Apologue and the status of fiction in the Renaissance

Abstract

This essay aims to study the evolution of the apologue during the Renaissance from the very beginning of its cultivation among Italian humanists in the 15th century. The new features it adopts separate it formally and thematically from the traditional fables: progressive preference for the personification of abstract entities, stress on ethic-philosophical teachings, indiscriminate use of narration and literary dialogue. In this way the apologue approaches other learned forms of allegorical writing and gets a functional autonomy which is shown in the new poetic consideration of the fable. Finally this process is related to the increasing censure against milesian fables in Spanish Renaissance literature.