SOURCE: "La Fontaine's Fables, Book VII: The Problem of Order," in Modern Language Review, Vol. 82, No. 3, July 1987, pp. 573-86.

[In the following essay, Slater identifies some organizing principles that seem to govern the grouping of La Fontaine's poetic fables within each of his books, nevertheless concluding that this organization does not serve to underscore any calculated theme or intention.]

Should La Fontaine's Fables be viewed as a coherent collection or as a number of disparate poems, carefully composed individually, but with few links between them?¹For this brief study I have concentrated on Book VII. It seems suitable for such a study: as the first Book of the second Recueil of 1678-79, it is well qualified to represent the first flush of collative enthusiasm of the poet, already a successful Fabulist, now about to present to the public a whole new collection.

A first step is to look at the Avertissement to the second Recueil, at the beginning of Book VII.² La Fontaine envisages the Recueil as a whole work, not just a random collection of poems. It has a particular quality of its own, rather different from the first Recueil. He writes: 'J'ai jugé á propos de donner á la plupart de celles-ci [Les fables du second Recueil] un air et un tour un peu différent de ceux que j'ai donnés aux premières, tant á cause de la différence des sujets que pour remplir de plus de variété mon Ouvrage.³ He refers to the second Recueil as 'mon Ouvrage', a term he uses again in the Epilogue to the Recueil:⁴ clearly he is thinking of the collection as a single work.

Elsewhere in the Avertissement he stresses the need to please the reader and to present a new approach and new material as a change from the previous Recueil. Paradoxically, the desired effect is one of consistent variety. On the question of the sources, he comments that he is making less use of Æsop than before, hence the tone will be less 'familier'; by this he means, I think, less countrified and undignified. The story-line, he says, is to be 'étendu davantage'; the style is apparently to be more elaborate, since he talks of its 'enrichissements'. In short, La Fontaine is saying that he has worked over his material very carefully indeed. The stylistic self-consciousness that he expresses in his Avertissement is borne out by a study of the text of the Recueil itself. It is so polished that any problems of composition are concealed beneath a flawless surface. When I come to examine Book VII, one of the essential questions to be considered will be whether La Fontaine's patent obsession with the smallest nuance of poetic composition is limited to detailed considerations of style or whether he is equally concerned with broader questions of structure. It seems reasonable to expect his careful approach to style to govern his attitude to the structure of the whole work as well.⁵ With this consideration in mind, as I examine the poems in Book VII, I propose to consider first the presence of external elements, and then to work towards a more detailed study of the poems.

First, is the France of La Fontaine's day reflected systematically in these poems? The dated fables in Book VII were written between about 1672 and 1676, and there are many allusions to current events and contemporary politics. Do these references present a coherent picture?

A political approach to the Fable genre is by no means an innovation of La Fontaine's.⁶ Nevertheless, in La Fontaine the political references seem particularly striking and important; indeed, in some cases he has clearly chosen to follow a much more political line than the earlier Fabulists who provided him with his subjectmatter.⁷ Most of the political references relate to the wars of the time, particularly conflicts involving small European states (see Fables 7, 15, and 16). There are also more specific allusions to the war with the Low Countries. For example, in Fable 3, Le Rat qui sest retire du monde, there is a thinly-veiled allusion to the events of 1675 (the poem is dated May 1675—see Régnier, Hl, 107). In that year the clergy objected to contributing to the cost of the war with Holland. The Rat retires to 'un fromage de Hollande' and refuses to help finance a war, and at the end of the fable La Fontaine sarcastically denies that he is criticizing the clergy through the Rat because 'un Moine est toujours charitable'.⁸ But he does not confine himself to veiled comments on the events of the 1670s. References to war in general abound throughout Book VII, and even more striking is the constant insistence on the need for peace. Eight of the seventeen fables in the Book contain some mention of war or peace. Indeed, La Fontaine seems much more preoccupied with this subject here than he is in other Books (in Book 1, for example, only three of the twenty-two fables allude to it even in passing). In this Book, then, he extrapolates from immediate contemporary preoccupations, and presents the evil of war in general as a didactic leitmotif. Two of the fables, Les Vautours et les Pigeons and Les Deux Coqs, deal almost exclusively with war.

Didacticism also governs La Fontaine's approach to another noteworthy contemporary event, this time a scandal. 'L'Affaire des poisons' clearly underlies Les Devineresses (Fable 14), in which he ridicules the notion of witchcraft. La Brinvilliers was tried as a witch in 1676, and Mme de Montespan was to be heavily implicated in the affair only a year after La Fontaine's second Recueil, dedicated to her, was published. There is circumstantial evidence to suggest that La Fontaine knew exactly what was going on.⁹ It has even been hinted that he was one of the forerunners of an official campaign to make light of the influence of the 'Devineresses' in order to lessen the impact of their nefarious activities.¹⁰ If true, this suggestion has far-reaching implications: La Fontaine the Fabulist is a mouthpiece for State propaganda, and the moral lessons he draws here (and presumably also in other fables) are meant to be taken very seriously by contemporary readers.

Other references to contemporary life are less serious in their implications. Rather than contributing to the didactic aspect of Book VII, they help to give it a topical 'feel'. In the Court fables there is a constant tendency to introduce light-hearted comparisons between the animal Court and that of Louis XIV. For instance, in La Cour du Lion (Fable 6), the Lion's Court is called a 'Louvre', and the King's activities are related in the formal language of the Court bulletin:

Il manda donc par députés
Ses vassaux de toute nature,
Envoyant de tous les côtés
Une circulaire écriture,
Avec son sceau.

