For his fables, written in both prose and verse, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing drew on texts by ancient poets such as Aesop, Phaedrus, and Aelianus, as well as the verse fables of La Fontaine, but altered their messages to reflect an Enlightenment moral. Additionally, the volume includes the "Treatises on the Fable," published in 1759, in which Lessing presented a theoretical exploration of the literary genre that remains valid to this day.