[In the following essay, Cauley argues that La Fontaine uses his Contes or Tales to examine narrative itself, relying as he does upon such techniques as narrators within the narrative, "authorial interventions," and interruptions by those who are listening to the tale within the tale.]

La Fontaine's Contes were admired by his contemporaries but fell into disfavor, largely because of their frequently licentious subject matter. After a long period of neglect, the Contes have regained much of their prestige and have recently been treated in several excellent studies.¹ One reason for the renewed critical attention is La Fontaine's lucid interest in narrative possibilities.

The best Contes of La Fontaine do not simply tell a story—they depict the telling of a story. In these tales La Fontaine is more interested in examining narrative techniques than in applying them to the presentation of serious material—he applied himself to the latter task in the Fables. For La Fontaine the representation of the interaction between storyteller and listener is a primary aim of the Contes. To accomplish this aim the Lafontainian conte develops two distinctive traits: first, the anecdote itself recedes further and further from center stage and second, a set of personae are introduced who represent the narrator, the listener, the critic, women, nuns, lovers etc.…—in short all the people who play a role not in the anecdote itself but in the drama constituted by the telling of the tales.

In order to focus interest on the storyteller La Fontaine must draw the reader's attention away from the anecdote. One way he does this is by having the narrator explicitly denigrate the importance of the story. The conteur will frequently refuse to fill in the details of the story, maintaining that he does not know or is not really interested in what actually happened. For instance at the end of "Le Petit Chien qui secoue de I'argent et des pierreries" it occurs to the narrator that he has left unmentioned the fate of the palace full of treasure created by the fairy:

"Que devint le palais?" dira quelque critique.
Le palais? que m'importe? il devint ce qu'il put.
A moi ces questions! suis-je homme qui se pique
D'être si régulier? Le palais disparut.
"Et le chien?" Le chien fit ce que I'amant voulut.
"Mais que voulut l'amant?" Censeur, tum'importunes:
Il voulut par ce chien tenter d'autres aventures.²

Another indication that La Fontaine does not consider the anecdote to be a crucial element of the conte is the nature of the anecdotes he uses. Like many classical authors he had little interest in plot, his stories are almost invariably based on well-known tales drawn from such authors as Boccaccio, Ariosto or Marguerite de Navarre. What sets La Fontaine apart from other classical imitators is his tendency to simplify the stories he adopts so that they are mere skeletons of the originals. Moreover if one looks at La Fontaine's source, it is clear that even though he goes to the most diverse sources he usually takes only a plot outline and leaves behind the most interesting and characteristic elements of the original. The relation of La Fontaine's Contes to their sources has been examined by several critics³ but this appauvrissement des sources is generally taken as proof of the inferiority of La Fontaine's Contes, rather than as an indication that his real interest lies outside the anecdote.

The movement away from a single récit towards a more overt examination of the relation between storyteller and listener is apparent in the evolution of these tales which La Fontaine published over a period of twenty years. The first Contes tend to be more purely anecdotal. Although the narrator makes his presence felt by his ironic tone and his occasional direct interventions, the reader's attention is often directed primarily to the subject matter of the story. As a matter of fact, at the earliest stage of his career as a writer of Contes, La Fontaine expressly presents simplicity as a desirable characteristic of the genre (387). While the criterion always applies to his anecdotal matter, the frame becomes increasingly complex. The first conte "Joconde," wastes no time before getting into the story: "Jadis regnait en Lombardie/Un prince aussi beau que le jour" (351). Of the eleven stories which La Fontaine published in the first collection, ten begin with the anecdote itself. These stories, like many of the Fables are remarkable for the rapidity with which the basic situation is presented. Consider for example the succinctness of the beginning of the last tale in the collection: "Un paysan son seigneur offensa" (379) or the first verses of "Soeur Jeanne": "Soeur Jeanne, ayant fait un poupon,/ Jeûnait, vivait en sainte fille …' (378). When we move from the first collection to the second the evolution is apparent. Only seven of the sixteen stories begin in medias res. The others have prefaces which range from the trivial to the elaborate. In all these cases the preamble to the anecdotal matter is itself an integral part of the conte, i.e., the prefaces are in verse like the rest of the conte and they are never separated from the anecdotal part by anything more than a paragraph (alinéa). Thus the form of the conte begins to enlarge itself to include not only the récit but material which provides a wider context, a moral point of view or an esthetic discussion of the conte itself. Sometimes the introduction occupies little more than a line, e.g., "Je vous veux conter la besogne/ Des Cordeliers de Catalogne …" (394). One passes almost immediately to the exposition of the monks' vice, but not before the storyteller, by the simple use of the verb "conter" has drawn his readers' attention to the fact that he is listening to a narration. Moreover, by using the pronouns "je" and "vous" La Fontaine expands the conte to include not only the characters who figure in the droll tale but also two personae: the first person narrator and the reader himself appear as elements of the literary structure.

