Publisher's Synopsis
"Everything speaks in my work". With these words, Jean de La Fontaine refers to his Fables, a work which - in the literary panorama of 17th-century France - remains one of the most emblematic and studied by critics. We know that the fabulist lived in a highly complex period, with many implications for the relationship between power and literature, and between the writer and society. La Fontaine, inviting us not to limit our reading to a superficial analysis, prompts us to question his work: in what sense does his work "speak", and is there a direct influence of political power on his work? How can a work such as the Fables, apparently conventional and at the same time charged with universal significance, fit into a wider project of criticism and denunciation of society, and particularly of the political hierarchy? How does La Fontaine achieve his aim of making his fables, a genre born of antiquity, ever relevant and open to interpretation, in the light of the historical events the author experiences?