Personalities, too, have a contemporary flavour. Real people are explicitly mentioned: Louis XIV, Mme de Montespan, Charles 11 of England, in, for instance, A Mme de Montespan and Fable 17. Other fictional characters seem to be typical of the times (or La Fontaine may be alluding to specific individuals). There is the précieuse of La Fille, the grasping Judge of Le Chat, la Belette et le petit Lapin, the women and the monk in Le Coche et la Mouche. As with his references to war, La Fontaine is particularly insistent on including such topical references. In this Book, there is at least one reference to contemporary life in thirteen out of the seventeen fables: enough to give a feeling of continuity to Book VII.

Yet he is not just writing contemporary poetry based on his observation of his times but adapting old stories: he is using traditional material to create a topical product. Indeed, the only original fable in Book VII seems to be Le Curé et le Mort.¹¹

Several complete and convincing accounts of the sources of the fables in this Book have been given, and it would seem superfluous to go over this material here.¹² But besides the sources, a close reading of Book VII reveals a definite pattern of literary allusions. Taken together these suggest an interest in other writers which has now surfaced in the poet's own writing. Such allusions may perhaps arise unconsciously and need not represent a deliberate attempt to give thematic continuity to the Book.

Certain references recur, and the most striking are to Rabelais. They provide a link between three Fables, 3 (Le Rat qui s'est retire du monde), 6 (La Cour du Lion), and 15 (Le Chat, la Belette et le petit Lapin). La Fontaine is reminded in these three Fables of two characters from Rabelais: Raminagrobis the poet and Grippe-Minaud the leader of the Chats Fourres. The most direct reference comes in Fable 15, where the Cat-Judge is named Raminagrobis¹³ but is also given the nickname Grippe-Minaud, which fits in with the description of him as a 'chat bien fourre', and also seems appropriate in view of his eagerness to kill. The Rabelaisian Grippe-Minaud's interminable 'Or çà' is used by La Fontaine's Lion in Fable 6, in a similar context: the tyrant-ruler employs it in addressing his intended victim. In Fable 3, one is reminded of Raminagrobis in the linking of priests and vermin: Rabelais's poet causes a misunderstanding by talking about friars as 'bestes noires, fauves et aultres.¹⁴ La Fontaine, too, links his Rat to a monk.

This last parallel is reinforced by a further literary link between Fables 3 and 15: the striking allusions to Molière's character Tartuffe. The portrait of the Rat as a self-seeker pretending to be a holy man is strongly reminiscent of Tartuffe. La Fontaine's Rat is 'gros et gras' (I. 11) and a 'devot personnage' (1. 13). Tartuffe, too, is 'gros et gras' (1. 4), and a 'devot personnage' (I. 1. 1. 146). The Cat-Judge of Fable 15 is less ostentatiously devout; but he too is 'gros et gras' (1. 34) and 'un saint homme' (1. 34), while the Rat is 'le nouveau saint' and Tartuffe is 'une sainte personne' (III. 7).¹⁵ That La Fontaine is reminded of Fable 3 when composing Fable 15 is further suggested by an otherwise incomprehensible allusion to rats in Fable 15, in which the protagonists are a Cat, a Weasel, and a Rabbit, and not a rat at all.¹⁶

I have been dealing with explicit textual references here, omitting more general literary allusions: for instance, reminiscences of Descartes and Montaigne in the comments on perception in Fable 17, allusions to earlier seventeenth-century poets (particularly in the elegant, 'précieux' introductory poem to Mme de Montespan, and the burlesque, mock-heroic verse of Les Vautours et les Pigeons or Les Deux Coqs), and frequent echoes of Virgil, Horace, and other classical poets. These are not confined to Book VII, and hence are outside the scope of this study.

Links between the poems in Book VII are not, however, confined to the external considerations I have been examining. Internal links are also established. La Fontaine explicitly linked two pairs of poems in this Book.¹⁷ First, the Fable numbered 4 in the text consists of two separate poems, Le Héron and La Fille. Second, there is stated link between Fables 10, La Laitiere et le pot au lait, and 11, Le Curé et le Mort.¹⁸

La Fontaine made a point of linking these fables because their content is similar and complementary. An interesting detail emerges here from Mme de Sévigné's letter of 9 March 1672, which mentions Fable 11 but comments: 'Je ne sais ce que c'est que ce Pot au lait.' In other words, she had no idea of the existence of Fable 10. Régnier speculates that Fable 10 had probably not yet been written (11, 155). The implication would be that La Fontaine wrote the fables-as separate poems, then grouped them and linked them afterwards.

Other pairs of fables contain links in content and the reader's attention is drawn to these in a variety of ways. Two pairs of poems are relevant here (each pair separated by a related fable which I shall discuss later). In the first case, La Fontaine gives two fables similar titles which reflect the resemblance between them. Fables 11 and 13, which treat the question of man's relationship to Fortune, have long descriptive titles containing references to the subject-matter. In the second case, unexpected similarities in content help to link two poems that would seem at first sight to have little in common. Fable 14, Les Devineresses, is rather curiously reminiscent of La Tete et la queue du Serpent (Fable 16). Both the Witch and the Serpent are involved in fortune-telling and in poisoning; a third, particularly unexpected parallel occurs when the Witch is referred to in a herpetological pun as a 'pythonisse'.