In the later Contes it is rare to find one which begins without a preface in which the narrator speaks directly; moreover, these preambles become more complicated as well as more common. The use of more highly developed preambles helps to put the anecdote itself at a certain distance from the listener and narrator.

Perhaps the narrator's most interesting preambles—and certainly the ones most fascinating to modern tastes—are those which discuss the technical aspects of the genre itself. "La Servante Justifiée" has a curious prologue:

Boccace n'est le seul qui me fournit:
Je vas parfois en une autre boutique.
Il est bien vrai que ce divin esprit
Plus que pas un me donne de pratique:
Mais comme il faut manger de plus d'un pain,
Je puise encore en un vieux magasin;
Vieux, des plus vieux, où Nouvelles nouvelles
Sont jusqu'à cent, bien déduites et belles
Pour la plupart, et de très bonne main.
Pour cette fois la reine de Navarre
D'un C'était moi, naïf autant que rare,
Entretiendra dans ces vers le lecteur.
Voici le fait, quiconque en soit l'auteur:
J'y mets du mien selon les occurrences,
C'est ma coutume; et, sans telles licences,
Je quitterais la charge de conteur.
(418)

The movement from Boccaccio to Marguerite de Navarre by way of the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles gives the storyteller a chance to show his virtuosity in leading the reader along in a smooth way but without letting him see too clearly where he is going. This feigned movement towards the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles before the unequivocal reference to the Heptameron is an amusing example of the games La Fontaine likes to play with his readers.

At the same time this little preface is not an unstructured bit of nonsense. The mention of his three favored sources is done in chronological order, which lends a certain rationality to the list. At the same time, this preamble derives a definite clarity from the way the rhyme scheme blocks out the paragraph. The initial four lines on Boccaccio form a straightforward quatrain ABAB. The five line section on the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles has the scheme CCDDC, which is unusual but not unknown in La Fontaine's vers libres.⁴ The poet occasionally uses it to clearly mark the end of his little digressions.⁵

Next a couplet introduces the section on Marguerite de Navarre. Like the section on the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, this one is completed by five lines arranged in the AABBA order. The last line with its reappearing rhyme marks not only the end of the section on Marguerite de Navarre but of the preamble as well. Thus the different sections of the prologue are clearly blocked off by the use of a distinctive rhyme scheme, although La Fontaine seems to glide accidentally from one section to the next.

Besides bringing into focus the literary aspects of this work by discussing its sources, the narrator also introduces the theoretical question of the creative role of an author who reworks a story by an earlier writer. As is often the case La Fontaine drops a line which suggests the problem and then comes back to the question by referring to it explicitly. In the three verses beginning "Pour cette fois" (418) La Fontaine actually writes that in the story "La reine de Navarre … entretiendra … le lecteur." A curious trait in this statement is the use of the verb "entretenir" which seems to emphasize Marguerite's personal presence when in fact all that comes from her is the idea for the plot. Of course the traditional tone for the conte is that of an amical discourse addressed to the reader. As Miss Rodax says in the conclusion of her monograph on the nouvelle, "the illusion is that of easy conversation, which, even in cold print, tends to draw the reader into a convivial group."⁶ The illusion is of course fostered by the narrator of La Fontaine's Contes, so it is quite natural for him to introduce a story from Marguerite de Navarre by saying that the reader is going to talk to the Queen herself. At the same time La Fontaine's narrator is too conscious of the nature of fiction to accept such a locution as an exact description of what is going to happen in the story. Moreover, the narrator expects his knowledgeable readers to immediately question this fiction of a dialogue between himself and Marguerite de Navarre. La Fontaine does not allow himself a digression into the questions raised by his apparently inadvertant use of the word—we are still in the Second Part and the narrator still adheres to the view that a conte by its nature is supposed to bounce along to a merry ending, without digressions. Instead the storyteller assumes that a discussion has taken place and leaps to the end of it in the next verse: "Voici le fait, quiconque en soit l'auteur" (418).

