Jean de La Fontaine, born July 8, 1621 in Château-Thierry and died April 13, 1695 in Paris, was a French poet, moralist, playwright, librettist and novelist.
Formative years (1641-1658)
We have very little information about La Fontaine's formative years. We know that he studied at the Collège de Château-Thierry until ninth grade where he mainly learned Latin but did not study this one. A task which one suspects La Fontaine of hardly taking care of with passion or assiduity and which he sold entirely in 1672. It is also that he began a career as a poet by the publication of a first text, a comedy adapted from Terence, The Eunuch, in 1654, which goes completely unnoticed.
In the service of Fouquet (1658-1663)
In 1658, he entered the service of Fouquet, Superintendent of Finances, to whom, in addition to a series of poems of circumstances provided for by contract - a "poetic pension" - he dedicated the epic poem Adonis taken from Ovid and elaborated a composite text at the the glory of his patron's estate, the Songe de Vaux, which remained unfinished because Fouquet was arrested on the orders of Louis XIV; La Fontaine wrote in favor of his patron in 1662, the Ode to the King then the Elegy to the nymphs of Vaux. We do not know exactly whether his trip to Limousin in 1663 was an exile ordered by the Louis-Quatorzian administration, or a freely consented decision to accompany his uncle Jannart, who was exiled to him. He draws from this trip a Relation of a Voyage from Paris to Limousin:it is a travelogue in the form of letters in verse and prose addressed to his wife, published posthumously.
The height of literary activity (1664-1679)
In 1664, he entered the service of the Duchess of Bouillon and the Duchess of Orléans. La Fontaine then divided his time between Paris and Château-Thierry as a gentleman - which ensured his ennoblement. This is when La Fontaine makes a remarkable entrance on the public literary scene with a first tale, taken from Ariosto, Mona Lisa. This rewriting in fact gave rise to a small literary quarrel, in the form of a competition with the translation that Bouillon had proposed shortly before; the debate focuses on the freedom that the storyteller can have in relation to his model:where the text of Bouillon is extremely faithful, even sometimes literal, that of La Fontaine departs on several occasions from the story of the furious Roland. The Dissertation sur Joconde, which is traditionally attributed to Boileau, settles the debate masterfully in favor of the tale by La Fontaine. Two collections of tales and short stories in verse then followed one another, in 1665 and 1666, whose licentious outlines were drawn in particular from Boccaccio and the Hundred new stories. Continuation of this narrative experience but in another brief form, this time of moral tradition, the Fables selected and put into verse, dedicated to the Grand Dauphin, appeared in 1668. In 1669, La Fontaine added a new genre to his activity by publishing the novel The Loves of Psyche and Cupid, which arouses relative incomprehension in view of its novel form:a mixture of prose and verse, of mythological narrative - this time taken from Apuleius - and literary conversations, the text contravenes basics of classical aesthetics. It is from the fiction of the "four friends" that this novel stages that we have speculated on the friendship that would unite La Fontaine, Molière, Boileau and Racine, without much proof:if La Fontaine is distantly linked to Racine's family, their relations are episodic; the relations with Molière are not known if they exist; as for Boileau, there is hardly any trace of such a friendship. After his participation in a Collection of Christian and Diverse Poetry published in 1670 by Port-Royal, La Fontaine successively published, in 1671, a third collection of Tales and short stories in verse, and a variegated collection, containing tales, fables, poems from the time of Fouquet, elegies, under the title of New Fables and Other Poems. In 1672 the Duchess of Orléans died:La Fontaine then experienced new financial difficulties; Marguerite de La Sablière took him in and took him in a few months later, probably in 1673.
In 1674, La Fontaine embarked on a new genre:opera, with a project of collaboration with Lully, which aborted. This is the occasion for a violent satire of La Fontaine against Lully, a rare register in his work, but where he excels in this poem entitled Le Florentin. The same year, a collection of New Tales was published - but this time, without anyone knowing very well why, the edition was seized and its sale prohibited:if La Fontaine had charged the anticlerical trait and the license, that these tales remained in the tradition of the genre and in a topic that made their charge relatively harmless. After two collections of Tales, it is again a collection of Fables chosen and put into verse that La Fontaine publishes in 1678 and 1679, this time dedicated to Madame de Montespan, mistress of the King:these are our current books VII to XI of the Fables, but then numbered from I to V.
