Some authors seem immortal, others sink into oblivion. After a while, what’s left? In its monthly series Should we reread…?, The duty revisits one of these writers with the help of admirers and attentive observers. Today, place for the one who awakens, amuses, exasperates or terrorizes generations of schoolchildren: Jean de La Fontaine (1621 – 1695). It is often reduced to an impressive number of fables, hiding a more abundant work, sometimes even “for adults only”. But the writer is best known for this “miracle of culture”, according to André Gide, populated by turtles, foxes and cicadas.
He wrote an opera, was tempted by comedy, defended avant-garde ideas (including that animals have a soul, a thesis presented in Speech to Madame de La Sand pit1678) and was admitted to the French Academy in 1684 after having disowned his libertine tales.
It’s hard to believe that we’re talking about Jean de La Fontaine as the image we have of him is that of a (brilliant) fabulist, he whose pearls of wisdom, and sentient morality, punctuate his speeches and conversations. Examples ? “We often need someone smaller than ourselves” (The Lion and the Rat, 1668); ” The reason of the strongest is always the best ” (The wolf and the lamb, 1668); ” Help yourself and heaven will help you ” (The mired charter, 1668); “He is taken who thought he was taken” (The Rat and the Oyster1678).
The last verses of Jean de La Fontaine’s last fable, The Referee, the Hospitaller and the Solitary (1693)
These texts, and their catchy little sentences, have long been deposited in the collective unconscious, and the school environment is no stranger to the phenomenon. Memorizing the fables of Jean de La Fontaine was often a necessary step, and if many have forgotten everything once adults, these linguistic pearls have retained their charm, as well as their evocative force. We can no longer count the chroniclers and speakers who refer to it in their texts and speeches.
And to think that from the publication of his first book of fables in 1668, the writer’s contemporaries hardly masked their surprise at these texts, in no way intended for children, dedicated to the descendants of King Louis XIV. But according to Lucie Desjardins, professor of literary studies at UQAM, these fables had a recipe comparable to that of the most famous comic strips of our time. “As with the Asterixes, we read them as a child, and we understand them; as an adult, we see something more. It is a common cultural fund that transcends ages, social classes and level of education. The same cannot be said of all the texts of this period,” specifies this specialist in 17th century French literature.e century.
However, when they appear, like today, these little stories with educational virtues achieve certain success. They stand the test of time thanks in part to the Jesuits who, in the 18the century, integrated them into their teaching methods, then took on the value of symbols in the 19the. “With the democratization of education in France,” says Lucie Desjardins, “we are creating a school canon of works that young people must read. But the 19the is much more puritan than the XVIIe, where his licentious tales disturbed no one, because the time was one of seduction, levity and deception. Subsequently, we will judge these tales harshly. In a preface to an old edition of La Fontaine’s works, it is stated: “A word about his tales so as not to return to them later”! »
Fables, child’s play?
Others hardly like the content of his fables, starting with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who, in Émile, or On Education (1762), sees in the animals that populate them characters with questionable morals. “Rousseau lived at a time when we were beginning to develop literature intended for a young audience,” recalls Michel Fournier, associate professor in the Department of French at the University of Ottawa and author of Fables of the New World (XVIIe–XXe century). Jean de La Fontaine, the classical heritage and the transmission of literary culture (Editions Hermann, 2015). He considers his fables too complex for children, and above all too ambiguous. It is precisely this ambiguity which makes it so rich, but the educational world has limited the complexity of this work. »
Marc André Bernier, professor of French literature at the University of Quebec at Trois-Rivières, also underlines Rousseau’s reservations with regard to fables “with a scholarly dimension, often inspired by ancient authors”. “When Rousseau gives the example of the fable The Fox and the Crow (1668), he argues that children cannot understand things like deception. After all, the fox begins his lie by saying: “Without lying…” He states precisely that he is not going to lie to better conceal his lie! The adults understood. » This is how he makes the delicious cheese fall from the beak of the crow, “a bird which we know sings very badly!” » underlines with a laugh this specialist in 18th century French literaturee century.
Jean de La Fontaine is also described as a “moralist”; in our time, the thing appears as an insult in certain circles. Big misunderstanding, according to Marc André Bernier. “A moralist in the 17th centurye century, he is a spectator of life, someone who observes human behavior, tries to understand it, and does so without prejudice. » And behind the apparent simplicity of his writing, the author, long the protégé of Nicolas Fouquet, powerful Minister of Finance under Louis XIV, who fell from grace in 1661, knew how to mix audacity and accessibility. “His tales and fables were also intended to be read aloud in living rooms,” says Lucie Desjardins. Women of this time knew neither Greek nor Latin, and La Fontaine claimed an aesthetic of entertainment, of lightness. Furthermore, writing poetry that mixed prose and verse was not something that was done much at the time. »
Small political treatises
Fables appear to many as real social compasses, on the importance of punctuality (“There is no point in running, you have to leave on time”, The bunny and the turtle1668) or savings (The grasshopper and the ant, 1668). Laurence Belcourt-Lamarche first sees “timeless messages” in them. In 2015, this graduate in political science from UQAM signed a master’s thesis entitled State of nature and advent of the civil state in the work of Jean de La Fontainea pretext to explore “the political significance” of these texts.
“It was said of Jean de La Fontaine that he was a lucid conservative: too lucid to respect the social order and too cautious to want to change it,” underlines this political advisor in the government of François Legault. In fact, his fables were above all a call to understand this order in order to improve it. » Obviously, “some had a greater political dimension than others”, sometimes directly linked to the news of the moment, like The Fox, the Monkey and the Animals (1668). “This fable where the monkey makes all kinds of faces to win a crown was also a commentary on the election of the throne in Poland, an elective monarchy at the time. »
Others, according to Laurence Belcourt-Lamarche, testify to the virtue of hard work as an inheritance (The plowman and his children1668), or the necessity of manual labor (The merchant, the gentleman, the shepherd and the king’s son, 1678). “We can see this fable as a call to recognize the value of the work of the most humble in society. It is modeled on a Pilpay fable [un sage indien qui aurait existé au IIIe siècle avant Jésus-Christ] where the four protagonists lost on an unknown island manage to survive together. La Fontaine has diverted it a little from its meaning: it is the shepherd who keeps the group alive, emphasizing that “the hand is the surest and most prompt help”. »
So, “childishness”, as Jean de La Fontaine described this famous part of his work? He also claimed that his fables “serve as envelopes for important truths.” There is no point in drawing hasty conclusions, you must first reread them…