Classical fables as arguments

narration and analogy

Paula Olmos

pp. 189-208

in: Henrique Jales Ribeiro (ed), Systematic approaches to argument by analogy, Berlin, Springer, 2014

Abstract

Aristotle's Rhetoric (1393a26ff) mentions fables as a specific type of paradeigma or argument by example, which he finds are good for popular persuasion (dēmēgorikoi). Classical tradition kept paying attention to this kind of composition (logos muthikos) and its argumentative qualities by including it in the standard list of rhetorical exercises (progymnasmata) that every student should be able to construe by the end of his education. In this paper, we will take a look at both this kind of theoretical approach to fables, typical of the rhetorical textbook tradition, which insists on the plausibility of the analogy traced between an impossible fabulous world and the real human world, as based on its narrative qualities, and at certain examples belonging to the catalogue of classical fables (Aesopica). We will see there is a variety of fable types, in which the relative distance of the analogous, source and target domains plays an important role in determining the kind of argument that may be employed to support it: from straightforward generalizations, which may be justifiably treated, in Aristotelian terms, as "rhetorical inductions", to much more elaborate and imaginative analogies.

Cited authors

Aristoteles