Two classic and popular fabliaux, La vieille Truande and Le Chevalier qui fist parler les Cons, begin by positing a relationship between fabliaux and fables:

This prologue appears in almost identical form in all five extant exemplars of La vieille Truande and is presumably authorial. It appears in only one of seven extant exemplars of Le Chevalier qui fist parler les cons, and its presence there probably reflects a scribe's effort to repair a lacuna in his copy text by appropriating the prologue of a companion piece from the same manuscript. In either case fablëor and scribe appear to have conceived the products of their respective literary activities as fabliaux, and did so in part on the basis of each fabliau's apprehended evolution from some fable source.

The judgement that fabliaux evolved from fables has been widely endorsed by modern critics, but only on the abstract and general principles of fable anteriority and the recurrence among fabliaux of various formal qualities conventionally present in fable literature. Both genres feature a conflict where one protagonist's success is achieved at the inevitable expense of another. The gain or loss is unequivocal, either strictly material or physical in the sense of achieving or failing to achieve sensory gratification. The conflict involves an intrigue where deceit plays a prominent part.