This is the first conte in which the narrator speaks about his own writing. The form is turned inside out as the narrator moves outside the story to refer to the work he is writing. At this point some readers are certainly going to want to identify this "je" with La Fontaine. And yet the provocative reference to a conversation with Marguerite de Navarre should have put the reader on his guard. La Fontaine leads us away from the question by saying: "Quiconque en soit l'auteur …" (418) and we all know that La Fontaine is the author. La Fontaine's mastery of the game is delightful; he raises the question, muddies the waters, then with perfect sleight of hand returns to the first person narrative 'as if it were the most uncomplicated form, the most direct conversation imaginable.

The preamble to "La Fiancée du roi de Garbe" also discusses the nature of storytelling—in particular the relation between a story and its supposedly true source. As usual in the universe of the Contes the question is not treated seriously; it simply provides the narrator with a subject of badinage. Still, this preface focuses our attention on the act of narration. The anecdote recedes into the distance as the reader enjoys the introduction. In fact the narrator twice recapitulates the story within the framework of the preamble, so that the reader begins to wonder if he is not reading a story which will have evolved as far as possible in the direction taken by the Lafontainian conte, that is, a story in which the anecdote would never be told, but simply alluded to in a discussion about how the story ought to be told. The Lafontainian conte, in which the narrator temporarily occupies the center of the stage and discusses his story, reminds one of a movie in which the director appears to discuss his story.

Detaching the narrator from his anecdote and making him a character in his own right is not enough to produce a work which successfully examines itself. It is necessary to draw the Reader into the story and to create a conversation between these two personae. La Fontaine himself indicated the need to insure the reader's cooperation in creating the dramatic illusion of storytelling when he said in the Preface to the Second Part of the Contes "le principal point" of the work was to "attacher le lectuer" (385).

The attempt to replace the narrative voice with a dialogue about the work takes place in progressive stages. At the simplest level, the narrator converses dialectically with himself, interrupting this discourse to correct himself or to raise questions. In "Les Quiproquo" he discusses (with himself) the large sum which is spent to seduce a servant:

Payer ainsi des marques de tendresse
En la suivante était, vu le pays,
Selon mon sens, un fort honnête prix:
Sur ce pied-là, qu'eût coûté la maîtresse?
Peut-être moins; car le hasard y fait.
(651)

The qualifying expressions "vu le pays" and "selon mon sens" break the flow of the monologue. The rhetorical question "Qu'eût coûté la maîtresse?" is answered by the conteur, but his tone changes from a bourgeois astonishment at the cost of the girl to a cynical and more aristocratic perception of the unpredictability of human affairs. This sudden twist in the passage leads to another change of direction; the narrator immediately checks himself and goes off on a tangent, this time speaking in the role of the omniscient narrator:

Mais je me trompe; et la dame était telle
Que tout amant, et tant fût-il parfait,
Aurait perdu son latin auprès d'elle:
Ni dons, ni sous, rien n'aurait réussi.
(651)

Rhetorical questions are a convenient way of breaking up the narrative monologue and of creating the impression of a more lively give-and-take. In "L'Oraison de Saint Julien" the narrator appears to get carried away by his admiration of the widow. He is unable to refrain from describing her and soon breaks into rhetorical questions which tend to draw the reader closer to his excitement. The passage ends with a reference to "nouns" which clearly establishes a link between the conteur and his listener:

Mot n'en dirai: mais je n'omettrai point
Qu'elle était jeune, agréable et touchante,
Blanche surtout, et de taille avenante,

