The object of this research project is to investigate the fable as a literary genre, its position and functions in Swedish literature from 1600 to 1800. In the continental history of the genre this period presents a dynamic development, from traditional fable via La Fontaine fable to fable of Enlightenment. In Sweden, too, the fable became an increasingly productive and popular genre during the 17th and 18th centuries. On the basis of a representative Swedish text corpus the project intends to survey the patterns according to which the unusually transformable fable genre follows a general European line of development and is governed by and reflects internal conditions and processes of change. Analyses of narration, allegory and didactics in a set of key texts will be combined with a contextualising perspective, focusing on the fable as a utility text of communication. In Swedish literary scholarship the fable has long been a neglected domain of research. Only one separate study exists, Ivar Hjertén's Fabel och anekdot inom Sveriges 1700-talslitteratur (1910). In the international field, however, the last few decades have witnessed extensive fable research, which, setting out from modern reception theory, inter alia, has radically renewed our understanding of the genre's role in literary culture, especially during the 17th and 18th centuries. The present project aims at filling a gap in Swedish literary scholarship as well as making a contribution to contemporary exploration of the history of European fable.