Fable. Bern: Lang: 1988. 

 311-31. 
_______. "Fable and Proverb: Intertexts and Reception." Proverbium 8 (1991): 55-76. 
_______. ''The Fable and the Anti-Fable: The Modem Faces of Aesop." Bestia: 

Yearbook of the International Beast Fable Society 4 (1992): 5-33. 
_______. "The Fable Joke." Southwest Folklore 5 (1981): 1-9. 
_______. Fable Scholarship: An Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1985. 
_______. ed. Proverbia in Fabula: Essays on the Relationship of the Proverb 
  and the Fable. Bern: Lang, 1988. 
_______. "Traditional Expectations in the Modem Fable." Neohelikon 11 (1983): 
 203-16. 
Dundes, Alan. "Texture, Text and Context." Southern Folklore Quarterly 28 
 (1964): 251-65. Rpt.in Dundes, Alan. Interpreting Folklore. Bloomington: 
 Indiana UP, 1980. 20-32. 
Gerth, Klaus. "Fabeln und Witze." Praxis Deutsch: Zeitschrift für den 
 Deutschunterricht 11 (March 1984): 14-24. 
Hodnett, Edward. Francis Barlow: First Master of English Book Illustration. 
 Ilkley, Yorkshire: Scolar P and U of California P, 1978. 
Hood, Susan. "Crocodile's Terror and an Elephant's Error-That's What Arnold 
 Lobel's Fables are Made of." Instructor 90 (May 1981): 34-39. 

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Arnold Lobel's Fables 

Hoshi Shin'ichi. Mirai Issopu [The Future Aesop]. Tokyo: Shincho-sha, 1971. Jason, 
Heda, and Aharon Kempinski. "How Old are Folktales?" Fabula 22 (1981): 

1-27. 
Krüss, James. Die Schiffbrüchigen oder die Fabelinsel. Berlin: Die Kinderbuch 

Verlag, 1985. 
Lambert, W. G. Babylonian Wisdom Literature. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1960. 
Leibfried, Erwin. Fabel. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1967. 
Lobel, Arnold. "Ca1decott Meda1 Acceptance." Horn Book Magazine 57 [4] 

(1981): 400-4. 
_______. Fables. New York: Harper, 1980. 
March [Campbell], William. 99 fables by william march, edited and with an 
 introduction by william t. going. University, AL: U of Alabama P, 1960. 
Mieder, Wolfgang. Antisprichwörter. Wiesbaden: Verlag für deutsche 
 Sprache, 1982. 
Monterroso, Augusto. The Black Sheep and Other Fables. Trans. Walter I. 
 Bradbury. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971. Trans. of La oveja negra 
 y demás fabulas. Mexico: Joaquin Moritz, 1969. 
Perry, Ben Edwin. Aesopica: Greek and Latin Texts. Urbana, IL: U of Illinois P, 
 1952. 
______. "The Origin of the Epimythium." Transactions of the American 
 Philological Society 73 (1940): 391-419. 
Schnurre, Wolfdietrich. Der Spatz in der Hand: Fabeln und Verse. Munich: Albert 
 Langen, 1973. 
Smith, M. Ellwood. "The Fable and Kindred Forms." Journal of English and 
 Germanic Philology 14 (1915): 519-29. 
Stahl, Sandra. "Sour Grapes: Fable, Proverb, Unripe Fruit." Folklore on Two 

Continents: Essays in Honor of Linda Degh. Eds. Nikolai Burlakoff and Carl 
Lindahl. Bloomington: Trickster P, 1980.160-68. Rpt. in Carnes, Pack. 
Proverbia in Fabula: Essays on the Relationship of the Proverb and the Fable. 
Bern: Lang, 1988.295-309. 

Thurber, James. Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated. New 
 York: Harper, 1939. 
______. Further Fables for Our Time. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956. 

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