[In the following essay, Grise contends that when one character dupes another in La Fontaine's Contes or Tales, the reader participates in a pleasurable sense of superiority for being in on the deceitful jokes.]

At the end of "Joconde," the first of La Fontaine's Contes, one of the characters asks a significant question: "Et si par quelque etrange cas/Nous n'avons point cru voir chose qui n'était pas?"¹ The theme of the tale is cuckoldry; two husbands discover their wives inflagrante delictu and, seeking revenge, determine to seduce other men's wives. The evidence on which each husband bases his judgment of his wife's infidelity is first-hand and visual. However, even in these circumstances La Fontaine muses about how deception and illusion can alter one's understanding of a situation: "Et si par quelque etrange cas / Nous n'avons point cru voir chose qui n'était pas?"

The first edition of the Contes of La Fontaine was published in 1665. Despite the scandal provoked by their scabrous subjects, La Fontaine continued to compose and publish these tales in verse until a few years before his death in 1695. Modern editions, which incorporate a few posthumously published tales, contain seventy tales in all. The Contes have enjoyed great popularity; over a hundred editions were published in the nineteenth century alone.² And yet, because they were excluded from the canon of seventeenth-century classical literature relatively little scholarly research has been undertaken on the Contes. Very gradually this situation is changing. Their rediscovery as a subject of scholarly investigation was initiated by John Lapp in 1971;³ they have now come to be recognized particularly for their innovative narrative techniques.⁴ Interestingly enough, La Fontaine, himself, singled out this very aspect of his work as most significant: "C'est seulement la maniere de les conter … qui [fait] la beaute et la grace de ces choses-ci" (Preface, 1665). The present study focuses on yet another aspect of La Fontaine's narrative art, namely what I shall call the manipulation of the cognitive dimension of the text.

For some decades there has been a lively critical interest in the degree of knowledge accorded to the narrator and to the narratee in fiction. Such terms as the omniscient narrator and the implicit reader have become commonplaces. Literary criticism has, however, explored to a much lesser extent the functioning of the characters' knowledge within the fictional world. How the characters within the diegetic world share knowledge, or often withhold it from each other, shapes the various configurations of the fictional narrative, from unexpected turns of plot to the dynamics affecting the interaction of characters. This cognitive dimension of the text directly influences the reader's experience of the text, its ironies, its suspense, its revelations.⁵

The cognitive dimension of a text can be thought of, as the word "dimension" suggests, in terms of space. The space is, however, mental space, as opposed to topographical space. The term, mental space, is a metaphorical way of designating subjective constructions of knowledge, or the processing of information by an individual. Just as the world of dreams seems to occupy another space, so do beliefs, hopes, or fears. These spaces are, we might say, framed, or contextualized, by a myriad of factors which act as guides for the interpretation of experience or information.⁶ They build cognitive space in as much as they are interpretive frames.

The Contes of La Fontaine are tales of deceit similar in spirit to the Decamerone of Boccaccio. Structures of deceit constitute the major diegetic framework of the Contes. Deceit, whether in the fictitious world of literature, or in everyday life, is a manipulative process which involves shifting the deceivee's interpretation of information. The shifting of perspectives, or frames of interpretation, is accomplished by means of space-builders, such as lying, disguise, or other forms of pretense. Deceit structures function primarily by shifting the framing of cognitive space from the factual to hypothetical or counterfactual modes of interpretation. Hypothetical framing occurs when a person who is being deceived believes in only a tentative manner the information provided by the deceiver. Counterfactual framing takes place when the deceivee believes completely the false information provided by the deceiver. The hypothetical and the counterfactual frames must have as their logical counterpart a factual cognitive frame, because in order to be identified as deceit, the factual understanding of the situation must be juxtaposed in the mind of the deceiver, and sometimes in the minds of other observers, with the hypothetical or counterfactual frames. The usual pattern in the act of deceit is as follows: 1) the deceiver by means of lies, disguise, or pretense shifts the deceivee's frame of interpretation from the factual to the hypothetical mode; 2) the deceiver provides further means of verification which shifts the deceivee's frame of interpretation from the hypothetical to the counterfactual mode; 3) the purpose of the deceit is achieved when the deceivee acts in accordance with the counterfactual frame; 4) the deceivee discovers the deceit and returns to a factual framing of the situation. Sometimes—in the trompeur trompe narratives—the pattern is repeated with the deceivee changing roles with the deceiver. The hypothetical stage and, therefore, the verification by further evidence is not infrequently absent from the process. The final discovery, likewise, does not always occur.