With these four pairs of related fables, an interesting fact emerges: all the pairs follow a pattern in which the first fable states the case lightheartedly, while the second brings out more serious implications. in Le Héron/La Fille, the first poem shows the Heron missing his chances of a good meal, while the second shows a girl ruining her chances of a happy marriage. In La Laitiére/Le Curé the first fable shows the Girl breaking her milk-jug; in the second the Priest dies. The first of the two Fortune fables ends happily with the protagonist finding the Fortune he has been seeking; in the second, he is ruined. In Les Devineresses/Le Serpent the false Witch makes money, while the Snake dies. La Fontaine presents an idea in the first fable of each pair and reveals its serious implications in the second.

In discussing textual links, I have until now been concentrating chiefly on pairs of fables. I now propose to look at the grouping or ordering of all seventeen Fables of Book VII, examining a fairly wide range of associations, beginning with content and moving on to style.

It is appropriate to begin the discussion with a look at narrative, where there is considerable variety. Fables can be eventful, exciting miniature adventures, or they can take the form of lifelike but everyday episodes or conversations. Again, they can be non-realistic and formal, allegories, or philosophical disquisitions, or they can fit into traditional modes and read like fairy-tales, formal quests, or picaresque travelogues. Often several of these elements will be present at once, and a fable will be an allegorical picaresque quest (Fable 11) or a philosophical fairy-tale (Fable 5).

Book VII shows a distinct pattern in the ordering of the individual poems from the narrative standpoint. This pattern emerges if one considers the subject-matter of the fables and their narrative modes, in the order in which La Fontaine presents them. The first six Fables (counting Fable 4 as two) are about searching and keeping. Fable I (Les Animaux malades de la peste) is an allegorical animal fable about the search for a scapegoat, and the implication is clearly that one will always be found. Fable 2 (Le Mal Marie') is a realistic depiction of the search for happiness with another person. This particular search is relentlessly doomed to failure. Fable 3 (Le Rat qui s'est retire du monde), a satirical animal portrait, conveys a message about keeping what you have found and not giving it to others even if they need it. Fable 4a (Le Héron), another animal portrait, presents the opposite point of view. The searcher-protagonist is criticized for not holding on to what he finds but looking for something better. Fable 4b (La Fille) gives a comic life-story and makes a similar point. Fable 5 (Les Souhaits) presents the search in a fairy-tale light as a wish to be granted: namely, the wish for wisdom. This is the first optimistic fable in the Book: the participants' search leaves them happier at the end.

So far, then, there is a continuity of approach and also a development. Each poem has treated a topic which follows on from the previous piece, but has given it a different slant or message.

Between Fables 5 and 6 a change occurs. La Fontaine has finished with the searching fables, and moves on to fables of aggression. Appropriately for this much more sinister type of poem, he also changes his tone. Whereas Fable 5 ended on an optimistic note, the next two are extremely pessimistic. Fable 6 (La Cour du Lion) is nevertheless linked to the previous poem, in form if not in mood, for it, too, is a fairy-tale. In 5 the characters were given three wishes; in 6 three characters are put to a test like the three princes in a fairy-tale, and, as is customary, the first two fail and the last succeeds. But the reader is left with the impression of the power of an aggressor over helpless victims, despite the 'happy' ending of the poem. The same message comes across in Fable 7 (Les Vautours et les Pigeons), which is more like a mythological tale of war than a fairy-tale.

Next come three journey fables, 8 (Le Coche et la Mouche), 9 (La Laitiere et le pot au lait), and 10 (Le Curé et le Mort). In each case the characters are seen travelling with a definite purpose, and the focus is upon the moment that ends the journey: the coach reaches the top of the hill, Perrette breaks her jug, and the Curé is flattened by the coffin he is accompanying to burial.

The next three fables are Fortune fables: they show man as the plaything of forces beyond his control, and incidentally touch on the question of hubris. Fable 11 (L'Homme qui court après la Fortune et l'Homme qui l'attend en son lit) is precisely on this theme; nevertheless it also links with the previous three poems, since it, too, describes a journey. The Man's quest for Fortune leads him on a voyage round the world. This aspect is forgotten in the next poem, Les Deux Coqs, which links up with Fable 7 (Les Vautours et les Pigeons) in presenting its material in a mock-heroic form. The content, however, is still about Fortune: the point made is that hubris may well be rewarded by summary destruction. The third Fortune fable reverts to studying the attitude of men to Fortune, but the element of injustice implicit in Les Deux Coqs is included. Here, however, the injustice is perpetrated not by Fortune but by man: hence the title L'Ingratitude et l'injustice des hommes envers la Fortune.

The preoccupation with injustice now takes over, and the next three fables are about the lack of justice in our lives. In 14 (Les Devineresses) and 15 (Le Chat, la Belette et le petit Lapin) the legal system of La Fontaine's time is shown to be incompatible with natural justice and common sense. In 16 (La Tete et la queue du Serpent) an intense preoccupation with having her rights destroys the Snake. Those who rely on the fairmindedness of others are doomed to frustration (the false 'Devineresse') or, worse still, to death (the Weasel and the Rabbit). La Fontaine writes: 'point ou peu de justice' (14, 1. 5).

The Book ends with a poem that does not really fit into any of the categories just described. Fable 17 (Un Animal dans la lune) takes the form of a philosophical discussion about perception followed by an impassioned plea for peace. The fable ends on a wistful, dubitative note, on a question that has no answer: when will peace come? This is the only fable in Book VII to end on a note of uncertainty, a note that is clearly meant to linger in the ears.

