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Fables of La Fontaine

Jean de La Fontaine

Psychology & SocietyEnglish
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The grasshopper who sang all summer and must beg from the ant in winter; the crow who drops his cheese when the fox praises his voice; the tortoise who beats…

Catalogue details

Author
Jean de La Fontaine
Category
Psychology & Society
Language
English
Source
Project Gutenberg

About this book

The grasshopper who sang all summer and must beg from the ant in winter; the crow who drops his cheese when the fox praises his voice; the tortoise who beats the hare; the wolf who finds an excuse to eat the lamb, because 'the reason of the strongest is always the best'. In some 240 verse fables, Jean de La Fontaine retells and reinvents tales from Aesop and Phaedrus, turning animals into sharp portraits of the courtiers, kings and ordinary people of seventeenth-century France.

Context and significance

La Fontaine (1621–1695) published his Fables in twelve books between 1668 and 1694, and generations of French children have learned them by heart. Several of his later fables come from Kalila wa Dimna, the fables that Ibn al-Muqaffa' carried into Arabic from the Indian Panchatantra, which reached him through a French version of a Persian retelling. This is the American translation by Elizur Wright. Compare The Arabian Nights Entertainments.

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