A hypothetical mental space is relatively weak because the subject is aware of the uncertain nature of the basis for belief. Once further evidence reinforces and confirms the initial information, the hypothetical frame shifts to a false or, in other words, counterfactual interpretation of the data. Consider, for instance, hearing a neighbor's statement that a tiger is lurking in a nearby park. The hearer sets up a hypothetical frame of belief. When the information is verified during a newscast, one builds a factual frame of interpretation around it. However, if the zoo-keeper had provided erroneous information, the pretense would act as a space-builder to construct a counterfactual mental space for the newscaster and the listeners. In this deceit structure, the zoo-keeper's knowledge that the tiger had not escaped is the factual "counterpart" to the counterfactual belief space.

When the frame of interpretation shifts suddenly, the framing activity becomes most apparent. Television provided an example of a shifting frame of interpretation some years ago on April Fool's Day when at the end of the news there was a lengthy documentary on the harvesting of spaghetti from spaghetti trees in Italy. At the outset viewers continued in the framing mode set up by a newscast, a frame which left no room for irony. Then, as the absurdities of the reportage accumulated, the viewer inevitably switched the counterfactual interpretive frame so as to filter the information through an ironic mode of interpretation. This may seem like the beginning of an analysis based on speechact theory, if not merely a return to critical discussions of reality as opposed to illusion. Such is not the case. The essential element under consideration here is the functioning of the interpretive framing activity in structures of deceit. What is proposed is a study not so much of the content of the frames as of their interaction within the inner cognitive space of a literary text, the Contes of La Fontaine.⁷The application of modern theories of cognitive science to a seventeenth-century literary text could seem, at first glance, anachronistic, if not inappropriate. And yet, seventeenth-century French esthetics were very much bound up with psychological analysis and an Aristotelian emphasis on cognitive aspects of narrative, such as peripety and anagnorisis. Whether present-day cognitive science can furnish new insights into a minor narrative genre of the French classical period is the problem posed in this study. If such proves to be the case, the theories would undoubtedly yield equally fruitful results were they applied to the dramatic works of Molière or of Racine.

The five tales which form the corpus to be analyzed are not grouped together by La Fontaine, but have been chosen because they each deal with magical or pseudo-magical events. Transformations of the cognitive frame operated by magic, or what is perceived as magic, are particularly dramatic. Each of these contes—"La Gageure des trois commeres" (133-41), "La Coupe enchantee" (206-17), "Le Petit Chien qui secoue de l'argent et des pierreries" (248-60), "Féronde, ou le purgatoire" (313-17), and "La Jument du compère Pierre" (336-40)—implicitly asks the question posed in "Joconde": "Et si par quelque etrange cas/Nous n'avons point cru voir chose qui n'était pas?"

Three women vie for the best story of a trick played on a husband in "La Gageure des trois commeres." In the second story, as the narrative begins, the wife assumes the rôle of the deceiver as she begins to manipulate circumstances so that she can deceive her husband. Seated under a pear tree with her husband, she orders the valet, in a gesture somewhat reminiscent of Eve in the garden of Eden, to fetch her some pears:

La dame dit: Je voudrais bien goùter
De ce fruit-là; Guillot, monte, et secoue
Notre poirier.…
(11. 132-34)

The attractive valet, Guillot, constitutes the extramarital forbidden fruit—the object of her desire and the motivation for her deceit. The "poirier" will become a phallic symbol before the end of the tale.

A curtain of illusion falls over the scene as the valet, acting as an accomplice, pretends to see the husband making love with his wife:

Vraiment, Monsieur, commence-t-il à dire,
Si vous vouliez Madame caresser,
Un peu plus loin vous pouviez aller rire,
Et moi présent du moins vous en passer.
(11. 139-42)

The space-builder for shifting the husband's cognitive frame to the hypothetical mode is the pretense of the valet. The valet pretends, "fait semblant," to see the husband and wife making love. He pretends to have a counterfactual cognitive frame through which he views the situation. The wife fortifies the valet's claim through her own game of pretense. She pretends to denigrate the valet as a madman and to know nothing of the deceit, although she actually is its chief perpetrator:

La dame dit: Que conte celui-Ià?
Je crois qu'il rêve: où prend-il ces nouvelles?
Qu'entend ce fol avecque ses ébats?
Descends, descends, mon ami, tu verras.
11. 153-56

La Fontaine highlights the theatricality of the scene by indicating the speakers' dialogue as if the text were a play. The spell of the illusion has taken over as the genre disguises itself temporarily, pretending to be drama rather than poetic narrative:

                  Guillot
Est-ce être fou que de voir ce qu'on voit?
                  La Femme
Et qu'as-tu vu?