The 1680s:around the Academy
Less prosperous period, where the productions were quantitatively less important, but no less diverse:thus, in 1682, La Fontaine published a "Poème du Quinquina", a philosophical poem in the claimed manner of Lucretius in praise of the new medicine, and accompanied of two new tales. The literary activity of the years 1665-1679 ended in 1683 with an election, however tumultuous, to the French Academy, without it being possible to specify the exact reasons for this difficulty:it was possible to hypothesize that the administration louis-quatorzienne held a grudge against the poet who had published two poems in favor of Fouquet during his trial; the speech of the opponents of this entry of La Fontaine to the Academy is based on the accusation of immorality launched against the collections of Tales and short stories in verse. In any case, La Fontaine, after a vague promise not to rhyme any more tales, was received on May 2, 1684 at the Academy, where, in addition to the traditional thanks, he delivered a Speech to Madame de La Sablière where he defines, in a famous formula, as "butterfly of Parnassus".
The following year, the Academy was once again the setting for a new affair in which La Fontaine was involved:Furetière, who by composing his own dictionary had overstepped the privilege of the company in this matter, was expelled, and launched a series of pamphlets in particular against La Fontaine, his former friend, whom he accuses of treason and against whom he takes up the accusation of licentiousness.
It is another old friendship, it without rupture, which gives birth, the same year, to the Works of prose and poetry of the sieurs de Maucroix and de La Fontaine; the collection contains translations of Plato, Demosthenes and Cicero by Maucroix and new fables and new tales by La Fontaine, who will have waited little to rig some licentious news.
New scandal, on a larger scale, at the Academy:the reading of the poem Le siècle de Louis Le Grand by Perrault triggered the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, in which La Fontaine sided, not without ambiguity, on the side of the Ancients, by an Epistle to Monsieur de Soissons, a pretext for a declaration of literary principles, the most famous of which remains "My imitation is not slavery".
The last years and the last fables (1689-1695)
A series of fables are published in review between 1689 and 1692, which are collected in 1693, with unpublished ones and those of 1685, in a final collection, our current book XII, dedicated to the Duke of Burgundy, eldest son of the Grand Dauphin and to this title heir presumptive to the Crown. Meanwhile, La Fontaine falls seriously ill; we have an account of 1718 by Father Pouget, confessor of La Fontaine, which assures of a conversion of La Fontaine during this illness and of a public denial of his tales before a delegation from the Academy. However, this event does not appear in the registers of the Academy. La Fontaine is buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery, since the transfer of his remains in 1817, at the same time as that of Molière.
Timeline
1617:Marriage of the poet's parents. Charles de La Fontaine, originally from Champagne, and Françoise Pidoux, originally from Poitou. Assassination of Concini and end of the regency of Marie de Medici.
1621:On July 8, Jean de La Fontaine is baptized in Château-Thierry, where he was born the same day or the day before. His father bears the title of "Counsellor to the King and Master of Waters and Forests of the Duchy of Chaury" (Château-Thierry). He is also a captain of the hunts. Protestant uprisings; death of the Duke of Luynes.
1623:September 26, baptism of Claude, brother of the poet. Publication in Paris of the Adonis of Cavalier Marin, with preface by Chapelain. Trial of Théophile de Viau.
1624:Richelieu becomes head of the King's Council.
1627:Publication of the last two volumes of Astrée.
1628:Death of Malherbe.
Around 1630:The studies of La Fontaine remain poorly known. He probably began them at the Collège de Château-Thierry, a well-known establishment, to complete them around 1635 in a Parisian college, where he had Furetière as a fellow student.
