Jean de La Fontaine collected fables from a wide variety of sources, both Western and Eastern, and adapted them into French free verse. They were issued under the general title ofFables in several volumes from 1668 to 1694 and are considered classics ofFrench literature. Humorous, nuanced and ironical, they were originally aimed at adults but then entered the educational system and were required learning for school children.
Divided into 12 books, there are 239 of theFables, varying in length from a few lines to some hundred, those written later being as a rule longer than those written earlier.
The first collection ofFables Choisies had appeared March 31, 1668, dividing 124 fables into six books over its two volumes. They were dedicated to"Monseigneur"Louis,le Grand Dauphin, the six-year-old son ofLouis XIV of France and hisqueen consortMaria Theresa of Spain. By this time, La Fontaine was 47 and known to readers chiefly as the author ofContes, lively stories in verse, grazing and sometimes transgressing the bounds of contemporary moral standards. TheFables, in contrast, were completely in compliance with these standards.
Eight new fables published in 1671 would eventually take their place in books 7–9 of the second collection. Books 7 and 8 appeared in 1678, while 9-11 appeared in 1679, the whole 87 fables being dedicated to the king's mistress,Madame de Montespan. Between 1682 and 1685 a few fables were published dealing with people in antiquity, such as "The Matron of Ephesus" and "Philemon and Baucis". Then book 12 appeared as a separate volume in 1694, containing 29 fables dedicated to the king's 12-year-old grandchild,Louis, Duke of Burgundy.
The first six books, collected in 1668, were in the main adapted from the classical fabulistsAesop,Babrius andPhaedrus. In these, La Fontaine adhered to the path of his predecessors with some closeness; but in the later collections he allowed himself far more liberty and in the later books there is a wider range of sources.
In the later books, the so-calledIndianBidpai is drawn upon for oriental fables that had come to the French through translations from Persian. The most likely source for La Fontaine was the pseudonymous version byGilbert Gaulmin (1585–1665) under the titleThe book of Enlightenment or the Conduct of Kings (French:Le Livre des lumières ou la Conduite des Roys, composée par le sage Pilpay Indien, traduite en français par David Sahid, d’Ispahan, ville capitale de Perse; 1644). Another translation by FatherPierre Poussines appeared in 1666 with the Latin titleSpecimen sapientiae Indorum veterum (A sample of ancient Indian wisdom). With a genealogy going back to the IndianPanchatantra, they were then attributed to Bidpai (Pilpay), who is given more than his fair due by La Fontaine in the preface to his second collection ofFables: "I must acknowledge that I owe the greatest part to Pilpay, the Indian sage." (French:Je dirai par reconnaissance que j’en dois la plus grande partie à Pilpay sage indien.)[1] His sources are in fact much more diverse and by no means mainly oriental; of 89 fables, no more than twenty are found in Bidpai's collection.[2]
Avienus andHorace are also drawn upon in the later books along with the earlier French writersRabelais,Clément Marot,Mathurin Régnier andBonaventure des Périers.Boccaccio,Ariosto,Tasso andMachiavelli's comedies were also sources. Contemporary happenings, too, were occasionally turned to account, as for instance an accident at the funeral of M. de Boufflers (vii, II). No fable, so far as appears, is of La Fontaine's invention, and La Fontaine had many predecessors in the genre, especially in the beastfable.
The subject of each of theFables is often common property of many ages and ethnicities. What gives La Fontaine'sFables their rare distinction is the freshness in narration, the deftness of touch, the unconstrained suppleness of metrical structure, the unfailing humor of the pointed moral, the consummate art of their apparent artlessness. Keen insight into the foibles of human nature is found throughout, but in the later books ingenuity is employed to make the fable cover, yet convey, social doctrines and sympathies more democratic than the age would have tolerated in unmasked expression. Almost from the start, theFables entered French literary consciousness to a greater degree than any other classic of its literature. For generations many of these little apologues have been read, committed to memory, recited, paraphrased, by every French school child. Countless phrases from them are current idioms, and familiarity with them is assumed.
"La Fontaine'sFables", wroteMadame de Sévigné, "are like a basket of strawberries. You begin by selecting the largest and best, but, little by little, you eat first one, then another, till at last the basket is empty".Silvestre de Sacy has commented that they supply delights to three different ages: the child rejoices in the freshness and vividness of the story, the eager student of literature in the consummate art with which it is told, the experienced man of the world in the subtle reflections on character and life which it conveys. Reception to the moral aspect has generally been positive, with exceptions such asRousseau andLamartine. The book has become a standard French reader both at home and abroad.
Lamartine, who preferred classic regularity in verse, could find in theFables only "limping, disjointed, unequal verses, without symmetry either to the ear or on the page". But the poets of theRomantic SchoolHugo,Musset,Gautier and their fellows, found in the popular favor these verses had attained an incentive to undertake an emancipation of French prosody which they in large measure achieved.
When he first wrote hisFables, La Fontaine had a sophisticated audience in mind. Nevertheless, theFables were regarded as providing an excellent education in morals for children, and the first edition was dedicated to the six-year-oldDauphin. Following La Fontaine's example, his translator Charles Denis dedicated hisSelect Fables (1754) to the sixteen-year-old heir to the English throne.[3] The 18th century was particularly distinguished for the number of fabulists in all languages and for the special cultivation of young people as a target audience. In the 1730s eight volumes ofNouvelles Poésies Spirituelles et Morales sur les plus beaux airs were published, the first six of which incorporated a section of fables aimed at children. These contained fables of La Fontaine rewritten to fit popular airs of the day and arranged for simple performance. The preface to this work announces that its aim is specifically to "give them an attraction to useful lessons which are suited to their age [and] an aversion to the profane songs which are often put into their mouths and which only serve to corrupt their innocence".[4]
This was in the context of getting the young people of the family to perform at social gatherings. Eventually the fables were learned by heart for such entertainments and afterwards they were adopted by the education system, not least as linguistic models as well. Reinforcing the work were illustrated editions, trade cards issued with chocolate[5] and meat extract products,[6] postcards with the picture on one side and the poem on the other, and illustrated chinaware. There have also been television series based on the fables. In Canada there was the 1958Fables of La Fontaine series and in FranceLes Fables géométriques between 1989–91.
In England the bulk of children's writing concentrated on Aesop's fables rather than La Fontaine's adaptations. The boundary lines began to be blurred in compilations that mixed Aesop's fables with those from other sources. The middle section of "Modern Fables" in Robert Dodsley'sSelect Fables of Esop and other fabulists (1764) contains many from La Fontaine. These are in prose but Charles Denis' earlier collection was in verse and several authors writing poems specifically for children in the early 19th century also included versions of La Fontaine. Although there had been earlier complete translations in verse at the start of that century, the most popular wasElizur Wright'sThe Fables of La Fontaine, first published in Boston in 1841 with prints byGrandville. This went through several editions, both in the United States and in Britain.[7] Other children's editions, in both prose and verse, were published in the 20th century.
The following fables have individual articles devoted to them:
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