Animal tale
An animal tale or beast fable generally consists of a short story or poem in which animals talk. It is a traditional form of allegorical writing.
Important traditions in beast fables are represented by the Panchatantra and Kalila and Dimna, Aesop, One Thousand and One Nights and separate trickster traditions. The medieval French cycle of allegories, Roman de Reynart is called a beast-epic, with the recurring figure Reynard the fox.
Beast fables are typically transmitted freely between languages, and often assume pedagogic roles: for example, Latin versions of Aesop were standard as elementary textbook material in the European Middle Ages, and the Uncle Remus stories brought trickster tales into English. A more recent example, in English literature, was George Orwell's allegorical novel Animal Farm, in which various political ideologies were personified as animals, such as the Stalinist Napoleon Pig, and the numerous "sheep" that followed his directions without question.
