La Fontaineâs Fables cultivate a sophisticated art of subtle echoes. They also set up occasionally a discreet internal intertextuality: the twelve Books of the definitive edition group texts that had already circulated separately and create somewhere brief series with very surprising iridescences. The authorâs of the present essays search to define benchmarks that may allow to recognize this series: La Fontaine mostly preferred not to stress them explicitly, it should be the readerâs pleasure to locate them! The essays show also that some very well-known fables present, when read in combination with their neighbour-texts, a completely unexpected physiognomy.
Avec les contributions de / contributors: Julien Bardot, Patrick Dandrey, Marc Escola, Sjef Houppermans, Yves Lepestipon, Paul.J.Smith, Tiphaine Rolland
Specialists in French Ancien Regime Literature or history. Readers interested in the Fables of Jean de La Fontaine. 2018 will be the 350th anniversary of the first edition of the Fables in 1668