Trop ni trop peu de chair et d'embonpoint.
A cet objet qui n'eût eu l'âme émue?
Qui n'ecit aimd? qui n'eût eu des désirs?
Un philosophe, un marbre, une statue.
Aurait senti comme nous ces plaisirs.
(415)

The rhetorical questions do not always serve to intensify the qualities of the scene or the person being presented. Sometimes they serve the more theoretical and abstract purpose of making the narration itself, the telling of the story, more visible. For example, the second of the "Contes tirés d'Athénée" is a mere sixteen verses long. In these very short works (which La Fontaine progressively abandoned) there is little room to develop the narrative framework which is so important a part of most of the Contes. Nevertheless by interjecting a simple narrative marker "Qu'arrive-til? into the second "Contes tire d'Athenee", La Fontaine keeps his reader aware of the narrative voice which is telling the story.

A curious and important aspect of this simple "Qu'arrive-t-il?" is that it voices the sentiment of expectation which the narrator wants to create in his listener. The rhetorical question "Qui n'eut aimd?" is clearly just a projection of the narrator's sentiments. But when he asks "Qu'arrive-t-il?" he is dividing his consciousness in two and supplying the question which the reader might ask.

This technique of having the narrator supply comments which could be attributed to the reader is apparent in what we might call "echo questions": the narrator seems to hear a question coming from his audience, he repeats it aloud and then answers it. An example appears at the beginning of "Le Faucon":

Il était autrefois un amant
Qui dans Florence aima certaine femme.
Comment aimer? c'était si follement
Que pour lui plaire, il eût vendu son âme.
(506)

At the end of "La Courtisane Amoureuse" there is a passage which uses several of these techniques:

Ce que, possible, on ne croira pas vrai,
C'est que Camille, en caressant la belle,
Des dons d'Amour lui fit goûter l'essai.
L'essai? je faux: Constance en était-elle
Aux éléments? Oui Constance en était.
Aux éléments: ce que la belle avait
Pris et donné de plaisirs en sa vie
Compter pour rien jusqu'alors se devait.
Pourquoi cela? Quiconque aime le die.
(520)

In the fourth line the narrator checks himself and asks rhetorically if he is not making a mistake. Then speaking as an omniscient narrator he claims he is quite correct and reiterates his claims. The final question "Pourquoi cela?" seems to come not from the narrator himself but to echo the protestations of a disbelieving audience.

It is important to note that in the last two examples of what we called "echo questions" (Comment aimer?" [506] and "Pourquoi cela?" [520]) the audience is not merely given a role in the story-telling action but is also ascribed a certain point of view. The simple statement that once upon a time a Florentine loved a certain woman does not necessarily need to elicit a sniggering or a malicious "comment aimer?" Similarly the voice which plays the role of the reader finds it hard to believe that Constance had more pleasure in sleeping with her lover than with her clients. The listener who appears in the stories is touched with the same skepticism which characterizes the narrator. Since the natural tendency is for a reader to identify with the listener whose voice we hear, the personality attributed to this interlocutor can be seen as an attempt to guide the reader's appreciation of the story. The narrator attempts to draw his readers into the tale, to lead them to identify with the persona who represents the listener.

Perhaps the most amusing way the narrator has of drawing his reader into the story is by laying a narrative trap for the reader. In "Nicaise", a young girl's parents are looking for a suitable husband for her:

Il s'offre un parti d'importance …
La belle en étant sur le cas,
On la promet; on la commence;
Le jour des noces se tient prêt.
(523)

In the context of these ribald tales, the reader cannot help wondering what sense to give to this expression "on la commence." There are several examples in the Contes of women who have "pris un pain sur la fournée."⁷ Moreover, the present conte is about a girl who has accepted the fact that her parents are going to arrange her marriage but who has promised her virginity to her admirer. In this example the reader naturally sees a sexual allusion in this phrase "on la commence." Immediately after the passage quoted above, the narrator intervenes to admonish the reader:

Entendez ceci, s'il vous plaît
(Je pense voir votre pensée
Sur ce mot-là de commencer):
C'était alors, sans point d'abus,
Fille promise et rien de plus.
(523)

A similar game is played with the reader in the conte entitled "La Fiancée du roi de Garbe." At one point the narrator recounts a shipwreck in which everyone perishes except our heroine, the hero and the strongbox. The three of them are stranded on a rock and eventually decide that their only hope lies in trying to swim from rock to rock until they reach the shore. So the heroine, the hero and the strongbox set off and after two days manage to reach the shore. After continuing the narration in this way for some time the storyteller stops for a moment to remark that the reader is probably asking himself "Pourquoi nous ramener toujours cette cassette?" (448) He then goes on to explain the role it plays in the rest of the story. The wit of the game consists in having the reader's reaction controlled so that the question arises "spontaneously" in his mind before the narrator addresses himself to it explicitly.

