French Literature Reviews - 2026
Antoine Biscéré, Jean de La Fontaine and the Aesopic Fable. Genesis and Genealogy of an Ambiguous Filiation
Literary Theory, Linguistics and Stylistics
At the very outset of his Fables, La Fontaine declares that he "sing[s] of heroes of whom Aesop is the Father." Often taken at face value, this proclaimed genealogy has led literary critics to view the composition of the Fables through the lens of a schematic confrontation between the supposed "Father" of the genre and his heir embodied in Grand Siècle France. Following a thorough examination of the origin and nature of the corpus known as Aesop's fables and the fictitious biography of the Greek fabulist (Life of Aesop), this study analyzes the reception and transmission of these texts during the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries. This inquiry reveals that the seemingly direct, obvious, and unmediated filiation between the legendary inventor of the apologue and his principal heir calls for a reassessment of our critical preconceptions. It sheds light on the archaeology of a model, a genre, and a tradition whose complexity and diversity—perhaps unsuspected by La Fontaine himself—offer the modern analyst a far more open, fluid, and even ambiguous mode of invention and reception of the fable genre than current annotations of the French fabulist's works would suggest.
An agrégé in Modern Letters and PhD in French Literature, Antoine Biscéré teaches at Université Côte d'Azur (Nice). General Secretary of the Société des Amis de Jean de La Fontaine, he has published some thirty articles on La Fontaine's work and the history of the fable since antiquity.
Excerpt from the introduction...
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PDF version: e-EAN 9782745362506. 55 €
The fable tradition has long occupied a distinct place in European literature, bridging classical antiquity and early modern aesthetics. Within French letters, the short allegorical narrative served both moral and satirical functions, evolving through various translations and adaptations across the centuries. Scholars of the period frequently examine how seventeenth-century writers engaged with ancient models, transforming received paradigms to suit contemporary literary tastes and courtly culture.
Readers interested in seventeenth-century French literature, classical reception studies, and the history of the fable may find this volume relevant. Antoine Biscéré examines the transmission of Aesopic texts from the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries, questioning traditional assumptions about literary lineage. By tracing the genealogy of the apologue, the study highlights the fluid nature of genre formation and the complex relationship between classical models and their early modern inheritors.