If the fables are considered in order, then, it does seem as though they are to some extent grouped together according to their subject-matter and narrative mode.

A series of recurrent narrative elements must be considered next. They provide links between the poems and give a less systematic, more subtle, but nevertheless strong feeling of coherence to Book VII. The most striking of these is the 'bolt-from-the-blue' factor, an element of surprise or shock that alters the course of the characters' lives or, indeed, puts an end to them. For instance, the victorious Cock is unexpectedly struck down in his moment of triumph in Les Deux Coqs. This use of the unexpected is in general a favoured technique of La Fontaine's. It recurs in ten of the seventeen fables in Book VII, and it must be added that it is important in the other books that make up the Fables. In Book VII there is no particular pattern to the distribution of the 'bolt-from-the-blue' fables, but the very frequent recurrence of the type lends coherence to the Book.

Another favourite, again randomly distributed and again found in ten of the fables, is the 'tried-and-found-wanting' element, as distinct from the fairy-tale form mentioned earlier. There the characters had to undergo a formal test, to make a wish, for example. Here the participants are put to a test which they may well not realize is happening at all; more often than not they will fail. An example is the Heron who fails to make the best of his opportunities (Fable 4). The Heron will not realize that he has failed a character-test until it is too late and he has lost.

A third element, again present in ten fables and again included at random, is that of 'conflict'. Here participants fight against each other, either physically (Les Deux Coqs) or verbally (La Cour du Lion).

Another, rarer element occurs three times, in three successive fables. The three (Fables 14-16) are all 'usurpation' fables. In the first (Les Devineresses) the usurpation is successful; in the second (Le Chat, la Belette et le petit Lapin), it succeeds at first, but the usurper is destroyed quite quickly; in the third (La Tete et la queue du Ser pent) the attempt at usurpation is a failure from the start.

All these recurrent narrative elements reflect La Fontaine's constant preoccupation with suspense. But he may include suspense only to destroy it: the 'bolt-from-the-blue' element thus reflects the arbitrariness of life. As a technique, it jolts the reader out of complacency and keeps him alert, uncertain of what is going to happen next.

Another thematic preoccupation in Book VII is that of basic human needs: for instance, the question of a roof over one's head. In Les Devineresses and Le Chat, la Belette et le petit Lapin a home is usurped; the message 'East, West, home's best' comes across in L'Homme qui court, and the running of a home is important in LI'ngratitude et l'injustice des hommes. There is also a rather curious series of references to opening the door to people and shutting it in their faces or leaving them on the doorstep (see Le Rat qui s'est retiri, La Fille, and L'Homme qui court). Other basic human needs are food, drink, and sleep. La Fontaine describes riches and good fortune in terms of food and wine: in Les Souhaits, the lucky people have 'en leurs greniers le ble, dans leurs caves les vins' (I. 38). The rich merchant in L'Ingratitude des hommes eats particularly well: 'Ses jours de jeûne etaient des noces' (I. 15). The most gluttonous is the Rat, who actually lives in a house made of cheese; the Judge does not merely kill the Rabbit and the Weasel, he dines off them; the Heron is criticized for being fussy about his food. Sleeping ('le repos, le repos, tresor si précieux', 11, 1. 17) also comes into several fables: La Fille, Les Devineresses, Le Mal Marie, and particularly L'Homme qui court.

This emphasis on eating and sleeping gives a down-to-earth atmosphere to Book VII, and gives a common identity to what are, after all, an extremely disparate set of characters, ranging from animal courtiers to contemporary Parisians to oriental spirits. There is no particular pattern to the placing of these allusions, their recurrence seems rather to denote a consistent attitude on the poet's part.

This feeling of consistency is reinforced by a study of the moral messages in these fables. By the term 'moral message' I do not mean solely the stated moralité, the promythium or epimythium, but more generally the didactic point of a poem. Taken together, the fables that make up Book VIl build up a coherent moral message presented according to a pattern. To put it briefly, in this Book La Fontaine emphasizes the hopeless nature of man's predicament and suggests that his rare achievements are due to luck; on the positive side, he is teaching us to have the wisdom to see the truth of this observation, so that we can make the best of fickle Fortune's haphazard gifts.

This lesson is conveyed in stages; the poems are grouped according to their message, and each group starts with a starkly pessimistic statement. The first group consists of poems I to 5. The message is that we should reject those things that normally form the basis of worldly ambitions: social success, love, material wealth. The first fable (Les Animaux malades) is the most depressing, since it merely tells us that we cannot prevent ourselves from being victimized by our fellows (in this case, fellow-courtiers). Having presented a stark truth, La Fontaine then gradually lightens the gloom. Fable 4 presents lack of ambition in a more positive light: modest expectations may meet with some measure of success, while Fable 5 makes the encouraging suggestion that one can learn wisdom, which is enough to compensate for the lack of other advantages.

The next five fables take up and examine this message about wisdom. Again the section begins with a harsh poem, La Cour du Lion, which is given the same court setting as Les Animaux malades. But there is an essential difference, which is the presence of wisdom. The hero of Fable 6, the Fox, possesses the wisdom that the Donkey lacked in Fable 1: hence the Fox survives, whereas the Donkey was killed. In Fable 7 wisdom is shown to be more important than kindness or altruism, for the Pigeons are destroyed because of their altruistic but ill-judged mediation between the two flocks of warring Vultures. Fable 8, La Fontaine tells us, is an indictment of 'sottise' (1. 24). In Fables 9 and 10 (La Laitière and Le Curé) La Fontaine seems to be taking the same line as in the equivalent fables of the first section (Le Héron/La Fille): he castigates people who fail to make the best of what they have and instead indulge in fantasies about what they could acquire. There is an essential difference, however, which represents a development in the thought. The earlier pair are destroyed by the passing of time: it becomes too late for them to redeem the situation. The Milkmaid and the Priest are destroyed in a more arbitrary manner, and their earlier optimism is contrasted with their sudden destruction at the hands of fate.

