This document provides an overview of lessons on folktales, fables, and parables. It defines these terms, explaining that folktales are passed down orally over generations and may criticize social attitudes, while fables use animal characters to convey moral lessons without offending. The lessons will have students examine life lessons and social norms reinforced in these stories, and consider why themes like the weak outwitting the strong appear across cultures and their implications for human society. Students will complete a short test to assess their understanding.

1. Unit 6 Lessons overview Folktales, Fables, and Prables

2. 6.1 Lesson We are going to be watching and reading several fables. As we do so, we are going to be examining the life lessons that are taught as well as the accepted behaviors in society that are being reinforced.

3. 6.1 First, fables, folktales, and parables are old forms of fiction. Remember, in the last unit we looked at the elements of short stories. Now we are going to look at folk tales. These are usually passed down from one generation to another by word of mouth. Look at a brief definition of each of these types:

4. 6.1 Folktale: A short narrative which comes from "the people" as a whole. There is no single author. Older people who handed them down to younger generations told these tales out loud over and over again. Consequently, every version of the tale is a little different from the version that came before. Folktales often seem to be about critical stages of life: birth, initiation, courtship, marriage, death, and work, and amusement. Some people argue that helping children work through their conflicts is one of the folktale's most important functions. Another important function of the folktale might be to criticize common social attitudes, traditions, or behaviors.

5. 6.2 Aesop used animals who talk and who act like humans to tell his stories called fables. Rather than pointedly telling people they acted funny, were misbehaving or were acting too proudly, Aesop would have the animals do the acting and talking for him. As people don’t like to be corrected or made to seem foolish, Aesop was able to get his ideas across without hurting anyone’s feelings or making them feel awkward

6. 6.2 Aesop is considered by many to be the “Father of the Fable. Aesop himself never wrote his stories down People all over the world have known and loved Aesop and his fables for a long time.

7. 6.2 The Aesopian fables emphasize the social interactions of human beings, and the morals they draw tend to embody advice on the best way to deal with the competitive realities of life. With some irony, fables view the world in terms of its power structures

8. 6.2 The characters in fables are usually flat (barely described) rather than round (richly described). Also, in fables and folktales the setting is usually an unspecified time and an unspecified place. Finally, Often fables and trickster tales illustrate how a smaller or weaker animal uses cunning to outwit a stronger, more powerful animal.

9. 6.2 Two questions for you to consider as you read this fable are as follows: Why would this theme occur repeatedly in so many stories, as well as across countries and cultures? What implications do such stories have for human society?

10. 6.3 In the last section of the lesson unit, you will complete a 5 question test on what you have learned in these lessons.