Character Catalog

First collection of verse fables, dedicated to the young Dauphin. These one hundred and twenty-four fables established La Fontaine's reputation and profoundly renewed the genre inherited from Aesop.

Second collection, broader and more philosophical, dedicated to Madame de Montespan. In it he deepens the psychology of the characters and the moral reflection on human nature.

Last book of the Fables, dedicated to the Duke of Burgundy, grandson of Louis XIV. It bears witness to a more melancholic wisdom and an accomplished formal mastery.

A collection of often bawdy and licentious tales inspired by Boccaccio, Ariosto, and Rabelais. These texts, condemned by the Church, were renounced by the author on his deathbed.

A long mythological poem dedicated to Nicolas Fouquet, which reveals La Fontaine's talent for lyric poetry and his admiration for ancient authors such as Ovid.

Unfinished poem celebrating the château de Vaux-le-Vicomte, composed for Fouquet before his arrest. A precious testament to literary patronage in the 17th century.

I use animals to instruct men. […] The appearance is puerile, I confess; but these puerilities serve as a wrapper for important truths.

Nymphs who owe him your most charming charms, / If along your banks Louis should walk, / Try to soften him, bend his courage.

I am writing to you from Château-Thierry, where I have arrived with great fatigue. The countryside is beautiful, but I prefer my room to all the roads in the world.

The apologue is composed of two parts, one of which may be called the body, the other the soul. The body is the fable; the soul, the moral.

Iris, I would praise you, it is all too easy; / But you have a hundred times refused our incense.

La Fontaine's birthplace, where he was born in 1621 and spent his childhood. The family home, now a museum, bears witness to his bourgeois origins.

The lavish residence of his patron Nicolas Fouquet, where La Fontaine stayed and flourished as a writer before Fouquet's arrest in 1661.

La Fontaine lived for twenty years under the roof of Marguerite de La Sablière, a woman of wit and letters, on the rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs. This salon was his most lasting home.

The institution of which La Fontaine became a member in 1684, following a controversial election. He represented the Ancients' camp in the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns.

The court of the Sun King, which La Fontaine seldom visited, owing to Louis XIV's coldness toward him. This palace symbolizes the world he brushed against without ever truly belonging to it.

The writing instrument of every literate person in the 17th century, the trimmed goose quill allowed La Fontaine to set his verses down on paper with the lightness and spontaneity that characterized him.

La Fontaine drew directly from Greek and Latin fabulists, notably Aesop and Phaedrus, whose collections he kept within reach to draw his subjects from before rewriting them in his own style.

An indispensable light source for literary evenings and nights spent reading or writing in the Parisian salons frequented by La Fontaine.

An avid reader of the Ancients, La Fontaine owned works of Stoic and Epicurean philosophy that nourished his moral thinking and shone through in his fables.

To appear in aristocratic salons, notably at the home of his patron Madame de La Sablière, La Fontaine would don the elaborate dress of the gentleman of letters, often reluctantly according to contemporary accounts.

La Fontaine was renowned for his simple lifestyle and frugal meals, yet appreciated the fine Champagne wine from his native region, a symbol of conviviality at dinners among friends.