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Fables and Moral Tales

Short tales told to teach, including the fable, the beast fable, the exemplum, the cautionary tale, the teaching story and the anecdote told to make a point. A genre belongs here when its cited article describes it as a story or tale that carries a moral, a warning or a lesson. The group sits within the Epic and Heroic Narrative subcategory of the genre roster and gathers the genres of this kind that the atlas already records, so that a reader can browse related genres together and compare how each one is defined.

Fables and Moral Tales
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Fable (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia Foundation
  • Has Member: Fable, Lead section
    Fable is a literary genre defined as a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, legendary creatures, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature that are anthropomorphised, and that illustrates or leads to a particular moral lesson (a "moral"), which may at the end be added explicitly as a concise maxim or saying.
  • Has Member: Beast Fable, Lead section
    Fable is a literary genre defined as a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, legendary creatures, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature that are anthropomorphised, and that illustrates or leads to a particular moral lesson (a "moral"), which may at the end be added explicitly as a concise maxim or saying.
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Exemplum - Wikipedia
Has Member: Exemplum, Lead section
Quote, Has Member: Exemplum, Lead section
An exemplum (plural: exempla or exemplums; meaning "byspel" or "example" in Latin) is a moral anecdote, brief or extended, real or fictitious, used to illustrate a point.
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Cautionary tale, Wikipedia
Has Member: Cautionary Tale, Lead section
Quote, Has Member: Cautionary Tale, Lead section
A cautionary tale or moral tale is a tale told in folklore to warn its listener of a danger.
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Teaching stories (Wikipedia)
Has Member: Teaching Stories, Lead section
Quote, Has Member: Teaching Stories, Lead section
A teaching story is a narrative that has been deliberately created as a vehicle for the transmission of wisdom.
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Anecdote (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationHas Member: Anecdote, Lead section
Quote, Has Member: Anecdote, Lead section
An anecdote is "a story with a point", such as to communicate an abstract idea about a person, place, or thing through the concrete details of a short narrative or to characterize by delineating a specific quirk or trait.
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Apologue (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationHas Member: Apologue, Lead paragraph
Quote, Has Member: Apologue, Lead paragraph
An apologue or apolog (from the Greek ἀπόλογος, a "statement" or "account") is a brief fable or allegorical story with pointed or exaggerated details, meant to serve as a pleasant vehicle for a moral doctrine or to convey a useful lesson without stating it explicitly.
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Aggadah (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationHas Member: Aggadah, Lead section
Quote, Has Member: Aggadah, Lead section
The predominant rabbinic holding is that Aggadah is meant to impart moral or theological truths through the form of allegory in order to be accessible, and it does not have to be taken literally.
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