Jean de La Fontaine

Jean de La Fontaine (1621–1695) was a French poet and fabulist whose animal tales turn compact plots into sharp observations about vanity, appetite, justice, and power. The Fables of La Fontaine shows how a fox, lion, wolf, lamb, or crow can carry several meanings at once: the action remains clear, yet the social relation behind it is rarely simple. The Original Fables of La Fontaine foregrounds the verse tradition in which conversational ease, rhythmic control, and irony work together. Tales and Novels of J. De La Fontaine reveals a different, more adult narrative current, broader in scene and less dependent on the moral architecture of the fable. His lasting force comes from refusing to make every lesson mechanically reassuring; intelligence may survive, but fairness does not always win. The Fables of La Fontaine offers the defining form, while Tales and Novels opens the less familiar side of his storytelling.