Voicing Power through the Other: Elite Appropriations of Fable in the 1st-3rd Centuries CE

As a result of its association with marginalized groups, the genre of fable is sometimes presented as accurately reflecting the voice of the Other, although the fable has traditionally always been a vehicle for the elite to establish, explain and justify their positions. While the fable is increasingly associated with the Other from the 1st century CE, the genre is still appropriated by upper-class male authors as a means of defining their positions and constructing their own ideal political, social and literary worlds. This study will focus on the voicing of the Aesopic fable in the literature of the 1st-3rd centuries CE, primarily in authors and works that incorporate one clearly identifiable fable exemplum told at length in the text. Elite authors in this period used the fable as a means of communicating their views of behavioural expectations, not only by appropriating a genre that they have characterized as Other, but also by the voicing of fable through marginalized figures. This appropriation of the othered genre and voice allows for an exploration of boundaries that in the end will reaffirm the established order. The elite appropriation of fable as a means of social control over marginalized groups reflects an uneasiness about their own positions and the increasing social mobility beginning in the 1st century CE. This study of the appropriation of the othered genre will contribute to our understanding of how elite authors dealt with anxieties about potential and actual disruptions in their expectations of the socio-political reality.Ph