Jean de La Fontaine was a French fabulist and one of the most widely read French poets of the 17th century. He is known above all for his Fables, which provided a model for subsequent fabulists across Europe and numerous alternative versions in France, as well as in French regional languages.
Jean de La Fontaine, Fables choises, 1755–59 at Waddesdon Manor
Facsimile of one of the very few manuscripts by Jean de La Fontaine
A scene from La Fontaine's story Le Gascon Puni by Nicolas Lancret, Musée du Louvre
An illustration of " Les Médecins " (Fable V.12) by Gustave Doré, 1866
Fable is a literary genre defined as a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, legendary creatures, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature that are anthropomorphized, and that illustrates or leads to a particular moral lesson, which may at the end be added explicitly as a concise maxim or saying.
Anthropomorphic cat guarding geese, Egypt, c. 1120 BCE
Printed image of the fable of the blacksmith and the dog from the sixteenth century
Aesop, by Velázquez
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