The Fables by Jean de La Fontaine

First published: Books 1-6, 1668; books 7-11, 1673-1679; book 12, 1694, as Fables choisies, mises en vers (English translation, 1735)

Type of work: Poetry

The Work:

While one may be tempted by tradition to think of Jean de La Fontaine’s TheFables as children’s stories, such a notion does a disservice to La Fontaine’s elegant poetry and down-to-earth, sometimes bitter philosophy and view of life. A point to keep in mind in reading TheFables is that they were written over a period of more than twenty-five years. The first six books of fables were published in 1668, five more books appeared in 1673-1679, and the twelfth and final book was published in 1694. As such, TheFables reflect the changes in point of view of a writer who matured and perhaps mellowed as he wrote and published his fable-poems.

To a certain degree, La Fontaine’s ideas also reflect social and political problems and philosophical styles in France during the reign of Louis XIV (1643-1715). Many of the early fables seem to comment on specific injustices of Louis XIV’s regime, especially as they affected the common people, while the fables from La Fontaine’s later years mainly express a spiritual withdrawal that resembles stoicism in certain respects.

As the literary heir of ancient fabulists such as Aesop, Bidpai, and Phaedrus, La Fontaine makes use of a form that was familiar to his readers. Most of his fables feature a story and a moral, the latter often separated from the text of the tale. La Fontaine’s verse form varies; he uses eight-syllable lines as a basic structure, but he often exploits the dignified twelve-syllable Alexandrine form, the verse form identified with seventeenth century French tragedy, when he wishes to express exceptional drama and seriousness.

As for the fables’ casts of characters, most of the fables present, as usual, familiar characters from the animal kingdom. “I use animals to teach men,” says La Fontaine in the poem that serves as a preface to TheFables. Some of the fables do, however, feature humans of various social classes and nationalities. In the case of his animal characters, La Fontaine often endows certain creatures with what would be considered traditionally symbolic traits. His lion, therefore, is always a character that represents royalty and the caprice of absolute power; La Fontaine’s wolf is always vicious and violent; the lamb is weak and timid; the fox is clever and insinuating, and so on.

Usually, also, the first fable of each book is especially important because it sets the tone for the fables that follow in that book; similarly, the last fable of each book often sums up or punctuates the themes of the entire book. Indeed, many of the most famous and familiar fables are to be found in book 1. “The Grasshopper and the Ant,” which opens book 1 and serves as a passageway to all the fables, is typical of La Fontaine’s style. This short fable expresses a peasant or bourgeois wisdom, a practicality that may strike some modern readers as cruel. There are only two characters in this poem, the grasshopper and the ant of the fable’s title. The first of these is carefree, a poet or a singer who wastes her time singing in the summer when she should prepare for the winter to come. As fall approaches, seeing that she will be short of supplies, the grasshopper beseeches her neighbor, the ant, for a loan. The ant, however, is quite unsympathetic, dismissing the grasshopper’s airy appeal with curtness. Similarly, the last fable in book 1, “The Oak and the Reed,” tells yet another tale of the downfall of the proud and complacent. In this case, the mighty oak tree who mocks the weakness of the reed at the fable’s beginning is laid low by a storm at the story’s end. The moral of this story is that it is not always best to be strong and rigid; sometimes, being able to bend with prevailing winds is an asset.

“The Fox and the Crow,” the second fable in book 1, presents a wily fox who outwits a vain crow. The following fable, “The Frog Who Would Be an Ox,” pokes fun at those who want to be something they are not. In this poem, La Fontaine adds a moral that applies what the fable teaches to the world of seventeenth century humans, pointing out that all bourgeois want to be great nobles (in an era when the titles of hereditary nobility could be bought by affluent middle-class people), all petty princes want to have their own ambassadors, and all minor noblemen want to have their own servants. A bit later, “The Wolf and the Dog” suggests that a life of freedom is much better than the life at court, which requires the sacrifice of one’s dignity. “The Wolf and the Lamb” illustrates the lesson that force gets the best of any argument, regardless of any question of abstract justice.

By the time readers arrive at the seventeenth fable of the first book, they are well conditioned to the author’s rather negative outlook on life and its lessons. This poem, “Death and the Woodman,” offers a broad comment on what one ought to do when one discovers that life is not as easy as one would like. The woodman of the fable’s title arrives at a point in his existence when he considers that death might offer a good way out of what proves to be a difficult life of poverty, hard work, and fiscal burdens placed on him by Louis XIV’s regime. Once the woodman summons Death, however, he reconsiders quickly. The lesson here, says La Fontaine, is that, all things considered, people will usually choose to suffer rather than to die. This expresses one of La Fontaine’s fundamental positions, a point he defends in various forms throughout TheFables: One ought not to complain too much, one should know that things could always be worse, and one should understand that some things can never change.

Even though La Fontaine elaborates and modifies certain perspectives in the latter books of TheFables, these central texts of the first book set the stage for what he would tell his readers in succeeding books in the years to come. Politics, for example, surfaces again in “The Frogs Asked for a King” (book 3), “The Gardener and the Squire” (book 4), and perhaps most notably in “The Animals Sick of the Plague” (book 7). In the first of these, the race of frogs is so stupid that it grows weary of democracy. Creatures that make decisions precipitously and without justification are always targets of La Fontaine’s ridicule, and here, the frogs that ask Jupiter for a king are devoured in short order by a rapacious crane. Self-interested and uncaring nobles appear in “The Gardener and the Squire,” where it is again shown that the best recourse in misfortune is to not complain too loudly. The moral of “The Animals Sick of the Plague” is that justice is determined by one’s social status rather than by true objectivity. In this fable, the lion-king presides over a sham trial, a search for a scapegoat in a time of trouble. The victim turns out to be the ass, an animal that is not really guilty but that is too dimwitted and weak to offer an effective self-defense.