                  Guillot
                       J'ai vu, je le répète,
Vous et Monsieur qui dans ce même endroit
Jouiez tous deux au doux jeu d'amourette,
Si ce poirier n'est peut-être charmé.
(11. 166-70)

The valet has claimed a perspective, or cognitive frame, up in the pear tree, from which he claims to have seen something the husband knows to be false. The valet knows that the husband will judge such a perception of the scene as counterfactual, although he will not understand what motivates the counterfactual framing. The husband's cognitive frame initially is factual and corresponds to reality. He knows that he and his wife have not been making love. The two contradictory perceptions of the scene, the factual and the counterfactual, are juxtaposed in his mind.

In the second stage of the act of deceit a hypothetical interpretive frame comes into play and the husband, seeking to verify the valet's claim, climbs the pear tree. The hypothetical frame shifts quickly when the husband sees his wife in the arms of the valet. It shifts back to the factual framing because he does not accept the empirical evidence:

Le maître à peine est sur l'arbre monté,
Que le valet embrasse la maîtresse.
L'époux qui voit comme l'on se caresse
Crie, et descend en grand'hâte aussitôt.
(11. 174-77)

Enraged at what he sees, he descends rapidly—in fact, just in time, it would seem, to save his honor. His cognitive frame is factual (he believes they are making love and, in fact, they are).

After he climbs down from the pear tree the process of deceit must recommence. Again the interpretive frame of the husband's cognitive space is weakened by the lies and protestations of his wife who claims that nothing took place and suggests that the husband was dreaming. With both the wife and Guillot denying what the husband claims to have seen, the husband shifts directly to the counterfactual mode as he climbs the tree again. In this third stage of the deception the husband's counterfactual frame of belief is firmly in place. While he sees exactly the same scene as the first time, his interpretive frame has shifted. He now sees the scene through a different frame and interprets it as not being factual. This revised frame of belief (he does not believe that what he sees is true) is an illusion. Both the valet and the wife know that the husband's perspective is false. Their cognitive space is factual. The two contradictory cognitive spaces are counterparts.

Upon the husband's descent the three characters agree that the only logical conclusion is to blame the pear tree:

Ne cherchez plus, leur dit-il, d'autres causes:
C'est ce poirier, il est ensorceld.
Puisqu'il fait voir de si vilaines choses,
Reprit la femme, il faut qu'il soit brule.
Cours au logis; dis qu'on le vienne abattre.
Je ne veux plus que cet arbre maudit
Trompe les gens.…
(11. 202-208)

Closure is brought about by the wife's order to cut down the pear tree, a gesture symbolizing castration. This destructive action builds up the husband's comforting, but false belief that order has been restored. There is no scene of discovery or revelation in the tale.

The inversion of the positions of the valet and the husband, from being up in the tree to being below it, as well as the husband's double ascent and descent is a figure of the inversion of truth taking place in this tale. What the husband sees is true, but he believes it is false. What the valet claims to see is a fabrication, and he knows it is. The wife and the valet when they enact the love scene, transform the initial imaginary love-making scene into a reality.

The pear tree acquires the erroneous status of being the instrument of false perception, supplanting in the mind of the husband the true perpetrators of the deceit. The tree, like a parody of the mythical tree of Eden, is declared by all three characters to be the source of false knowledge. The valet first suggests the role of the pear tree: "Si ce poirier n'est peut-etre charme" (I. 170). The husband accepts this as a possible explanation just before his second ascent into the tree: "Notre poirier m'abuse assurdment" (I. 197). This is confirmed by what he sees: "Ne cherchez plus, leur dit-il, d'autres causes: / C'est ce poirier; il est ensorcele" (11. 202-03). The tree is a pseudo-magical talisman which makes one believe in the reality of something which never existed: "Et si par quelque etrange cas / Nous n'avons point cru voir chose qui n'était pas?"

