LA FONTAINE, JEAN DE (1621–1695)

LA FONTAINE, JEAN DE (1621–1695), French poet and fable writer. Jean de La Fontaine grew up in a bourgeois family in rural France, where his grandfather, father, and finally he himself held the local charge of master of waters and forests. In his youth he quit the study of theology to pursue and obtain a law degree. He married and had a son, but cared little for his family and soon lived separately, in Paris. The poems "Adonis" (1658) and "Elegie aux nymphes de Vaux" (1661; The dream of Vaux) impressed Nicolas Fouquet (1615–1680), Louis XIV's superintendent of finances and a patron of the arts, who granted the poet a pension in 1659. The disgrace and imprisonment of Fouquet (1662) disrupted La Fontaine's life and finances and caused the king to be suspicious of the poet for many years. He entered into the service of the king's widowed aunt, where he again had access, albeit limited, to the rich bourgeoisie and the aristocracy. He began to frequent literary salons and published Contes et nouvelles en vers (1665; Tales and stories in verse), which were shockingly indecorous to precious ladies and followers of classicism because of their bawdy topics, and which were closer in subject and style to medieval fabliaux or the works of François Rabelais (c. 1483–1553).

In 1668 La Fontaine published the first of a collection of Fables choisies mises en vers (Selected fables set in verse; books 1–6), dedicated to the dauphin, which became extremely popular. Fables and other short poetic forms had been practiced in the literary salons for a while by a number of noted writers, but not with the style, wit, or power that La Fontaine displayed. As the guest and protégéof Mme Marguerite de la Sablière (c. 1640–1693) he enjoyed modest personal and financial comfort. He continued to write and publish new Tales, but with less success, and eventually incurred a police ban. He wrote the libretto for an opera (Daphné) by Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632–1687), but the two fought and parted. Although actively writing, he only found approbation with a second set of Fables (books 7–11) in 1678–1679. When he was elected to the French Academy in 1683, the king complicated matters for the former client of Fouquet and withheld royal approval until after Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (1636–1711) had been admitted several months later. Leading a libertine life well into his sixties, La Fontaine did not change his life or renounce his more scandalous works until after he fell gravely ill in 1693. The next year saw a final book of Fables, a year before his death in Paris.

La Fontaine had the nickname of the "butterfly of Parnassus," as he was often considered to be flighty and disorganized. Anecdotes abound related to his naïveté, lack of seriousness, and inability to hold a decent conversation. But more recently this view has been challenged, and he has been seen as a capable courtier possessed of more skills than previously thought. Meanwhile, his superb mastery of poetic technique has never been doubted.

The two hundred and forty or so fables that he wrote can be considered as various overlapping scenes in the drama of human life. This is presented generally by a brief story of animal conflicts, making the poems allegorical. They need to be applied to human behavior (the wolf represents a certain kind of individual, or even a particular person) before instruction can be drawn. The morals, which are often (but not always) stated, can seem contradictory, or at least tied to a certain situation, when the entire body of fables are read, but the didactic purpose frequently lies in citing one fable for a unique real-life case. The fables are appealing to both children and adults and are linked to the seventeenth century by numerous specific details, but they attain universal pertinence by the general character traits and morals revealed.

The first set of Fables was inspired mainly by the Greek writer Aesop and the Roman Phaedrus, while later works were modeled after Bilpay and other non-Western sources. The conflicts between the grasshopper and the ant, the wolf and the lamb, and the tortoise and the hare, among many others, were part of both an oral tradition and a literary one. La Fontaine did not alter the basic stories or outcomes from these sources, but elaborated both the narrative and poetic aspects. A bit of conversation or some detail of clothing or place makes them more dramatic, picturesque, and plausible. As for poetic technique, at a time that valued the alexandrine couplet, La Fontaine displayed great irregularity, as he varied his line lengths and rhyme schemes within each fable, making them less artificial and predictable.

Both Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) and Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Lamartine (1790–1869) criticized the Fables as being too violent for children or even for adults, who also might mistakenly follow the vices, rather than the virtues, depicted. It is true that the poems often teach by negative example, but their charm has captivated most critics, teachers, and parents for more than three hundred years.

LA FONTAINE, JEAN DE (1621–1695)

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