What are the characteristics of fables?

The characteristics of fable:

1, fables are generally short in length, incisive and concise in language, relatively simple in structure and extremely rich in expressive force.

2. Fables are obviously instructive and ironic. Metaphor is often used to reflect educational themes or profound truths in simple stories. Most theme ideas use this as a metaphor for another, for the near, for the present, and for the great.

3. Fable stories are generally fictional, and the protagonist is more casual, which can be a person or a thing.

4. The rhetorical devices commonly used in fables are metaphor, exaggeration, symbol and personification.

5. "Yu" means "sustenance", that is, putting the author's thoughts in a story to make people understand some truth.

Fable is a literary genre that gives meaningful truth to concrete stories and gives people inspiration. It's short, but concise. The hero of the story can be a person, or an anthropomorphic animal, plant or other thing. The word first appeared in Zhuangzi, rose in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, and later became a genre of literary works.

Extended data:

Fable is destined to be a kind of writing that is weaker and lower than history, because it is related to the anecdote fable writing of pre-Qin philosophers. Its source is the "heresy" of non-Confucianism and Taoism. However, fable reading is a common reading method for Confucian scholars. In this mode, readers realize the novel nature of the story, so they don't regard it as real history. The real significance of these novels lies in their didactic and philosophical aspects.

China began to popularize fables as early as the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. At that time, some thinkers used fables as a means of debate. In order to defeat each other in political opinions and clarify their own views, mutual accusations and arguments are often based on ancient myths, legends, folk stories or proverbs. Through artistic processing, lively and abstract arguments are used instead of arguments to have a heated debate.

China's folk fables are extremely rich and generally short. In addition to the Han nationality, there are fables of ethnic minorities. Most of the fables created by people of all ethnic groups take animals as the protagonists, and use the activities and relationships of animals to throw in a lesson or metaphor to achieve the purpose of fable.

It reflects the healthy and simple thoughts of the working people and shines with the infinite wisdom and noble morality of the people. China's ancient fables have a long history and were formed in the pre-Qin period. It has gone through five stages: the fable of reasoning in pre-Qin, the fable of exhortation in Han Dynasty, the satirical fable in Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, the satirical fable in Tang and Song Dynasties and the humorous fable in Ming and Qing Dynasties.

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