The three 'Fortune' fables follow on from La Laitiere and Le Curé: the difference is that the participants, who may be perfectly blameless, have become the playthings of Fortune. La Fontaine starts by stating the message very pessimistically, and works towards a more optimistic view. The first two fables in this section (I I and 12: L'Homme qui court après la Fortune and Les Deux Coqs) show individuals behaving in a perfectly logical manner within a situation, yet they are thwarted by the perversity of Fortune. But in Fable 13 (L'Ingratitude et l'injustice des hommes) the message is rather more constructive: even if one cannot be fortunate at least one can be wise ('Tout au moins soyez sage', the Wise Man tells his friend in line 38). Renouncing all hope of material success, La Fontaine is advocating reliance on the inner contentment that wisdom brings. Yet again, he has found an element of optimism in a pessimistic group.

The last four fables introduce a new idea, that of the unreliability of public opinion and the lack of justice in the world. La Fontaine says that this state of affairs is irremediable: 'C'est un torrent; qu'y faire? 11 faut qu'il ait son cours./Cela fut et sera toujours' (14, 11. 6-7). In the case of the last three fables he also takes the message into a wider context: all three poems end on a political note, and the message is directed towards nations, not individuals. Nations should not overreach themselves, or put the desire for justice above the need for peace. Thus we are told that the destruction of the Weasel and the Rabbit in 15 parallels-the fate of small nations who, seeking fair treatment, are engulfed by the major power they have chosen as arbitrator. Again, the most pessimistic of the three poems is the first, in which La Fontaine implies that there is no hope of remedying injustice, and the most optimistic is the last poem, in which the poet describes the delights of peace.

Some further points of detail relating to La Fontaine's moral messages are of relevance here. First is the question of how the message is expressed. Here the poet varies the technique from poem to poem. A long exposition in one poem will be followed by a much briefer, more sketchy presentation in the next. The reader's attention is held by this variety while continuity is provided by the actual content of the messages, as shown above. For example, Fable 16 has a one-line epimythium stating the moral implications, while Fable 17 adopts a much more expansive tone. Again, La Fobtaine varies the directness with which he attacks the moral message. If he is very straightforward in one poem, he is likely to be cryptic or laconic in the next. For example, Fable 6 ends on a definite epimythium, instructing the courtier-reader on how to survive at Court; Fable 7, by contrast, is obscure. The point of the poem seems to be rather a Machiavellian one: by keeping one's opponents divided one can manipulate them better. But La Fontaine, perhaps because he could have been accused of political cynicism here, avoids dotting the i's and instead of actually making the point, hints at it, concluding: 'Ceci soit dit, je me tais.' Variety is also found in the way the poet includes himself. Where he is didactic and direct in one poem, he will be personal and reflective in another. In Fable 1, for example, the message is terse and explicitly directed at the reader, while Fable 2 opens with the poet's musings on the subject of marriage: the tone is much more conversational and personal; the poet refers to his own experience of women. La Fontaine varies his personal interventions in this way throughout the Book.

It might seem appropriate to conclude with a specific reference to what must be the two most striking fables in the Book: the first and the last. Their very position gives them extra emphasis. Interestingly, both these fables relate to contemporary life rather than to mankind in general. The first describes the problems of being an individual at court, while the last is very firmly set in the context of contemporary unrest rather than of general moral truths. Does this mean that La Fontaine saw himself more as a social reformer or, at least a moraliste, than as a philosopher?

The impression of coherence found in the moral message of Book VII is dispelled by an examination of the tone of the fables. The Book leaves an almost bewildering impression of diversity of mood or tone, from the frivolous to the serious and didactic. One might expect the tone of a poem to echo its moral message, but the case is rather different. The tone seems to combine the two patterns I have indicated in examining the content of the moral messages and the techniques used to express them. On the one hand, adjacent poems may often be similar in tone, reinforcing the impression that the Book is divided into sections; each section tends to start with a poem that is serious, even grim, and slowly to work towards a more optimistic note by means of imperceptible gradations. But elsewhere La Fontaine makes a point of varying the tone quite radically between one poem and the next, and if he is producing two very similar fables he may well separate them with something quite different in tone, which makes any one approach less monotonous because it is less concentrated.

Ideally, I should have liked to go through the whole of Book VII, showing how skilfully La Fontaine varies the tone from fable to fable. This is clearly too long an enterprise for this study, so I propose instead to pick out a series of consecutive poems and look at them from the point of view of tone. I shall limit myself to the first few poems.

The first fable of Book VII is preceded by a dedicatory poem to Mme de Montespan. The tone is artificial, elegantly witty, and full of conceits (the King and his mistress are likened to Greek gods, for instance). As La Fontaine says, 'Mon esprit s'amuse' (I. 14).

Fable I itself, Les Animaux malades de lapeste, which Chamfort compares to the tragedy of Œdipus (Régnier, II, 94), provides a grim contrast. The poem is scarcely humorous (though there is a passing smile when the Lion, enumerating his sins, adds that in devouring sheep he occasionally consumed the shepherd as well). When the Donkey is put to death for eating a mouthful of grass the punishment seems horrific. La Fontaine is sparing of his comments till the end; the animals condemn themselves through their own mouths.

