Book: Fables

Overview
Jean de La Fontaine’s Fables (first collection, 1668), titled "Fables choisies, mises en vers", gather and recast ancient and Eastern tales into supple French verse, creating a witty, urbane mirror of human society. Dedicated to the Dauphin and conceived as both instruction and entertainment, the six books published in 1668 transform brief exempla into miniature dramas where animals and ordinary folk reveal the springs of power, folly, prudence, and desire. The result is neither a children’s primer nor a moral ledger but a theater of the world, where charm, irony, and ambiguity coexist with pointed ethical lessons.

Structure and Style
The 1668 collection comprises dozens of fables arranged across six books, each a compact narrative unfolding in a few nimble stanzas. La Fontaine varies meter and tone with ease, moving from the gravity of alexandrines to the sprightliness of shorter lines. His narrator slips between storyteller, confider, and amused spectator, punctuating scenes with asides that guide but rarely dictate. Morals sometimes appear at the end like a curtain line, sometimes open the piece, and often remain deliberately implicit, inviting readers to weigh circumstance against maxim. The diction is clear yet elastic, mixing classical polish with colloquial sparkle, and the pacing favors brisk exposition, quick dialogue, and vivid turns that clinch the point.

Themes and Moral Vision
Power and justice, prudence and vanity, liberty and dependence form the collection’s central axes. The fables repeatedly test the relation between might and right, often concluding that force masquerades as law when institutions fail. Prudence emerges as adaptation rather than timidity; survival depends on flexibility more than sheer strength. La Fontaine distrusts extremes: industriousness without charity can be as harsh as improvidence without foresight, and uncompromising pride may break where modest pliancy bends and endures. The moral horizon is secular, lucid, and tinged with skepticism, but compassion flickers through the irony; the poet treats human weakness as a constant to be understood rather than scolded.

Notable Fables
"The Wolf and the Lamb" stages a trial in which the verdict precedes the evidence; the stronger invents pretexts to devour the weaker, a lapidary lesson in arbitrary power. "The Crow and the Fox" anatomizes flattery: the corvid’s vanity yields its cheese to the smooth-tongued thief, a warning that self-love is the courtier’s easiest prey. "The Oak and the Reed" opposes rigid grandeur to humble suppleness; the storm spares the reed that bows and uproots the tree that refuses to yield. "The Cicada and the Ant" contrasts carefree song with winter scarcity; beneath the brisk rebuke to improvidence lies a stingy ant whose refusal to help troubles simple moral arithmetic. "The Wolf and the Dog" sets comfort against freedom: the well-fed watchdog’s collar reveals the hidden cost of servitude. "Death and the Woodcutter" catches a man who calls for death, then begs to shoulder his bundle again, exposing the ambivalence between weariness and the stubborn will to live. At their best, such tales deliver a moral and its critique in the same breath.

Context and Legacy
Appearing under Louis XIV, the 1668 Fables cloak social observation in animal masks, a prudent art after the fall of La Fontaine’s patron Fouquet. The dedicatee’s pedagogical frame gave the book official sheen while its irony entertained salons and readers beyond the court. The collection’s success fixed the French fable’s modern form and voice: graceful, incisive, and hospitable to doubt. Later series would broaden the scope, but the first six books already display the full register of La Fontaine’s craft, making these Fables a lasting touchstone for moral reflection and literary pleasure.