Jean de La Fontaine (8 July 1621-13 April 1695) was a French fabulist and one of the most widely read French poets of the 17th century.
He is known above all for his Fables, which provided a model for subsequent fabulists across Europe and numerous alternative versions in France, as well as in French regional languages.
After a long period of royal suspicion, he was admitted to the French Academy and his reputation in France has never faded since. Evidence of this is found in the many pictures and statues of the writer, later depictions on medals, coins and postage stamps.
La Fontaine was born at Château-Thierry in France. His father was Charles de La Fontaine, maître des eaux et forêts -a kind of deputy-ranger- of the Duchy of Château-Thierry; his mother was Françoise Pidoux. Both sides of his family were of the highest provincial middle class; though they were not noble, his father was fairly wealthy.
His first serious work was a translation or adaptation of the Eunuchus of Terence (1654). At this time the patron of French writing was the Superintendent Fouquet, to whom La Fontaine was introduced by Jacques Jannart, a connection of his wife's. Few people who paid their court to Fouquet went away empty-handed, and La Fontaine soon received a pension of 1000 livres (1659), on the easy terms of a copy of verses for each quarters receipt. He also began a medley of prose and poetry, entitled Le Songe de Vaux, on Fouquet's famous country house.
It was about this time that his wife's property had to be separately secured to her, and he seems by degrees to have had to sell everything that he owned; but, as he never lacked powerful and generous patrons, this was of small importance to him. In the same year he wrote a ballad, Les Rieurs du Beau-Richard, and this was followed by many small pieces of occasional poetry addressed to various personages from the king downwards. Fouquet fell out of favour with the king and was arrested. La Fontaine, like most of Fouquet's literary protégés, showed some fidelity to him by writing the elegy Pleurez, Nymphes de Vaux.
More information: Poem Hunter
It was about this time that the quartet of the Rue du Vieux Colombier, so famous in French literary history, was formed. It consisted of La Fontaine, Racine, Boileau and Molière, the last of whom was almost of the same age as La Fontaine, the other two considerably younger. Chapelain was also a kind of outsider in the coterie. There are many anecdotes, some pretty obviously apocryphal, about these meetings. The most characteristic is perhaps that which asserts that a copy of Chapelain's unlucky Pucelle always lay on the table, a certain number of lines of which was the appointed punishment for offences against the company.
The coterie furnished under feigned names the personages of La Fontaine's version of the Cupid and Psyche story, which, however, with Adonis, was not printed till 1669.
In 1682, he was, at more than sixty years of age, recognized as one of the foremost men of letters of France.
Shortly afterwards La Fontaine had a share in a still more famous affair, the celebrated Ancient-and-Modern squabble in which Boileau and Charles Perrault were the chiefs, and in which La Fontaine (though he had been specially singled out by Perrault for better comparison with Aesop and Phaedrus) took the Ancient side.
About the same time (1685–1687) he made the acquaintance of the last of his many hosts and protectors, Monsieur and Madame d'Hervart, and fell in love with a certain Madame Ulrich, a lady of some position but of doubtful character.
More information: Gutenberg
This acquaintance was accompanied by a great familiarity with Vendôme, Chaulieu and the rest of the libertine coterie of the Temple; but, though Madame de la Sablière had long given herself up almost entirely to good works and religious exercises, La Fontaine continued an inmate of her house until her death in 1693.
What followed is told in one of the best known of the many stories bearing on his childlike nature. Hervart on hearing of the death, had set out at once to find La Fontaine. He met him in the street in great sorrow, and begged him to make his home at his house. J'y allais was La Fontaine's answer.
The numerous works of La Fontaine fall into three traditional divisions: the Fables, the Tales and the miscellaneous (including dramatic) works. He is best known for the first of these, in which a tradition of fable collecting in French verse reaching back to the Middle Ages was brought to a peak. Although these earlier works refer to Aesop in their title, they collected many fables from more recent sources. Among the foremost were Marie de France's Ysopet (1190) and Gilles Corrozet’s Les Fables du très ancien Esope, mises en rithme françoise (1542).
The publication of the twelve books of La Fontaine's Fables extended from 1668 to 1694. The stories in the first six of these derive for the most part from Aesop and Horace and are pithily told in free verse. Those in the later editions are often taken from more recent sources or from translations of Eastern stories, and are told at greater length. The deceptively simple verses are easily memorized, yet display deep insights into human nature. Many of the lines have entered the French language as standard phrases, often proverbial. The fables are also distinguished by their occasionally ironical ambivalence.
Fictional depictions have followed the fashionable view of La Fontaine at their period.
Download Fables by Jean de la Fontaine (French version)
Jean de La Fontaine
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