In Fable 2 (Le Mal Marie'), La Fontaine changes to a chatty rather than a didactic tone, discussing his own attitude to marriage. The bitterness that could underlie the actual story of the Mal Marie comes across as mild irony. The tale is told almost entirely in direct speech, as though the characters are so busy talking that the poet cannot get a word in edgeways. Even the conclusion is spoken by the Marie. The overall tone is colloquial and light, though the fable does imply some bitter truths.

Fable 3 (Le Rat quis'est retire'), takes the ironic tone much further. La Fontaine lingers over his adulatory description of the Rat, only to sum him up disparagingly as. 'ce Rat si peu secourable'. The last lines are sarcastic: he claims he is not attacking the clergy here, when clearly he is (a direct attack might have seemed too dangerous, or just aesthetically inappropriate). The overall tone of this poem is deliberately light, yet the question thus dismissed is not devalued as a result.

One of the most subtle weapons used by La Fontaine in Le Rat retiré is the noun. He implies that the Rat is consistently hypocritical by using a series of fulsome synonyms to portray him: the Rat is a saint, a hermit, we are told. In the next fable, 4a (Le Héron), the participant is criticized through verbs, not nouns (the Heron 'en eût fait aisément son profit', 'N'avait qu'à prendre', 'crut mieux faire', 's'attendait à mieux', 'montrait un goût dédaigneux'). Though the moral implies strong criticism of the Heron ('ne soyons pas si difficiles'), La Fontaine's tone seems much milder than in the previous fable. He is commenting on the Heron's actions on one occasion (through verbs) rather than attacking his identity (through nouns). The subject-matter is less controversial here, so perhaps this milder tone is to be expected.

Fable 4b (La Fille) adopts a peculiarly artificial tone which fits the subject-matter but detracts from the seriousness of the message. The poem is about a précieuse; the language is as précieux as the protagonist. Laughter is personified as 'les Ris', the ruin of the Girl's beauty is rather heavily compared to the ruin of a building, and there is an elaborate conceit of a talking mirror, as in the précieux fairy-tales of the period. The language is appropriately euphemistic ('ses soins ne purent faire Qu'elle échappât au temps' is how he describes the Girl aging). The poem ends on a note of bathos which destroys the elaborate elegance of the whole: the Girl finally marries a malotru. The resulting poem is more light-hearted than the preceding fables—it is almost a pastiche, and the author adopts a conspicuously detached tone.

In Fable 5 (Les Souhaits) La Fontaine picks up the mild mood and the fairy-tale approach and tells a straight tale with little authorial comment or bias. The fantasy involves magic spirits, wishes that come true, and allegorical personification. The remoteness of the setting (on the banks of the Ganges) adds to the unreality. The fable is given its individuality by small touches: the endearing personality of the Follet who loves gardening, or the odd comment about how a monarch is over-fond of taxing his subjects. Only the final line seems like a direct observation by La Fontaine, but it is scarcely a judgement. Yet, in this mildest of fables, the notion of wisdom is first introduced.

It is worth recalling here the question of narrative mode, for the differences in tone among the last three fables may be slight and subtle, but the poems are strikingly different in mode. Le Héron is a vivid description of a Heron stalking along a riverbank; La Fille is a pr&ieux account of the love-life of a contemporary Lady; Les Souhaits is an Indian fairy-tale.

Fable 6 (La Cour du Lion) provides a sharp contrast in tone. The poem is grim, linking up with Fable I. It falls into sections, each of which approaches the material from a different but equally telling angle. The first fourteen lines are deceptively artificial and courtly in tone; they stress the magnificence of the monarch, emphasizing his ostentation. When the Court is actually described, it comes as a shock. It is a hideous cave, it smells appalling, the Lion-King is as cruel as Caligula. After the direct account of the events, the tone changes again to express the moral. La Fontaine's observations have implied a strong attitude to the Court and King, that second Caligula. But he now tells his reader to be tactful ('repondre en Normand'), and, as it happens, he himself has refrained from direct criticism of what he clearly, by implication, deplores. But despite the internal variety the overall tone is harsh; the impression of mildness built up in the three previous poems has been reversed.

This short series shows La Fontaine establishing a complex meshing effect between the poems, linking now through mood, now through use of language, or contrasting two poems in some respects while he links them in others.

The last seven fables present even more internal variety of tone. Several of them are 'combination' fables: they start in one mood and switch to another during the course of the poem. The poems are becoming more complex: they are longer on the whole, and they all contain variety of tone, themes, and structural features. La Fontaine is building up to the discursive, reflective mood of the last fable. The penultimate poem, 16, is a good example of a combination fable of this type.

