ABSTRACT
An ancient form of literature, numbering among its early examples the Indian Panchatantra and the Greek fables attributed to Aesop, the beast fable is represented in extant Middle English literature before Chaucer’s “Nun’s Priest’s Tale” only by The Fox and the Wolf. Nevertheless, the beast fable represents a long and important tradition. Aesop’s tales appeared early in Latin collections in the first and fourth centuries and again in a widely popular prose collection of the tenth century. An English translation of the latter is said to have been prepared for Henry I. Perhaps Marie de France was alluding to that lost translation when she declared that her Anglo-Norman Fables (ca. 1189) were translated from English.