1633:On April 26, baptism of Marie Héricart, daughter of the civil and criminal lieutenant in the bailiwick of La Ferté Milon, related to the Sconin-Racine family.
1636:Birth of Boileau. Corneille's Cid.
1637:Discourse on the Method of Descartes.
1639:Birth of Racine.
1641:La Fontaine enters the mother house of the Oratory in Paris on April 27, then perhaps goes to Juilly and returns to Paris at the house of Saint-Magloire to study theology. His brother Claude joined him at the Oratory.
1642:La Fontaine leaves the Oratory, after 18 months. Death of Richelieu.
1643:La Fontaine returned to Château-Thierry. His poetic vocation then awakens, it seems. May 15, death of Louis XIII. May 19, victory of Rocroi.
Around 1646:La Fontaine comes to study law in Paris; he acquires the title of lawyer in the Court of Parliament. With other young poets, regulars of the Palace, he is part of a small literary and friendly academy called the "Round Table". These palatines are Pellisson, Furetière, Maucroix, Charpentier, Cassandre. He met other men of letters:Conrart, Chapelain, Patru, Perrot d'Ablancourt, the Tallemants, Antoine de La Sablière...
1647:November 10, signing of the marriage contract between the poet and Marie Héricart at La Ferté-Milon. "His father married him, and he did it out of kindness" (Gédéon Tallemant des Réaux|Tallemant). The poet's mother, alive in 1634, died on the date of the contract. In April, Maucroix had purchased a canon's prebend at Reims. He will remain La Fontaine's friend until his death. Gassendi:De Vita and Moribus Epicuri.
1649:Claude, a colleague at the Oratory, renounces his share of the inheritance in favor of Jean, in return for a pension. The sling broke out in 1648.
1652:La Fontaine acquires the office of three-year Private Master of Waters and Forests.
1653:In August, sale of a property located in Oulchy-le-Château. On October 30, baptism at Château-Thierry of La Fontaine's son, Charles, who has Maucroix as his godfather. The father will never take much care of his son. End of the Fronde.
1654:In August, first published work by La Fontaine:The Eunuch, comedy in verse imitated from Terence.
1658:Death of the father of La Fontaine, who leaves to his son his charges, not very lucrative and a muddled estate with heavy debts. As a precaution, La Fontaine and his wife ask for separation of property. The household itself is hardly united, probably through the fault of the poet, an indifferent husband. After June, La Fontaine offers Fouquet his Adonis. Jannart, Marie Héricart's uncle, was Fouquet's deputy in Parliament and Pellisson, friend of La Fontaine, was in the superintendent's service.
1659:Until 1661, La Fontaine will receive a cash pension from Fouquet, in return for a "poetic pension". He must also compose a work in honor of Vaux-le-Vicomte:he undertakes the Songe de Vaux. He lives sometimes in Paris, at Jannart, with his wife, sometimes in Château-Thierry for the duties of his charges, but he frequents the Château de Fouquet, binds with Charles Perrault, Saint-Evremond, Madeleine de Scudéry. Peace of the Pyrenees.
1660:Beau Richard's Les Rieurs are performed at the Château-Thierry carnival. In this city there is an Academy in which La Fontaine and even more his wife are interested. In 1660-1661, La Fontaine became friends with Racine, a beginner. In June, marriage of the king. In August, Queen Marie-Thérèse enters Paris.
1661:August 17, Fête de Vaux, during which La Fontaine attends the first performance of Les Fâcheux by Molière. September 5, arrest of Fouquet in Nantes. La Fontaine falls seriously ill. Recovered, he returned to Château-Thierry, where he was pursued by a trader in usurpation of nobility. Beginning of construction of Versailles.
1662:In March (?), anonymous publication of the Elegy to the Nymphs of Vaux. August:the Duke of Bouillon, lord of Château-Thierry marries Marie-Anne Mancini, niece of Mazarin. La Fontaine became "gentilhomme servant" of the Douarière Duchess of Orléans in Luxembourg, but he still stayed with Jannart. December 10, finished printing the Nouvelles en vers, containing the first two Contes de La Fontaine.