Fable 16 (La Thte et la queue du Serpent) is characterized by extreme artificiality of tone. In this respect it reminds the reader of two earlier fables. 4b (La Fille) adopted a similarly affected tone which echoed the pretension of the female protagonist. In the first part of 6 (La Cour du Lion) an equally courtly, formal, and ceremonious atmosphere was evoked (here, too, the Snake is clearly a court lady). The fact that the fable is about the two halves of one Snake makes the excessive balance and symmetry of the poetry amusingly apt. There are several puns (the tail says of the head 'Je suis … sa soeur et non sa suivante', and adds that the two halves of the Snake are 'du même sang'). Classical allusions abound, and the elegance is reinforced by the pr&ieux conceit of oxymoron in the following alexandrines: 'Le ciel eut pour ses voeux une bonte cruelle. Souvent sa complaisance a de mechants effets. 11 devrait etre sourd aux aveugles souhaits' (I. 28). The overall mood is detached, there is little authorial comment, and the bulk of the fable is in direct speech. The tone changes abruptly with the end of the poem, an account of the death of the Snake. This provides a brutal contrast to the refinement of her outlook, though the actual moment of death is dismissed in a sketchy euphemism. A political moral is rather surprisingly appended in one brief final line. The artificial first section and the casual directness of the second part together build up a mood of cool detachment. The light tone of this fable involving death creates an impression of lack of concern.

The last fable, Un Animal dans la lune, is not surprisingly the most serious and thoughtful poem in the Book. La Fontaine uses it as a vehicle for ideas on perception and the power of Reason. He ends with a plea for peace in France. The central section, the actual story of the Animal on the moon, is much less important than the philosophical introduction and the conclusion on Peace. La Fontaine's view of the power of Reason is a positive one, and in the concluding section he expresses the definite hope that peace in Europe will become a reality. But I have already noted that when expressed as questions, not assertions, these hopes seem doubtful. Only in the introductory poem and in the last fable are real people directly addressed. This gives these poems additional impact, as though the poet were stepping out from the page.

It remains to re-examine the results of these investigations and to see what they suggest if they are considered in the context of the Fables as a whole.

First, La Fontaine's comments in the Avertissement to the second Recueil. is it, in fact, true that Book VII seems less familier? This claim does seem to be borne out by a comparison between this Book and, say, Book V, where the majority of the fables are about the daily grind of peasant life, rural poverty, hunger, and toil. The Court comes in only once and then at a remove, in Fable 4 of Book V, while the country element is present in seventeen of the twenty-one poems in that Book. This is a striking contrast to Book VII, with its nine Court and allegorical human poems, outnumbering its six country fables.

Contemporary allusions were also shown to be important in Book VII. La Fontaine shifts his ground from Book to Book in this respect. Sometimes he appears to be making a Book as remote as possible, while with another he emphasizes its modernity. In Book IV, for example, fifteen of the twenty-two fables have a classical setting, whereas in Book V, the 'country' Book. all but three of the fables are placed in a present-day or a neutral country setting, and in the middle fable of Book V La Fontaine explicitly rejects the classical world.¹⁹ In Book VII, he seems more relaxed about the classical element, including references to the ancient world in eight poems, while thirteen fables contain references to contemporary life. The political side in Book VII is, however, very important. In particular, war is his main target: there are criticisms of war in no fewer than eight poems. A comparison with another Book shows how his attitude to war varies throughout the Fables. Book IV; for example, advises man to get on with life quietly ('sans trompette'), mentions war in only two fables, and at one point makes one of the characters remind another that war is not an immediate preoccupation: 'Sommes-nous en temps de guerre?', a passer-by indignantly asks the miser who has overanxiously buried his treasure (Fable 20). But in Book VII the poet is in a serious frame of mind, worried about the contemporary political situation, viewing the Court as smitten by a pestilence (Fable 1), or pleading anxiously with the King to make peace (Fable 17). The literary sources are a subject of study in themselves. Book VII reflects La Fontaine's habit of alluding to other writers in his poems; though perhaps there are more allusions to Rabelais and Molière than usual here.

The use of narrative modes is interesting. In other Books La Fontaine can be seen concentrating on a completely different range of types. In Book VIII, for instance, there are several fables which consist of a simple conversation, Le Rieur et les poissons (VIII, 8), which relates a witticism at a dinner party, being a case in point. There are no fables of this type in Book VII. This may well be explained by the fact that the poet is concentrating on the political scene here, a topic too serious and too vast in scope to be dealt with by means of conversations, which tend to create a more intimate atmosphere.

The moral message is particularly coherent in Book VII.²⁰ On a human level La Fontaine shows man as an inadequate creature whose successes will be due only to luck; he should acquire the wisdom to realize this truth. This is not the message of the Fables as a whole, and other Books could be cited as contrasting examples. Book VI, for instance, is all about fools—the poems either show a fool coming to grief or (more often) juxtapose the fool with a wiser character who proves him wrong. These themes are found in all but two of the first seventeen poems in Book VI. Appropriately enough, these fables are firmly set in the animal kingdom, since animals, being intrinsically less dignified than men, can be more simply shown up as fools. The last four fables in Book VI move into the human world and present a disenchanted view of the human condition.

As for presentation of the poems in Book VII, I have tried to discern a definite pattern or order here. The poet starts by shocking the reader with a grim, cruel poem, then gradually works towards a lightening of the atmosphere at the end of each section. At the same time he preserves an element of 'diversité' in the length and directness of adjacent fables. This is a general tendency, but he gradually abandons it towards the end of the Fables. Book X onwards consists of a series of much longer and more serious poems, for the most part unrelieved by lighter material. The tendency within each separate Book is also for the poems to get longer. La Fontaine builds up momentum towards the end of the Book, and one always feels that the last fable is specially important. It is usually one of the longest in the Book.