In another tale of enchantment, "La Coupe enchantee," changing the reader's way of looking at marital infidelity, or, in other words, the reader's interpretive framing of this social problem, becomes from the outset the ostensible goal of the narrator who sets out playfully to prove the paradoxical statement: "Cocuage est un bien." In an extensive prologue (11. 1-81) the cocu is presented as an example of someone who lives on illusions, on songes, on false mental belief spaces: "Il se maintient cocu, du moins de la pensée, / S il ne l'est en chair et en os" (11. 18-19). The narrator goes still further in trying to rectify the common viewpoint on the wife's infidelity demonstrating with logical aplomb that cocuage is unimportant if the husband does not know about it, and relatively insignificant even if he is aware of it:

         Quand on l'ignore, ce n'est rien,
         Quand on le sait, c'est peu de chose.
Vous croyez cependant que c'est un fort grand cas.

         Je tire donc ma consequence,
Et dis malgré le peuple, ignorant et brutal,
         Cocuage n'est point un mal.
(11. 24-26, 43-45)

False belief spaces are the irrational product of an eccentric social type, the cocu, who imagines his wife is unfaithful:

Figurez-vous un fou chez qui tous les soupçons
       Sont bien venus quoi qu'on lui die.

Ses songes sont toujours que l'on le fait cocu.
       Pourvu qu'il songe, c'est l'affaire.
Je ne voudrais pas un tel point garantir;
       Car pour songer il faut dormir.
(11. 3-4, 7-10)

In the prologue the emphasis on songe, the contrast between reality and illusion, between true perspectives and false perspectives, is a preparation for the narrative which is to follow.

In this exemplary tale the talisman is not a pear tree, but a magical cup which reveals whether one's spouse has been faithful. If a wife has always been faithful, her husband can drink from the cup without spilling its contents. The problem raised here is not without a connection to the notion of factual and counterfactual perspectives in "La Gageure des trois commeres" in that the narrator in "La Coupe enchantee" holds that it would be better not to know, to have a false perspective, if one's wife were unfaithful.

The deceit structure in "La Coupe enchantee" is unusual in that the verification phase, when the deceiver provides corroborating evidence to the deceivee, constitutes the main interest in the tale. The primary deceiver and her goal soon seem nearly forgotten and are not mentioned in the conclusion. A sorceress, Nerie, has fallen in love with Damon, a common mortal. Her only way to win him for herself is to deceive him into believing in a falsehood—the infidelity of Caliste, his beloved wife. Nerie first makes him suspicious of his wife's visits from Eraste; his jealousy leads him to imagine false scenarios:

                       … Damon a dans l'esprit
Que tout cela s'est fait, du moins qu'il s'est pu faire.
Sur ce beau fondement le pauvre homme bâtit
         Maint ombrage et mainte chimère.
(11. 269-72)

The text here returns momentarily to the motif of songe from the prologue, those false perspectives of reality which jealousy generates. However, suspicion as a space-builder provides only a relatively weak frame, a hypothetical frame, through which to interpret actions. Belief spaces built on suspicion need further reinforcement through verification procedures.

The central part of the narrative action is the carrying out of Nerie's proposal to provide proof of Caliste's infidelity. Nerie uses her magical powers to supply two means of verification for Damon: first by transforming Damon into his suspected rival, Eraste, and, secondly by offering him the magical cup.

His metamorphosis is accomplished by a magical means, rubbing his wrist with "I'eau de la metamorphose" (I. 281). Damon has now effectively moved into the world of falsehood. He has abandoned looking through the hypothetical frame of suspicion into a false and fabricated world; he has stepped through the frame and become himself a "feint personnage" (I. 286). The counterpart of Damon's blurred mental space, based on suspicion inculcated by Nerie, is Nerie's factual mental space, her true vision of Caliste as faithful and of Damon as the dupe of her deceitful strategies. The seduction of Caliste by Damon—in the guise of Eraste—constitutes a pattem of deceit within the deceit.

