e as a tool of political criticism. The symbolic nature of the fable naturally lends itself towards politics. In fact, the word fable literally means "off-speech" in ancient Greek. (Loveridge, 1998)
             In times of severe censorship, the symbolic, archetypal roles of the animals used in fable have played a large part in criticizing and commenting on the politics of the time. Nowhere is this criticism of the political climate more prevalent than in the fables of seventeenth century England.
             One capacity of animals is to make a fiction accessible to a broad audience. (Ziolkowski, 1993). The use of animals in literature is inherently symbolic. By bestowing human characteristics upon animals, the author is circumventing censorship and the reader is deriving meaning from previously established character archetypes and roles. Although in the hands of a propagandist animals can be used to inculcate the values of an existing regime, they can also help the literary subversive to attack the status quo. (Ziolkowski, 1993).
             Apart from bearing significance and meaning to various groups of people, animals permit authors to take risks that they cannot take in stories explicitly about human beings. "Through beasts they can comment upon the powerful express their resentments and frustrations and fulfill in fantasy dreams that they could not realize in life." (Ziolkowski, 1993).
             How does beast fable make all this possible? To caricature enemies or oppressors as animals is a relatively safe form of humor, since often the targets of such mockery will refuse to make themselves ridiculous by acknowledging that any resemblance exists. (Ziolkowski, 1993)
             In The English Fable, Jayne Lewis calls fables a "form of covert political criticism." (Lewis, 1996) The political role of the fable has its roots in ancient Greece, where Aesop, the so called father of fable, was a slave "obliged to cloak trenchant philosophical and po...