Overall, there are definite links between the poems that make up Book VII, which is thus in many respects different from the other Books of the Fables. It would be going too far to postulate an architecture secrète, a sustained argument in which each poem represents an inevitable step forward. But there does seem to be an element of grouping or meshing, whether conscious or unconscious, both in the content and in the technique of these poems.²¹

Notes

¹ Nathan Gross, 'Order and Theme in La Fontaine's Fables, Book VI', Esprit Créateur, I. 21, no. 4 (1981), 78-89, gives a useful bibliography of works on the ordering of the Fables (p. 78, n.). More recently, Leo Spitzer's essay, 'The Art of Transition in La Fontaine', has been published in an English translation (in Leo Spitzer, Essays on Seventeenth-Century French Literature, edited by David Bellos (Cambridge, 1983). Other references will be given in full as they occur.

Nathan Gross's essay, besides dealing with a different Book of the Fables, reaches a very different conclusion from mine. He sees Book VI as having a 'continuous thematic development', likely models being Apuleius's Golden Ass and ancient epic. R. Jasinksi, in his detailed study of the first Recueil, La Fontaine et le premier recueil des 'Fables', 2 vols (Paris, 1966) also maintains that 'il est en définitive une architecture des Fables'. However, he concentrates more on analysing the individual fables than on looking at each Book as a whole. My own examination suggests an altogether less systematic structuring, as will become apparent.

² p. 175. All references to the Fables are to G. Couton's Garnier edition (Paris, 1962).

³ p. 175. Henri de Régnier, in a note in his Œuvres de La Fontaine, Grands Ecrivains de la France edition, 11 vols (Paris, 1884), 11, 80, gives a summary of critics' responses to this comment of La Fontaine's.

⁴ p. 311. It is interesting to compare these comments with the remarks on the first Recueil, analysed in some detail by Philip Wadsworth in Young La Fontaine (Evanston, Illinois, 1952), pp. 206-15.

⁵ La Fontaine's obsession with detail is reinforced by material relating to the publication of the Fables. J. D. Biard, in his Vignettes des Fables de La Fontaine (Exeter, 1977), suggests that the poet paid constant visits to his publisher and supervised the Chauveau illustrations to the poems, grouping the Fables and frequently linking them by means of a common illustration. Though Biard is referring to the first Recueil only, one does get a convincing idea of how La Fontaine operated. The prefaces and the comments to the poet's other works reinforce the impression that he laboured over every detail. Consider, for instance, his remark in the Preface to Psyché that 'La prose me coûte autant que les vers'.

⁶ For instance, in 1631, Baudoin uses the fable of the Fox and the Crow as a starting-point for a long discussion on the correct response of a prince to flattery.

⁷ Pierre Boutang, in La Fontaine politique (Paris, 1981), looks at other fables from this angle (see pp. 68, 253). Jasinski above all interprets the first six Books largely in the light of the seventeenth-century political scene.

⁸ The same events may also be referred to in Fable 17, Un Animal dans la lune, probably also written in 1675. at a stage when England had achieved peace while France had not. La Fontaine professed admiration for Louís XIVs numerous victories, but in this fable he shows himself to be clearly unhappy about the war. In 1675 England, at peace with Holland since the previous year, was offering to mediate between France and Holland, and La Fontaine could well be urging Louis to accept this offer. See Régnier, 11, 203, and Couton, p. 482, for comments on the dating.

⁹ It is known that La Fontaine had entry into the main Paris salons; he knew Mme de Montespan and was close to Mme de Bouillon, later to be involved in the affair. Régnier (11, 178) suggests some literary sources for this fable.

¹⁰ Couton (p. 477) implies this is a possibility rather than putting it forward as a definite suggestion.

¹¹ This fable is the retelling of an event that occurred on 14 February 1672, and was mentioned by Mme de Sévigné on 26 February; on 9 March she writes that the Fable has been completed. The story of the mouse in the telescope in Fable 17 is also a true one; but La Fontaine probably had a literary source for his poem, Butler's 'An Elephant on the Moon'.

¹² Régnier and Couton both give very full accounts of La Fontaine's sources in their introductions. Jasinski discusses the question of sources and influences (I, 175-190). A Haddad, Les Fables de La Fontaine d'origine orientale (Paris, 1984), quotes some of the fables that inspired La Fontaine.

¹³ The specific parallel between Raminagrobis and cats comes in Voitre (see Régnier, II, 188).

¹⁴ For Grippe-Minaud, see Rabelais, Le Cinquiesme Livre, Chapter 12. For Raminagrobis, see Le Tiers Livre, Chapter 21.

¹⁵ For other parallels to Le Tartuffe, see Régnier, II, 107-09.

¹⁶ Couton's explanation for this allusion does not seem very satisfactory (Garnier, p. 478).

¹⁷ For a discussion of these linked fables, see J.-P. Collinet, Le Monde littéraire de La Fontaine (Paris, 1970).

¹⁸ At the end of Fable 11, La Fontaine points a moral that he says is relevant to both Fable 10 and Fable 11: 'Proprement toute notre vie Est le curé Chouart, qui sur son mort comptait Et la fable du Pot au lait' (11. 35-37).

¹⁹ The fable is La Montagne qui accouche. The punchline is that a writer who attempts to imitate the classics and write an epic will produce only 'du vent'.

²⁰ Book IX is a good example of a less coherently didactic Book. Here La Fontaine seems to be concentrating on achieving diversity of message. He reinforces this impression by several references to diversité (see Fables 3 and 12).

²¹ Other lines of approach suggested themselves during the course of this examination, and were reluctantly abandoned for reasons of length. In particular, there are interesting word-links between poems. Fables 1 and 2, for instance, contain the only two juxtapositions of blanc and noir in La Fontaine's Fables.