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A moral is a message conveyed or a lesson to be learned from a story or event. The moral may be left to the hearer, reader or viewer to determine for themselves, or may be explicitly encapsulated in a maxim. As an example of the latter, at the end of Aesop's fable of the Tortoise and the Hare, in which the plodding and determined tortoise wins a race against the much-faster yet extremely arrogant hare, the moral is "slow and steady wins the race." Morality (from the Latin manner, character, proper behavior) has three principal meanings. ... Wiktionary (a portmanteau of wiki and dictionary) is a multilingual, Web-based project to create a free content dictionary, available in over 151 languages. ... Aesop, as depicted in the Nuremberg Chronicle by Hartmann Schedel. ... The Tortoise and the Hare, illustrated by Milo Winter in a 1919 Aesop anthology The Tortoise and the Hare, illustrated in a 1921 story anthology The Tortoise and the Hare is a fable attributed to Aesop. ...

The use of stock characters is a means of conveying the moral of the story by eliminating complexity of personality and so spelling out the issues arising in the interplay between the characters, enabling the writer to make clear the message. With more rounded characters, such as those typically found in Shakespeare's plays, the moral may be more nuanced but no less present, and the writer may point it up in other ways (see, for example, the Prologue to Romeo and Juliet.) A stock character is a fictional character that relies heavily on cultural types or stereotypes for its personality, manner of speech, and other characteristics. ... Shakespeare redirects here. ... A prologue (Greek πρόλογος, from προ~, pro~ - fore~, and lógos, word), or rarely prolog, is a prefatory piece of writing, usually composed to introduce a drama. ... For other uses, see Romeo and Juliet (disambiguation). ...

Throughout the history of recorded literature, the majority of fictional writing has served not only to entertain but also to instruct, inform or improve their audiences or readership. In classical drama, for example, the role of the chorus was to comment on the proceedings and draw out a message for the audience to take away with them; while the novels of Charles Dickens are a vehicle for morals regarding the social and economic system of Victorian Britain. ɾdrama are obscure. ... The Greek chorus (choros) is believed to have grown out of the Greek dithyrambs and tragikon drama in tragic plays of the ancient Greek theatre. ... For other uses, see Novel (disambiguation). ... Dickens redirects here. ... Victoria Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Empress of India Victorian morality is a distillation of the moral views of people living at the time of Queen Victoria (reigned 1837 - 1901) in particular, and to the moral climate of Great Britain throughout the 19th century in...

Morals have typically been more obvious in children's literature, sometimes even being introduced with the phrase, "The moral of the story is …". Such explicit techniques have grown increasingly out of fashion in modern storytelling, and are now usually only included for ironic purposes. As Oscar Wilde observes wryly, The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.^[1] Childrens books redirects here. ... Ironic redirects here. ... Oscar Fingal OFlahertie Wills Wilde (October 16, 1854 – November 30, 1900) was an Irish playwright, novelist, poet, and author of short stories. ...

Some examples are: "Better be safe than sorry", "The evil deserves no aid", "Be friends with whom you don't like", "Don't judge people by the way they look", "Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me" and "Slow and steady wins the race".

References

1. ^ [1] Accessed 30 October 2006.