A Fable, published by Random House on 2 August 1954 (Polk, 1109), was the sixteenth of William Faulkner’s nineteen novels and one of only five not set in his apocryphal Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi. The setting instead is primarily the World War I battle front in France in May 1918, though it does include an extended section about a stolen racehorse that takes place in the years right before the war in various locations around the Mississippi Valley region of the United States. The novel’s main story is an allegorical fictionalization, loosely based on events and characters of Christ’s Passion Week, of the aftermath of a French Army regiment’s refusal to carry out an order to attack.
Composition
The idea for A Fable came from an August 1943 meeting Faulkner had with Hollywood producers and directors...
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Citation: Meats, Stephen E.. "A Fable". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 31 July 2025 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=7180, accessed 09 June 2026.]
