La symbolique animale dans les Fables de Phèdre

Abstract

In his from Aesop translated fables, Phaedrus shows animal figures which noticeably differ from those of his Greek model. If these changes can partially be due to the versifying of the Aesopian fables, they above all attest to redefinition of fabulous genre in the Ist century AD, when fable takes on a more critical and caricatural dimension than in Greek compilations. The Latin fabulist strives indeed to paint a synthetic portrait, both physical and moral, of these animal figures, so as to make fabulous (stereo)types of them, likely to shoulder a well defined symbolism that could become constitutive of a new Latin fable genre.

Keywords

• fable
• Aesop
• Phaedrus
• animal
• morality
• critic