The purpose for this study, as set forth in chapter one, is to describe the history and use of Aesop's fables as part of the Western pedagogical tradition. A second intention is to demonstrate how the different uses of the fables by various cultures reflect specific social, political, and economic concerns of the societies from which they are drawn. The first part of chapter two defines the fables as a didactic and literary genre and explores the reasons for their widespread use throughout world culture. The second half of the chapter describes how philosophers and pedagogists important to the Western intellectual tradition have viewed the fables. Chapter three describes how a widely used fable conforms to the educational needs and traditions of various cultures, and chapter four outlines how the fables were used in the cathedral schools and grammar schools on the Continent and in England during the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance. Chapter five attempts to reconfirm the thesis that, until the end of the seventeenth century, the worlds of child and adult were not differentiated. Chapter six includes a content analysis of the fables included in approximately 1600 American spellers and readers published between 1775 and 1924. (Author/RB)