Poetry
Fables
Jean de La Fontaine · 1668
Opening lines
La cigale, ayant chanté
Tout l'été,
Se trouva fort dépourvue
Quand la bise fut venue:
The cicada, having sung
All summer long,
Found herself quite destitute
When the north wind had come:
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
More than two hundred fables in verse, divided into twelve books, feature animals, sometimes men or gods, in short tales. The cicada, who has sung all summer, comes to ask the ant for something to get through the winter; the fox flatters the crow to take its cheese; the wolf picks a quarrel with the lamb drinking downstream from him.
Context
The fables appeared in three collections: six books in 1668, dedicated to the Dauphin, five more in 1678 and 1679, and a twelfth, dated 1694. To the ancient sources, Aesop, Phaedrus and Babrius, are added in the later collections tales from India, which the author attributes in the advertisement of the second collection to the “wise Indian” Pilpay. The verse is of varied metres, without being free, and follows the inflections of the narrative.
Who it is for
Short pieces, which can be read separately and in whatever order one likes, in seventeenth-century verse.
Prizes and reception
Written first for a royal child, they became a basic text of school teaching in France.
Sources for this page 6
The pages consulted to check this page.