Among the various techniques of involving the reader which we have mentioned thus far, the listener has been invisible and unheard within the conte itself; he is addressed and his presence is implied by the grammatical constructions. A much more lively way of showing the interaction between the two is by having the reader actually appear in the conte and by recording his words as part of the fabric of the work. In "La Courtisane Amoureuse," when the conteur relates Constance's abasement, the listener cannot help interrupting to express his astonishment:

      Le jeune homme y consent.
Elle s'approche; elle le déboutonne;
Touchant sans plus à l'habit, et n'osant
Du bout du doigt toucher à la personne.
Ce ne fut tout, elle le déchaussa;
"Quoi! de sa main? Quoi! Constance ellemême?"
Qui fut-ce donc? Est-ce trop que cela?
Je voudrais bien déchausser ce que j'aime
Le compagnon dans le lit se plaça. …
(517)

The interruption elicits a two-line response before the narrator returns to his story. "Le Roi Candaule" offers another example of the same technique:

      C'était en l'école de droit.
"En l'école de droit? Là même. Le pauvre homme
Honteux, surpris, confus, non sans quelque raison,
    Pensa tomber en pâmoison.
(584)

The creation of the narrator and listener as actual characters within the conte marks a quantum leap in narrative technique. It is not simply a question of "framed narrative" with the storyteller and his listener appearing before and after the story but of a "layered narrative." The narrator is continually present, interjecting comments and asides, and the reader is free to appear at any moment to question the narrator on what is happening. The anecdote recedes into the distance while the reader and the narrator together form the most captivating locus with the conte.

But these two personae are not the only ones who play a role in the framework which usually surrounds La Fontaine's borrowed plot. Besides addressing himself to the reader, the narrator also speaks to his critics, to lovers in general, to women, to prudes and to nuns. When the narrative voice has ceased to function as a mere device for presenting the plot sequence and once it has moved outside the anecdote and laid claim to an independent existence by speaking directly to the reader, the temptation to continue the process appears irresistible.

In the preamble to "Les Oies de Frére Philippe" the narrator tries to defend himself against the charge that the Contes are unfair to women by insisting on the formal aspects of the work. In this passage the narrator addresses his would-be critics:

Contons, mais contons bien: c'est le point principal;
C'est tout; à cela près, censeurs, je vous conseille
De dormir, comme moi, sur l'une et l'autre oreille.
     Censurez, tant qu'il vous plaira,
     Méchants vers et phrases méchantes:
     Mais pour bons tours, laissez-les là,
Ce sont choses indifférentes.
(478)

At other times however the censors are addressed only briefly in order to create a closer bond with the sympathetic reader, as in this passage from "Le Tableau":

Censeurs, n'approchez point d'ici votre oeil profane.
Vous, gens de bien, voyez comme soeur Claude mit
     Un tel incident à profit.
617

Here the critics are introduced as a rhetorical device in the continuing discourse with the readers.

The storyteller occasionally addresses women in general. In "Les Oies de Frère Philippe" such passages are grafted onto the more basic dialogue between narrator and reader. Thus, the story begins

Je dois trop au beau sexe, il me fait trop d'honneur
De lire ces récits, si tant est qu'il les lise.
Pourquoi non? c'est assez qu'il condamne en son coeur
     Celles qui font quelque sottise.
(477)

This passage is certainly not addressed to women, who are spoken of in the third person. In fact the narrator pretends that it is not certain women read the Contes at all. The storyteller continues talking about women in the third person for eight verses, then addresses them directly: "Chassez les soupirants, belles, souffrez mon livre:/ Je réponds de vous corps pour corps" (477).

