Abstract

This chapter is concerned with an animal fable included in Heinrich von Kleist’s 1805/1806 essay “On the Gradual Production of Thoughts whilst Speaking.” Departing from an understanding of zoopoetics as both an object of study and a method of research, I argue that the fable is such an object of study and that the fable demands a special kind of reading. It is crucial for a zoopoetic reading to replace the old understanding of fables—which says that fables are solely about humans and not about animals—with a consideration of multiple human-animal relations. When the animal fable included in Kleist’s essay is analyzed along those lines, it becomes obvious that the fox is paradigmatic, not only as a poetological figure, but also as a political figure.