Jean de La Fontaine (1621-1695) is one of the most famous fabulists of all times. Today his work is associated with children literature, but, just like in many other cases, kids were never his target group. If we read his Fables today, this is still obvious. With so many nuances and overtones, they are way too sophisticated to be classified as children literature. Many of them are actually not appropriate for the young audience because they are dealing with too challenging topics. By the way, many are formally even not fables, but epistles, elegies, and other poetic forms. Apart from that, La Fontaine’s intention was never merely a didactic message. They can be also understood as author’s reflections and ironic comments of human characters.
Shall we have a look at few facts about Jean de La Fontaine’s life and work?
1. He was born into a wealthy family. His father arranged him a rich bride and well-paid job, but La Fontaine’s was spending too much and too fast, so he could not keep the job and was separated from his wife, although they remained in contact.
2. Jean was very talented when he needed any kind of sponsorship. He spent most of his life as a guest in different houses of nobility, where he had everything for comfortable living and in return he gave not much more than his charm and some poetry. He had, for instance, a deal with Minister of Finance to have a roof over his head, food on the table and nice allowance on condition he writes at least one poem every three months.
3. None of his Fables is original. He wrote them in several sets, first six with a dedication to king’s son, next to the king’s mistress and last to the king’s grandson. Earlier were rewritings of Aesop’s fables and later we can find many rewritings of oriental fables. Among his resources, we can find Ariosto, Boccaccio, Horace, Machiavelli, Rabelais, and others.
4. Before the Fables he wrote and published Contes (Tales and Novels in Verse), which can rather be classified as experiments in verse and style than classic poetry. They were very popular, but the majority of these comedies with themes mostly borrowed from Italian writers (Boccaccio again) were considered as immoral and thanks to their notoriety (not the only, but probably most important reason) he lost two elections to French Academy before he was finally accepted.
5. Apart from Fables and Tales La Fontaine wrote many poetical and theatrical works but critics agree they are not nearly as good ad his both major projects. The only exception is probably a novel The Loves of Cupid and Psyche. Well, let’s leave something for some other occasion.