What Damon hopes to see by tricking Caliste into a supposed rendez-vous with Eraste is the truth about whether she is faithful to him. He wants to eliminate doubt. However, by falsifying Caliste's perspective so as to make her believe that he is Eraste, Damon, ironically, undermines his own plan. When Caliste is on the point of surrendering to his advances, but only because he as a last resort has offered her money, Damon returns to his true form. However, his problem is now to reconcile the counterfactual and the factual cognitive frames. Can Caliste be considered unfaithful for being about to succumb to the advances of her husband, even though he was a "feint personnage"? Is he a cocu? "L'était-il, ne l'était-il point?" (I. 343). This would be a challenging "cas d'amour" for even the seventeenth-century précieuses with their casuistry of love.

Nérie next offers Damon a magical cup which holds out, like the fruit of paradise, a promise to acquire otherwise inaccessible knowledge. The fruit of the pear tree in "La Gageure des trois commères" was only a sham; here the talisman is truly magical. Jealous suspicion has by now distorted Damon's frame of belief to such an extent that he does not really want to believe in his wife's innocence. He continues to drink until some of the liquid spills: "Ce fut bien lá le comble. 0 science fatale!/Science que Damon eût bien fait d'éviter" (11. 376-77). Despite all the evidence Nérie has devised for him, Damon never fully switches from his hypothetical interpretive frame. Nérie does not achieve what she set out to gain by deceiving Damon. Even if Caliste is unfaithful, Damon reasons, perhaps his jealousy is unwarranted. Still in pursuit of the truth, Damon agrees to free his wife, whom he has by now imprisoned, if he finds that a number of other husbands are in the same situation as himself. Almost all of them discover through the magic cup that their wives, too, are unfaithful. At the conclusion, Damon offers the cup to Renaud, Charlemagne's nephew who wisely refuses to drink. The message of the narrator as it was affirmed in the prologue expresses itself clearly again. What if, Renaud muses, it were due to his own clumsiness, and not a magical force, that the cup spilled?

Que sais-je? par hasard si le vin s'épandoit?
Si je ne tenais pas votre vase assez droit?
          Je suis quelquefois maladroit:
Si cette coupe enfin me prenait pour un autre?
(11. 466-69)

Uncertainty, the hypothetical framing of his wife's fidelity—the "que sais-je?"—is preferable to the possibility of constructing a counterfactual mental space in which his wife would be unfaithful, and he a "cocu." He would believe falsely that his wife had been unfaithful—"chose qui n'était pas." It is better not to know and to retain a hypothetical faith in one's spouse: "Quand on l'ignore, ce n'est rien" (1. 24), as the narratee was admonished in the prologue. The message is ironic and somewhat cynical.

The enchanted cup, like the pear tree, is an unreliable mental space-builder which provides only a weak basis for building a framework of belief. Is it better to know, or not to know? And even if the husband thinks he knows, may he not be the victim of deceit, or of an illusion? The philosophical question of the uncertainty of knowledge attained through the senses is again raised, as it was in "La Gageure des trois commères." Cognitive space is once more explored through the unfolding of deceit structures. The tale's concluding lines reinforce the metaphysical theme of the fragility of the bases for belief:

Que sait-on? Nul mortel, soit Roland, soit Renaud,
Du danger de répandre exempt ne se peut croire.
Charlemagne lui-même aurait eu tort de boire.
(11. 484-86)

Magical illusion is likewise operative in the deceit structures in "Le Petit Chien qui secoue de l'argent et des pierreries" where nothing is as it seems. The forbidden fruit, as in "La Gageure des trois commères," is illicit love. The talisman and instrument of deceit is a magical little dog. Anselme, the elderly husband, is forced to revise his view of an unfaithful wife; Argie, for her part, abandons her austere view of the virtuous conduct becoming to a wife. These narrative transformations of cognitive space are accomplished, and to an even greater degree than in "La Coupe enchantée", by altering frameworks of belief through magical means.

