SOURCE: "Viewing Romance in La Fontaine's Psyché," in L'Esprit Créateur, Vol. XXVIII, No. 4, Winter 1988, pp. 17-33.

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 writing.

In his epilogue to the first six books of the Fables, La Fontaine professes his need to restore his creative energies with a change of pace:

Il s'en va temps que je reprenne
 Un peu de forces et d'haleine
 Pour fournir à d'autres projets

Retournons à Psyche.1

Laying aside the instructive Fables, he again takes up his Amours de Psyché et de Cupidon,² which he describes in his preface as aiming only at the reader's pleasure. Yet despite this work's frivolity, its composition does not afford La Fontaine the desired respite, for its prose seems to cause him as many...