After speaking to women for some fifteen lines the narrator slides into the harangue directed at those who would find fault with his work: "Censeurs, je vous conseille de dormir … sur l'une et l'autre oreille …" (447). Finally at the very end of the preamble he again speaks to women: "Ce que je n'ai pas fait, mon livre irait le faire?/ Beau sexe, vous pouvez le lire en sûreté" (478).

The narrator also speaks to nuns, who are of course frequently the licentious heroines in these Contes. His conversation with them is less dramatic than the frequent dialogues with the reader (the nuns never actually speak, although the narrator supplies words for them); still the air of spontaneity as the narrator counts his misdeeds is convincing:

Nonnes, souffrez pour la dernière fois
Qu'en ce recueil, malgré moi, je vous place.
De vos bons tours les contes ne sont froids;
Leur aventure a ne sais quelle grâce
Qui n'est ailleurs; ils emportent les voix.
Encore un donc, et puis c'en seront trois.
Trois! je faux d'un; c'en seront au moins quatre.
Comptons-les bien: Mazet le compagnon;
L'abbesse ayant besoin d'un bon garçon
Pour la guérir d'un mal opiniâtre;
Ce conte-ci, qui n'est le moins fripon;
Quant à soeur Jeanne ayant fait un poupon,
Je ne tiens pas qu'il la faille rabattre.
Les voilà tous: quatre, c'est compte rond.
Vous me direz: "C'est une étrange affaire
Que nous ayons tant de part en ceci!
—Que voulez-vous? je n'y saurais que faire;
Ce n'est pas moi qui le souhaite ainsi.
Si vous teniez toujours votre bréviaire,
Vous n'auriez rien à démêler ici;
Mais ce n'est pas votre plus grand souci.
Passons donc vite à la présente histoire.
(572)

The narrator's impertinent self-justification ("Ce n'est pas moi qui le souhaite ainsi …") is a typical example of his refusal to answer questions seriously. On the other hand the "malgré moi" in the second verse cleverly prepares this later claim and shows how seriously La Fontaine applies himself to the task of organizing the narration.

Careful organization of the narrative, rhetorical questions, authorial interventions, echo questions, and above all the creation of a group of personae who surround the central anecdote—all of these techniques contribute to making the narration itself the object of a lucid examination by the storyteller. It is as if a movie camera were set up to record another movie camera, a director and a group of actors creating a film. The Contes cannot replace La Fontaine's admitted masterpiece, the Fables, but the tales deserve to regain the prestige they won among La Fontaine's contemporaries. In the Contes, perhaps better than in the Fables, La Fontaine demonstrates his originality and his technical mastery.

Notes

¹ See John Lapp, The Esthetics of Negligence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971) and Fannie Louise Howard, Illusion and Reality in the Contes of La Fontaine, Diss. Rice University 1970. There are also important pages on the Contes in Renée Kohn, Le Goût de La Fontaine (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1962) and Jean-Pierre Collinet, Le Monde littéraire de La Fontaine (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1970).

² Jean de La Fontaine, Oeuvres complètes (Paris: Gallimard "Collection de la Pléiade"), I, 542. Parenthetical references in the text refer to page numbers in Tome I, Fables, Contes et Nouvelles.

³ See Vittoria Borri, Le Novelle del Decameron imitate da La Fontaine (Trieste: Stabilimento Artistico Typographico Gr. Caprin, 1914) and Nicola Cacudi, La Fontaine, imitateur de Boccace (Paris: Accolti-Gil, no date).

⁴ When we speak of "vers libres" we are naturally referring to poetry composed of regular lines of varying length with an irregular rhyme scheme in vogue in the latter half of the seventeenth century.

⁵ cf. La Fontaine, p. 477.

⁶ Yvonne Rodax, The Real and the Ideal in the Novel- la of Italy, France and England: Four Centuries of Change in the Boccaccian Tale, University of North Carolina Studies in Comparative Literature, 44 (Chapel Hill, 1968), p. 12. Ms. Rodax does not discuss the Contes of La Fontaine.

⁷ See for example "Les Aveux indiscrets", "L'Ermite" and the conte commonly called "Soeur Jeanne" (378).