SOURCE: "Reconstruction and Deconstruction: La Fontaine, Aesop and the Eighteenth-Century French Fabulist," in Papers on French Seventeenth Century Literature, No. 11, Summer 1979, pp. 29-46.

In the following essay, Runte compares the Aesopic fable with the work of French writer Jean de la Fontaine, identifying this distinction: while Aesopic fables treat the reader as a student to be instructed, La Fontaine's fables in verse treat the reader as a coparticipant in interpreting the fable's meaning.

"Une ample comedie a cent actes divers," La Fontaine thus characterized his collection of fables.¹ Critics have not been remiss in exploring the dramatic qualities of these "scenes parfaites pour les caracteres et le dialogue."² Dialogue has been explored primarily on the level of the plot line and in terms of the characters created by the fabulist: "Le Fabuliste fait de ses animaux ce qu'un Dramatique habile fait de ses Acteurs."³ However, a second level...