Definition of "apologue" []

• A moral fable, especially one having animals or inanimate objects as characters. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Though he acknowledges the delicacy of criticizing the Soviet regime, Eliot's political objection was that the only good guy in Orwell's allegory seemed to be Trotsky, and he didn't like Trotsky: Now I think my own dissatisfaction with this apologue is that the effect is simply one of negation."
• "On this occasion, Campobasso gave his opinion, couched in the apologue of the Traveller, the Adder, and the Fox; and reminded the Duke of the advice which Reynard gave to the man, that he should crush his mortal enemy, now that chance had placed his fate at his disposal."
• "Professor Benfey, followed by Mr. Keith Falconer, discovers between the Æsopic and the Hindu apologue: — “In the former animals are allowed to act as animals: the latter makes them act as men in the form of animals.”"