The initial situation is stable: the faithful wife, Argie, at home while her husband is away, refuses the advances of her many suitors, including the most attractive one, Atis. Atis, intent on obtaining at least one night with Argie, plays the rôle of the deceiver. The event that precipitates a change in the situation and provides Atis with the means to deceive Argie is his chance encounter with the supernatural world when he saves a snake's life. Here, the narrator assumes a tone reminiscent of La Fontaine, the fabulist, whose narrator in "L'homme et la couleuvre" (Fables X, 1) shows great compassion for the snake. In reply to a man who is about to kill the animal, Atis pleads:

Ami, reprit Atis, laisse-le; n'est-il pas
Créature de Dieu comme les autres bêtes?
II est à remarquer que notre paladin
N'avait pas cette horreur commune au genre humain
Contre la gent reptile et toute son espèce.
(11. 115-19)

From this moment on, a world of metamorphosis and illusion takes hold of the structure of the tale and determines its outcome. The snake is not a snake at all, but a fairy called Manto who one day a week must take on the form of a snake. She repays Atis by devising a scheme to win over Argie. Manto changes herself into a magical dog called Favori who, among other talents, produces on demand money and precious jewels, while at the same time she gives Atis the appearance of a pilgrim.

The implementation of the first and most important deception begins when the pilgrim and dog arrive at the Château of Argie. Two misleading pieces of information—the magical dog and the false appearance of Atis—act as space-builders in that their falsehood provides an erroneous basis for Argie to shift her interpretation of her rôle as a faithful wife. If she slept with Atis, she could become very rich. This hypothetical consideration shifts Argie's attitude towards marital fidelity, making it an attractive possibility. The seeming incompatibility between being rich and being virtuous resolves itself when Argie's servant resorts to casuistry to convince her that so long as no one knows about the infidelity, Argie will remain virtuous: "Qui le saura?" (1.274) The anonymous pilgrim seems to pose no threat to the necessary secrecy. Ironically, Argie superimposes on her counterfactual belief in the identity of the pilgrim what she believes is a hypothetical frame: "si c'était encore le pauvre Atis!" (1. 256):

…Avoir l'effronterie
De lui mettre en l'esprit une telle infamie!
Avec qui? si c'était encore le pauvre Atis!
Hélas, mes cruautés sont cause de sa perte.
11 ne me proposa jamais de tels partis.
(11. 254-58)

Argie's interpretive framing of the situation shifts radically, and to her great satisfaction, as soon as she is in Atis' arms, for he reveals his true identity.

Upon his return, Anselme's view of Argie's transgression is initially that of the typical cocu:

La perfide a couvert mon front d'ignominie.
Pour satisfaction je veux avoir sa vie.
Poignarde-la; mais prends ton temps.
(1. 359-61)

In this discovery phase of the deception, Anselme considers himself to be the chief victim in a classical case of a wife's infidelity. The pattern of deceit in "Le Petit Chien qui secoue de I'argent et des pierreries" deviates somewhat from the norm at this point. A parallel deception of the husband now takes place as Manto works her magic on Anselme, making him, too, fall into the trap of avarice and shift his view of the situation. She, in the guise of a Moor, carries out this deceit by presenting him with a beautiful palace which will be his on the condition that he takes on the role of a page for two days. Argie, a secret witness to this entrapment and transformation, feigns not to recognize her husband when she meets him in the palace:

.…Est-ce Anselme, dit-elle,
       Que je vois ainsi déguisé?
Anselme? 11 ne se peut; mon oeil s'est abusé.
Le vertueux Anselme à la sage cervelle
Me voudrait-il donner une telle legon?
(11. 448-52)

Anselme's own avarice has been exposed as comparable to Argie's. The perspective of the jealous husband must be put aside. The cognitive frame through which he interprets the situation changes, but the new knowledge he acquires does not so much alter his judgment of the fact of his wife's infidelity as shift his perspective of the infidelity. When the ephemeral riches conjured up by magic disappear, Anselme and Argie are willing to return to their initial relationship of devotion to each other. Cognitive space is explored in this tale to demonstrate that avarice has the power to shift perspectives and even to alter ideals of virtue—as the first line of "Le Petit chien" stated: "La clef du coffre-fort et des coeurs, c'est la même" (I. I).