1665:On January 10, finished printing Tales and Short Stories in verse. On June 30, the printing of a translation of the City of God by Saint Augustine, whose poetic quotations were rendered in French verse by La Fontaine; the second volume will appear in 1667.
1669:The Loves of Psyche and Cupid, novel followed by Adonis, printed for the first time.
1671:On January 21, La Fontaine leaves his offices bought by the Duke of Bouillon, and loses this source of income. Publication of the Collection of Christian and Diverse Poems, dedicated to Monsignor the Prince of Conti. La Fontaine contributed a lot to the preparation of this Jansenist collection (completed printing on December 20, 1670). January 27, Third part of the Tales. March 12:New Fables and other poems (eight fables). In January, the Psyche of Molière and Corneille, Quinault and Lulli, inspired by the novel by La Fontaine, was represented.
1672:Death of the Douarière Duchess of Orléans. La Fontaine thus loses his last charge. Separate publication of two fables The Sun and the Frogs, The Curé and the dead. Invasion of Holland. Discourse on the Knowledge of Beasts by P. Pardies.
1673:It was probably from 1673 that Marguerite de La Sablière hosted Jean de La Fontaine. Until she died in 1693, she provided for her needs. In his hotel, he can meet Charles Perrault, Bernier, doctor and disciple of Gassendi, who spent a long time in India, and a good number of scholars such as Roberval and Sauveur. Publication of the Poem of the Captivity of Saint Malc, a subject no doubt suggested by Jansenist friends. On February 17, death of Molière, for whom La Fontaine wrote an epitaph.
1674:The protection of Madame de Montespan and her sister Madame de Thianges earns La Fontaine the mission of writing an opera libretto on Daphne, for Lulli, who refuses it:hence the satire of the Florentine, which remained in manuscript for 17 years. Publication of New Tales, very licentious. Epistles, to Turenne, a member of the Bouillon family, who personally held La Fontaine in friendship. In July, Boileau's Art poétique makes no mention of the fable or La Fontaine.
1675:Prohibition of the sale of New Tales by order of La Reynie, lieutenant of police. On July 27, Turenne was killed at the Battle of Salzbach. Bernier publishes the Abrégé de la Philosophie de Gassendi.
1676:La Fontaine sells his birthplace to his cousin Antoine Pintrel and finishes paying the paternal debts.
1677:The Duchess of Bouillon, protector of La Fontaine and her brother the Duke of Nevers cabal against the Phèdre of Racine.
1678-1679:New edition of the selected Fables, dedicated to Madame de Montespan. The Peace of Nijmegen (August 1678) is celebrated by La Fontaine in several plays.
1680:Exile to Nérac of the Duchess of Bouillon compromised in the poisons affair. Death of La Rochefoucauld. Death of Fouquet at Pignerol. Conversion of Marguerite de La Sablière who, widowed, having married her three children, abandoned by La Fare, her lover, devotes herself to the care of the sick and goes to live in rue Saint Honoré, she installs La Fontaine near her new home.
1681:On August 1, the printing of the Epistles of Seneca (the letters to Lucilius) was completed, translated by Pierre Pintrel, cousin of La Fontaine, who himself translated the poetic quotations into verse and had the work published.
1682:In January, Poème du Quinquina, dedicated to the Duchess of Bouillon, followed by two tales, Galatea and Daphne, opera librettos. Around this time, La Fontaine undertook a tragedy, Achille, which remained unfinished. Birth of the Duke of Burgundy.
1683:May 6, first performance at the Comédie Française, of La Fontaine's Comedy Rendez-vous, which has no success and whose text is lost. September 6, death of Colbert. La Fontaine is seeking his seat at the French Academy, while Louis XIV wants to see Boileau, his historiographer, elected. On November 15, the Academy, in majority hostile to the satirist, proposed La Fontaine by sixteen votes against seven. The session was agitated, due to the anger shown by Toussaint Rose, the king's secretary. Louis XIV uses this as a pretext to refuse authorization to "consume" the election.
