La Fontaine, Jean de

La Fontaine, Jean de (1621-1695), French writer, author of the most famous fables of modern times.

La Fontaine was born at Château-Thierry, probably on July 8, 1621. He was educated at the College of Reims. For many years he followed his father’s profession of inspector in charge of supervising the forests and waterways of the duchy of Château-Thierry. After 1659, he was supported by a number of noble and influential patrons of literature. His first major published play (1654) was an adaptation of Eunuchus (The Eunuch) by the Roman playwright Terence, but his literary reputation was established by the first volume of his Contes et Nouvelles en Vers (Stories and Tales in Verse, 1664, followed by further volumes in 1667-1674). The three collections of his Fables Choisies Mises en Vers (Selected Fables Versified, 1668, 1678, and 1694) made him one of the most eminent French men of letters of the period, alongside the playwrights Molière and Racine and the poet-critic Boileau. He also wrote poems, opera librettos, plays, and prose works, of which the most important is the romantic tale Les Amours de Psyché et de Cupidon (The Loves of Psyche and Cupid, 1669). He was elected to the Académie Française (see Institut de France) in 1683. He died in Paris on April 13, 1695.

La Fontaine’s Contes et Nouvelles retell stories from The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio, the Heptameron of Margaret of Navarre, and the late 15th-century Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles with considerable variation, and with unique wit and verve. Their reputation for licentiousness held up La Fontaine’s election to the Académie. His Fables made original poetry out of what had been a didactic prose genre. La Fontaine wrote in vers libres (free verse), a form of verse that mixes a variety of metres and rhyme schemes, and which he handled with consummate mastery. Stories about animals, narrated in the form of miniature dramas, are used to satirize human behaviour and the injustices of society. La Fontaine uses humour and pathos with equal skill, and often the way the story is told casts doubt on the wisdom of the traditional moral found in La Fontaine’s models (notably the Greek writer Aesop and the Indian writer Pilpay).