In "Feronde, ou le purgattoire" the message of the tale is again that husbands should not be suspicious and jealous. A pseudo-magical deception re-adjusts and radically transforms the husband, Feronde's cognitive space so that he must reinterpret his wife's actions. Initially suspicious of her frequent visits to the local priest, Feronde is very harsh with his wife, recognizing that her relationship with the priest is not as innocent as she claims:

Sa femme allait toujours chez le prélat;
Et prétextait ses allées et venues
Des soins divers de cet économat.
(11. 81-83)

The priest orchestrates a double deceit pattern, first to sequester the troublesome husband by making him believe he is in purgatory, and, secondly, to bring him back to life when his wife becomes pregnant, and doing so in a manner credible to Feronde and to other people. In the first stage of the deception the priest, using a magical "poudre endormante" (I. 11), puts Feronde to sleep so soundly that he does not awaken even during his own funeral. La Fontaine uses the "indirect libre" discourse to advantage when Feronde regains consciousness in the tomb: "Qu'est-ce cela? songe-t-il? est-il mort? / Serait-ce point quelque espece de sort?" (11. 120-21). Being informed by the priest's accomplices that he is in purgatory and will remain there for a thousand years, Feronde's counterfactual understanding of his situation makes him willing to endure the beatings and fasting imposed on him in the name of purification. So radically does his perspective alter that he promises not to suspect his wife of anything, if only he can return to earth.

In the meantime the priest has been so busy consoling the widow that he is about to become a father in more than name:

Son soin ne fut longtemps infructueux
Pas ne semait en une terre ingrate.

Pater abbas avec juste sujet
Apprehenda d'être père en effet.
(II. 186-89)

The second phase of the deception, the return of Feronde, is viewed by the people of the village as a miraculous event. To the astonishment of all, the abbé prays so hard that Feronde returns from purgatory. The villagers interpret the event through a counterfactual framework:

… Un si merveilleux cas
Surprit les gens. Beaucoup ne voulaient croire
Ce qu'ils voyaient. L'abbé passa pour saint.
(11. 195-97)

The husband accepts the child as his own, thus adopting a permanently false view of the situation, as is sometimes the pattern in La Fontaine's tales. The moment of revelation does not take place. Feronde is a complete victim of deception.

"La Jument du compere Pierre," like the tale of the pear tree and that of Feronde, portrays a naive husband, Pierre, who is deceived into believing in false magic. Messire Jean, cleverly promises to work a charm so that the peasant's wife will "par art d'enchantement" (1. 78) be a mare during the day and a woman at night. Transportation of the farmer's produce to the market will be greatly expedited and the mare will need to eat only a small amount of grass daily. Lured by the false promise of future prosperity, Pierre is duped into believing in the fabricated magical framework; he even encourages his reluctant wife, Magdeleine, to disrobe in front of Messire Jean. Pierre, in fact, removes her last garments. He, like the husband under the pear tree, witnesses Messire Jean making love to his wife, but does not believe what he sees. The deceit is carried out by first duping Pierre into building a hypothetical mental space within which he foresees a prosperous future; the second step in the deceit structure is to shift Pierre's cognitive framework into the counterfactual mode, so that he does not interpret what he sees as he normally would. The cure, claiming to operate his magical transformation of her into a jument, touches her all over so that each part will enter into the spell. Pierre, seeing no progress being made, even enters, through his cognitively deficient framework, into the illusory world further and prays for the metamorphosis:

Tant de façons mettaient Pierre en chagrin;
Et ne voyant nul progrès à la chose,
II priait Dieu pour la métamorphose.
(11. 146-48)

The supremely magical moment which is to accomplish Magdeleine's actual transformation into a mare consists in the act of giving the animal a tail: "car de l'enchantement / Toute la force et l'accomplissement / Gisait a mettre une queue a la bete" (11. 149-51). The word, "queue," it might be recalled, had a sexual connotation for La Fontaine's readers. Only when it is too late does Pierre see what is really happening: "Messire Jean, je n'y veux point de queue: / Vous l'attachez trop bas, Messire Jean" (11. 156-57). In a curious reversal, both the cure and Magdeleine berate Pierre and verbally transform him into a donkey. Messire Jean exclaims:

.…Foin de toi:
T'avais-je pas recommandé, gros âne,
De ne rien dire et de demeurer coi?"
(11. 164-66)

Magdeleine is angry, and, very subtly, her innuendoes about Pierre's virility come through the lines by way of the rhyme "malheureux"P'gueux" which echoes the earlier "queue" rhyme:

…Malheureux,
Tu ne seras qu'un misérable gueux
Toute ta vie: et puis viens-t'en me braire.
(11. 170-72)

In this narrative the deceivee discovers the deceit. The duped husband sheds his false interpretive framework, takes back control of the situation, and does not tolerate the wife's invitation to the cure to come and transform her into a jument every day. Pierre, unlike Feronde or the husband under the pear tree, sees clearly at the end and declares to his wife: "Plus de jument, ma mie" (1. 183). He has made the full circle through the illusion and back again.