1684:On April 17, Boileau is unanimously elected; the king grants the authorization to receive La Fontaine. May 2, reception of the fabulist, reading of the Speech to Madame de La Sablière. La Fontaine wrote La Comparaison d’Alexandre, de César et de Monsieur le Prince (by Condé), at the request of the Prince de Conti. Condé himself esteemed La Fontaine and gladly saw him at Chantilly. Death of Corneille.
1685:In January, the Academy expels Furetière, guilty of having obtained by surprise a privilege for his Dictionary, completed before that of the Academy. La Fontaine votes for exclusion and suffers the virulent attacks of his former friend, to whom he responds with epigrams. On July 28, finished printing Ouvrages de Prose et de Poésie des Seigneurs de Maucroix et de La Fontaine in two volumes, the first of which contains new tales, and the second new fables and other plays. Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Death of Prince Louis-Armand de Conti.
1686:Death of Condé. Augsburg League. Perrault reads his poem from the Century of Louis Le Grand, a protest by Boileau. The Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns breaks out. In February, the Epistle to Huet is printed in a limited edition booklet. In July, Marie-Anne, Duchess of Bouillon, had to take refuge in England with her sister Hortense, a friend from Saint-Evremond. Followed correspondence by La Fontaine with them and some friends of the London group, which included, among others, the diplomats Bonrepaux and Barrillon.
1688:Marguerite de La Sablière retires to the Incurables but continues to provide accommodation for La Fontaine. The poet became familiar with Prince François-Louis de Conti, in the very free environment of the Temple des Vendôme, where he found Chaulieu. For a while he chaperones the scandalous Madame Ulrich. The characters of La Bruyère; the portrait of La Fontaine will not enter it until the 6th edition, in 1691.
1691:November 28, first performance at the Opéra d'Astrée, lyrical tragedy by La Fontaine, with music by Colasse, son-in-law of Lulli:complete failure.
1692:In December, seriously ill, La Fontaine is converted by the Abbé Pouget, young curate of St Roch.
1693:On February 12, he renounces the Tales in front of a delegation from the Academy and receives viaticum. However, he recovers. Marguerite de La Sablière died in January, Pellisson on February 7. The friends from England tried in vain to convince La Fontaine to come and settle in London. He becomes the guest of Anne d'Hervart, Master of Requests at the Parliament of Paris, son of a banker and extremely rich, married to Françoise de Bretonvilliers. On September 1, the printing of selected Fables, dated 1694, and constituting Book XII. In October-November, remarks addressed to Maucroix on his translation of Asterius.
1694:Birth of Voltaire.
1695:On February 9, La Fontaine is overcome with weakness on returning from the Academy. He died on April 13, at the d'Hervart home. While carrying out the mortuary toilet, we find a hair shirt on him. La Fontaine was buried on April 14 in the Cimetière des Innocents. As a result of an error made on this point by d'Olivet in the History of the Academy, the commissioners of the Convention exhumed in 1792, to erect a mausoleum for them, anonymous bones in another cemetery.
1696:Posthumous works, with dedication signed by Madame Ulrich.
1709:Death of Marie Héricart, widow of the poet.
1723:Death of Charles, only son of the poet.
Fables
His Fables constitute the main poetic work of classicism, and one of the greatest masterpieces of French literature, which could have made Sainte-Beuve say that La Fontaine was the Homer of the French:the tour de force de La Fontaine is to give through his work a high value to a genre that until then had no literary dignity and was reserved for school exercises in rhetoric and Latin. Work of rewriting the fables of Aesop, Phèdre, Abstemius, but also texts by Horace (the Rat of the cities and the rat of the fields), of Livy ("the Limbs and the stomach"), of letters apocrypha of Hippocrates ("Democritus and the Abderitans"), and many others, they constitute a sum of classical Latin and Greek culture, and even open up in the second collection to the Indian tradition with the choice of panchatantra fables. A work of both poetry and thought:for the Fables offer a meditation in action on the nature and effects of speech, especially political speech, and of their own enunciation:Louis Marin thus showed the subtlety of reflection as of device of these seemingly innocent fables, starting from the paradigmatic example of the fable entitled Le Pouvoir des Fables (see Bibliography).