The tone of withdrawal from society and from a life of involvement in the world found in the last two books of fables, published when the author was in his early seventies, is well represented by “The Mogul’s Dream” (book 11) and by the last of the fables, “The Judge, the Hospitaler, and the Hermit.” The title character of “The Mogul’s Dream” dreams of a vizier (a government minister) who finds limitless pleasure in heaven. In contrast, in the same dream, the mogul sees a hermit who, oddly enough, is tortured by eternal fire. The mogul is confused and seeks out a wise man who interprets his dream by pointing out that in life the minister longed for solitude while the so-called hermit spent his time seeking favor at court. In the fable’s extended moral, the narrator says directly that he would like to inspire his reader with a love of peace, quiet, and reflection. If one follows his advice, he suggests, one will escape the contingencies of human passion and caprice. “The Judge, the Hospitaler, and the Hermit” focuses on three saints trying to find salvation in different ways. The first saint, moved by the trials and tribulations he sees in courts of law, decides to be a judge and to try cases equitably and free of charge. The second saint chooses to care for others in a hospital. Both, however, regret their decisions, soon getting their fill of human complaints and discontent. The two saints turn for advice to a third. The last tells his friends that the greatest obligation in life is to know oneself, which requires leaving society and taking refuge in tranquil places. In the fable’s moral, the narrator expands on what happens in the fable. Since people do go to courts of law and hospitals, the narrator tells the reader, lawyers, judges, and doctors are needed. He adds, however, that one forgets oneself when involved in public pursuits and becomes the plaything of the chance, the misfortune, and the corruption that mere worldly happiness brings.

With this recommendation, La Fontaine ends his Fables, saying in the last words of the collection that he hopes this encouragement to withdraw into oneself and away from society is a lesson that future centuries will learn. He presents this lesson, he continues, to kings and to wise men alike. “Where better end my work than here?” is the final, rhetorical question of TheFables.

Ultimately, readers of La Fontaine’s TheFables learn about the author’s awareness of life’s misfortunes, including problems that can be traced specifically to abuses of Louis XIV’s political and social system. The poor and socially disadvantaged seem to receive La Fontaine’s sympathy up to a point. They are overtaxed and unjustly so; they are the victims of the petty humor of the bourgeoisie, of the nobility, and of the legal system; and they suffer the ills common to all men and women: sickness, pain, and death. However, La Fontaine never advises revolt against the political and social abuses that he knows exist. While he sympathizes with human suffering, it is clear that he believes one to be responsible for one’s own difficulties. Complaining about life is of no use, the author says, primarily because one can change very little in one’s social and political environments. Times change, kings die and are replaced by new kings, but human nature remains essentially the same: a mixture of virtue, vice, flawed values, and vain desires.

Growing older, La Fontaine expressed that the best way to survive life’s travails is to take responsibility only for what can be controlled: one’s state of mind. In making this suggestion, La Fontaine follows the example of such ancient philosophers as Marcus Aurelius Antoninus and Epictetus, who encourage looking to oneself, reflecting on one’s own identity, and narrowing one’s focus of activity. Only in this way can one attain real peace of mind, removed from the transitory nature of life in the world.

Bibliography

Birberick, Anne L. Reading Undercover: Audience and Authority in Jean de La Fontaine. Lewisburg, N.J.: Bucknell University Press, 1998. Examines TheFables and some of La Fontaine’s other works, demonstrating how he used techniques of both concealment and disclosure to please an unconventional audience while simultaneously ingratiating himself with his more conventional patrons.

Brereton, Geoffrey. A Short History of French Literature. New York: Penguin Books, 1960. An analysis of The Fables, placing both the work and La Fontaine within the broader context of French literature.

Cruickshank, John, ed. French Literature and Its Background. Vol. 2. New York: Oxford University Press, 1969. Contains essays on French seventeenth century literature as well as a fine study of TheFables by Margaret McGowan, in which she examines both La Fontaine’s philosophy and its relevance to his milieu.

Fumaroli, Marc. The Poet and the King: Jean de La Fontaine and His Century. Translated by Jane Marie Todd. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002. Recounts La Fontaine’s life and career within the context of political and cultural developments in seventeenth century France, describing how he sought to maintain his artistic integrity against the oppressive regime of Louis XIV.

Hollier, Dennis, ed. A New History of French Literature. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994. This massive volume, challenging in its unusual perspectives, contains an interesting chapter by Georges Van Den Abbeele on La Fontaine and two other seventeenth century French moralists, Jean de La Bruyère and François de La Rochefoucauld. The chapter’s emphasis is on ideas.

La Fontaine, Jean de.“The Fables” of La Fontaine. Translated by Marianne Moore. New York: Viking Press, 1952. An indispensable translation of La Fontaine’s TheFables, rendered by one of America’s great poets. Moore’s translation preserves the style, point of view, voice, and sense of TheFables without straining for rhyme and rhythm at the expense of meaning.

Runyon, Randolph Paul. In La Fontaine’s Labyrinth: A Thread Through “The Fables.” Charlottesville, Va.: Rookwood Press, 2000. Traces the connections between each fable and the succeeding one, locating a common unity throughout the work.

Slater, Maya. The Craft of La Fontaine. London: Athlone Press, 2001. A detailed explication of The Fables, including analyses of their humor, depiction of animals, literary qualities, and moralistic core.