La Fontaine's Fables

The Fables of Jean de La Fontaine were issued in several volumes from 1668 to 1694. They are classics of French literature.

Composition history

Divided into 12 books, there are 239 of the Fables, varying in length from a few lines to some hundred, those written later being as a rule longer than the earlier.

The first collection of Fables Choisies had appeared March 31, 1668, dividing 124 fables into six books over its two volumes. They were dedicated to "Monseigneur" Louis, le Grand Dauphin, the six-year-old son of Louis XIV of France and his queen consort Maria Theresa of Spain. By this time, La Fontaine was 47 and known to readers chiefly as the author of Contes, lively stories in verse, grazing and sometimes transgressing the bounds of contemporary moral standards. The Fables, in contrast, were completely in compliance with these standards.

Eight new fables published in 1671 would eventually take their place in books 7–9 of the second collection. Books 7 and 8 appeared in 1678, while 9-11 appeared in 1679, the whole 87 fables being dedicated to the king's mistress, Madame de Montespan. Between 1682 and 1685 a few fables were published dealing with people in antiquity, such as "The Matron of Ephesus" and "Philemon and Baucis". Then book 12 appeared as a separate volume in 1694, containing 29 fables dedicated to the king's 12-year-old grandchild, Louis, Duke of Burgundy.

Jean de La Fontaine

Jean de La Fontaine (IPA: [ʒɑ̃ də la fɔ̃tɛn]; 8 July 1621 – 13 April 1695) was the most famous 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, and in French regional languages.

According to Flaubert, he was the only French poet to understand and master the texture of the French language before Victor Hugo. A set of postage stamps celebrating La Fontaine and the Fables was issued by France in 1995.

Life

Early years

La Fontaine was born in Calan at Château-Thierry in France. His father was Charles de La Fontaine, maître des eaux et forêts — a kind of deputy-ranger — of the Duchy of Château-Thierry; his mother was Françoise Pidoux. Both sides of his family were of the highest provincial middle class; though they were not noble, his father was fairly wealthy.

Jean, the eldest child, was educated at the collège (grammar school) of Reims, and at the end of his school days he entered the Oratory in May 1641, and the seminary of Saint-Magloire in October of the same year; but a very short sojourn proved to him that he had mistaken his vocation. He then apparently studied law, and is said to have been admitted as avocat/lawyer.

Fable

Fable is a literary genre: a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, mythical creatures, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature that are anthropomorphized (given human qualities, such as verbal communication) and that illustrates or leads to an interpretation of a moral lesson (a "moral"), which may at the end be added explicitly as a pithy maxim.

A fable differs from a parable in that the latter excludes animals, plants, inanimate objects, and forces of nature as actors that assume speech or other powers of humankind.

Usage has not always been so clearly distinguished. In the King James Version of the New Testament, "μῦθος" ("mythos") was rendered by the translators as "fable" in the First Epistle to Timothy, the Second Epistle to Timothy, the Epistle to Titus and the First Epistle of Peter.

A person who writes fables is a fabulist.

History

The fable is one of the most enduring forms of folk literature, spread abroad, modern researchers agree, less by literary anthologies than by oral transmission. Fables can be found in the literature of almost every country.

Immaculate Machine's Fables

Immaculate Machine's Fables is the third full-length album by Canadian indie rock band Immaculate Machine. Released on Mint Records on June 12, 2007, the album was available for sale on iTunes as of May 29.

Track listing

Personnel

Fable (disambiguation)

A fable is a story intended to illustrate a moral.

Fable or Fables may also refer to:

Video games

Music

Fontaine

Fontaine is a French word meaning fountain or natural spring or an area of natural springs.

Fountain (Duchamp) is the title of a famous sculpture by Marcel Duchamp.

Place Names

Fontaine or Fontaines is the name or part of the name of several communes in France:

BioShock (series)

BioShock is a first-person shooter video game series developed by Irrational Games—the first under the name 2K Boston/2K Australia—and designed by Ken Levine. The first game in the series was released for the Windows operating system and Xbox 360 video game console on August 21, 2007 in North America, and three days later (August 24) in Europe and Australia. A PlayStation 3 version of the game, which was developed by 2K Marin, was released internationally on October 17, 2008 and in North America on October 21, 2008 with some additional features. The game was also released for the Mac OS X operating system on October 7, 2009. A version of the game for mobile platforms has also been developed by IG Fun. A sequel, BioShock 2, was released on February 9, 2010. On August 12, 2010, Irrational Games unveiled a trailer for a new game titled BioShock Infinite, released on March 26, 2013. With the release of BioShock Infinite selling over 11 million copies as of May 2015, the three games combined have more than 25 million copies sold.