Illustration of the Fables
The fables are illustrated from the first edition by Chauveau and his disciples:it is because the fable is a genre close to the emblem, and as such functions as a moral image; it therefore welcomes its iconographic doubling for didactic purposes. In the 18th century, Oudry offered new, more naturalistic illustrations. Grandville in 1838, then Gustave Doré in 1867 successively proposed a new iconography. In the 20th century, Benjamin Rabier followed by Chagall in turn offered their visions of Fables.
Tales
The fabulist has eclipsed the storyteller. The religious tension of the end of the reign of Louis XIV, and later the prudishness of the 19th century, overshadowed these licentious tales whose poetic challenge consists in playing with the implicit in order (not) to name sexuality, to "say without saying", in a game of evasion and provocation based on the complicity of the reader. La Fontaine carried out these two activities simultaneously, going so far as to add tales to the ultimate collection of fables of 1693:much more than a laboratory for the playful narration of Fables, the Tales could well be part of the same enterprise, that of of a poetic narration under the sign of a gaiety without illusions. The work of La Fontaine offers the exemplary figure of a disillusioned wisdom:she chooses, like the Democritus of the fable Democritus and the Abderitans, a meditative retreat rather than the life of the city of Abdera subjected to the thoughts of the vulgar , and, faced with the frenzied violence of reality, she prefers, against the Heraclitus of History, laughter rather than tears.
Some verses of Jean de La Fontaine turned into proverbs
* ...Every flatterer
Lives at the expense of the listener. (The Raven and the Fox, l, 2)
* The reason of the strongest is always the best. (The Wolf and the Lamb, l, 10)
* If it's not you, then it's your brother. (The Wolf and the Lamb, l, 10)
* Rather suffer than die is the motto of men. (Death and the Woodcutter, l, 16)
* I bend and do not break. (The Oak and the Reed, l, 22)
* We need as much as we can oblige everyone:
We often need a plus small than yourself. (The Lion and the Rat, II, 11)
* ... Is quite mad of the brain
Who claims to please everyone and his father. (The Meunier, his Son and the Ass, III, 1)
* They are too green, he says, and good for boors. (The Fox and the Grapes, III, 11)
* ... Mistrust
Is the mother of security. (The Cat and an Old Rat, III, 18)
* Little fish will become big. (The Little Fish and the Fisherman, V, 3)
* One in the hand is, it is said, better than two in the off. (The Little Fish and the Fisherman, V, 3)
* ... Work is a treasure. (The Plowman and his Children, V, 9)
* There is no point in running; you have to leave on time. (The Hare and the Tortoise, VI, 10)
* Help yourself, Heaven will help you. (Le Chartier mired, VI, 18)
* Depending on whether you are powerful or miserable,
Court judgments will make you white or black. (Animals sick with the plague, VII, 1)
* ... Such is taken who thought he was taking. (The Rat and the Oyster, VIII, 9)
* But the shortest works
Are always the best... (Speech to M. le Duc de La Rochefoucauld, X, 14)
* Let the wise be wary of all strangers. (The Fox, the Wolf and the Horse)
* The skin of the bear must never be sold / Until it has been put on the ground (The Bear and the two Companions , V, 20)
Works
* The Eunuch (1654)
* Adonis (1658, published in 1669)
* Les Rieurs du Beau-Richard (1659)
* Elegy to the Nymphs of Vaux (1661)
* Ode to the King (1663)
* Tales (1665, 1666, 1671, 1674)
* Fables (1668, 1678, 1693)
* The Loves of Psyche and Cupid (1669)
* Collection of Christian poetry and various (1671)
* Poem of the captivity of Saint Malc (1673)
* Daphne (1674)
* Poem du Quinquina (1682)
* Works of prose and poetry (1685)
* Astrée (1691)