In these five "magical" tales cognitive framing techniques, which are present throughout the other tales of La Fontaine as well, come very clearly into focus. Deceptive tactics are deployed in order to create hypothetical and counterfactual belief frames through which the characters in the tales see, or comprehend situations in a way that does not correspond to the factual situation.

One of the most important aspects of La Fontaine's narrative technique on the diegetic level is the juxtaposition and superimposition of differing cognitive frameworks on the same set of circumstances. In "La Gageure des trois commeres" the husband's framing of the actual scene of love-making between his wife and the valet is juxtaposed with the valet's 'pretended framing of the scene as involving no sexual activity. The deception is complete when the one framework is super imposed on the other in the husband's mental space so that he sees the love-making but does not believe it is taking place. La Fontaine skillfully constructs and deconstructs belief spaces within the narrative. Illusions created by false perspectives are constantly being played with as they are created through various forms of deceit and cast aside through revelation and discovery.

If within the fictional world the deceiver, and sometimes one or more accomplices, understand the situation within a factual framework and are aware of the false framing activity of those who are victims of the deceit, the reader occupies an even more privileged position. The continually shifting changes in perspective within the diegetic world serve to fascinate the reader. The reader's pleasure comes from occupying a superior cognitive space from which to view the multiple perspectives simultaneously, assess their relative validity, and enjoy the ironic double vision of contradictory cognitive spaces. The narrator creates a pact of complicity with the reader by sharing enough information so that the reader's interpretive frame is large enough to comprehend the shifting perspectives of the characters. In "Le Petit Chien qui secoue de l'argent et des pierreries" the reader relishes the dramatic irony of the situation when Argie wishes that she were about to make love to Atis; in fact, that is precisely what she is about to do. Common threads of deceit and trickery run through all the Contes, but the dominant, albeit apparently playful, concern is the one highlighted in the magical tales, that is, the hypothesis that society, the world we live in, and our knowledge of it, is possibly all illusory. We, humans, are all sitting under the pear tree, thinking we know reality, but what if our perspective is false:"Et si par quelque étrange cas / Nous n'avons point cru voir chose qui n'était pas?" This is the recurring subliminal question put to the reader throughout the Contes.

Notes

¹Contes et nouvelles en vers, ed. Nicole Ferrier and Jean-Pierre Collinet (Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1980) 62. All quotations from the Contes refer to this edition.

² See Catherine Grisé, "Le Jeu de l'imitation: un aspect de la réception des Contes de La Fontaine," PFSCL 10 (1983): 35-39.

³The Esthetics of Negligence: La Fontaine's Contes (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1971).

⁴ See Joseph Cauley, "Narrative Technique in the Contes et nouvelles en vers of La Fontaine," French Literature Series 2 (1975): 27-38; Fannie Scott Howard, "La Fontaine on Fiction Writing: Reality and Illusion in the Contes" French Literature Series 2 (1975): 167-71; Jane Merino-Marais, Différence et répétition dans les Contes de La Fontaine Gainesville: UP of Florida, 1981).

⁵ On the cognitive dimension of the literary text, see A.J. Greimas, Maupassant. La Sémiotique du texte (Paris: Seuil, 1975), and the articles under "Cognitif' in Greimas and J. Courtés, Sémiotique. Dictionnaire raisonné de la théorie du langage, 2 vols. (Paris: Hachette, 1979, 1986).

⁶ On the concept of mental space in terms of cognitive science and information theory, see John Dinsmore, "Mental Spaces from a Functional Perspective," Cognitive Science 11 (1987): 1-21, and Gilles Fauconnier, Mental Spaces (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985); Erving Goffman investigated sociological aspects of cognitive framing some years ago in Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1974).

⁷ On other aspects of cognitive space in the Contes, see Catherine Grisé, "Erotic Dimensions of Space in La Fontaine's 'La Fiancée du roi de Garbe,' MLR 82 (1987): 587-98 and Jane Merino-Marais, "The Play of Deferred Communication in La Fontaine's 'La Confidente sans le savoir,'" PFSCL 11 (1979): 107-17.