THE GASCON
I am always inclined to suspect
The best story under the sun
As soon as by chance I detect
That teller and hero are one.
We’re all of us prone
to conceit,
And like to proclaim our own...
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The French poet and man of letters Jean de La Fontaine (1621-1695) was one of the great French classical authors. He preferred to work in relatively minor and unexploited genres, such as the fable and...
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Jean de La Fontaine is best known for his Fables choisies, mises en vers (Selected Fables, Put into Verse), published in twelve books from 1668 to 1693. Comprising more than two hundred short poems di...
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In the following essay, Guiton commends the appealing, poetic language of La Fontaine's fables.
Gi; le Corbeau Et Le Renard =~ Sle Corbeau Et Le Renard
Maî...
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In the following essay, Wine suggests that in Psyché, La Fontaine explored the limits of classical theories of perfect beauty and experimented with new forms of esthetics and style in his own wri...
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In the following essay, Grise contends that when one character dupes another in La Fontaine's Contes or Tales, the reader participates in a pleasurable sense of superiority for being in on the ...
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In the following essay Rubin asserts that, contrary to the arguments of other critics, La Fontaine did not ignore the prevailing poetic styles and concerns of the time, but that in fact his Fables rev...
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In the essay that follows, Sweetser argues that La Fontaine used metaphors of travel in several of his Fables to reflect on the direction of his own life and to counsel the future king of France on th...
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In the following essay, Gross asserts that the narrative remarks which frame La Fontaine's story Psyché are meant to draw the reader's attention to the powerful effects of both natu...
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In the following essay, Wadsworth examines La Fontaine's contributions to the development of the fable genre and traces the fable's literary antecedents. He concludes that the genre�...
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In the following essay, Cauley argues that La Fontaine uses his Contes or Tales to examine narrative itself, relying as he does upon such techniques as narrators within the narrative, "authoria...
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In the following excerpt, Runte observes that in the century after La Fontaine's death, fabulists and other writers tended to characterize his work in the fable genre his work as immoral and as...
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In the following essay, Moravcevich asserts that La Fontaine uses the seventeenth-century tools of reason and rhetoric in a complex but classically. pleasing manner via his animal characters and ultim...
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In the following essay, Rubin clarifies the definition of the term 'fable" and asserts that La Fontaine employs the fable genre not in its traditional rhetorical or instructional format&...
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In the following essay, Danner summarizes the evaluations of such La Fontaine scholars as de Mourgues, Runte, and Rubin regarding La Fontaine's use of irony in his Fables. Danner suggests that ...
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In the following essay, Slater identifies some organizing principles that seem to govern the grouping of La Fontaine's poetic fables within each of his books, nevertheless concluding that this ...
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Tales and Novels of J. de La Fontaine — Volume 25
Jean de La Fontaine
Jean de La Fontaine
