In the Britannica Encyclopedia it is written, "The true nature of the man remains enigmatic. He was intensely and naively selfish, unconventional in behavior, and impatient of all constraint". Yet, according to Magaret Guiton author of La Fontaine: Poet and Counterpoet, La Fontaine was a mastermind at making and keeping friends. He was the protege of rich patrons, and they were happy to support him. For twenty years La Fontaine lived at the home of Madame de La Sabliere, whose salon was famous for gathering scholars, philosophers, and writers. In 1684 La Fontain

Another reason why children find the fables interesting is the humoristic tone use by La Fontaine to describe the characters' caricatures and personalities. For instance, "Le Heron" ("The Heron") is a long-necked, long-legged, and long-beaked beast. For Guiton, one gets the humor out of the girl's personality, in "La Fille" ("The Maiden"), with "La Fontaine's accumulation of rapid antitheses- c'etait ceci, c'etait cela" to describe the "hard-to-please young girl" (135):

Finally, the fables also have human characters from all social classes: kings, judges, laborers, maids, doctors, teachers, and even priests. Those humans, like the rest of the characters, show human vices and virtues: they are selfish, avaricious, dull, servile, and greedy people looking for fame and fortune. "L' Homme et son image" ("The Man and his Reflection") picks up the theme of self-love and illusions about oneself. According to Marie-Odile Sweetser, expert of French seventeenth-century literature and culture, "La Mort et le bûcheron" ("Death and the Woodman") is a meditation on the human condition when facing difficulties of life (61). The woodman, overcome by debts and by lack of food and rest, calls death to help him out.

If humor is responsible for the interest of young readers to the fables, a more mature audience enjoys the poems because of the characters that depict human psychology. Like all fabulists, "La Fontaine treats animals in anthropomorphic terms" (Le Page 817); According to "Les personages des fables" ("The fables' characters"), the dominant ones: the cat, the lion, the fox, the eagle, and the vulture are strong, cunning, persuasive, and sharp-witted. The dog, the frog, the serpent, the elephant, and the rat are sometimes weak, sometimes strong depending on the animal they have to confront. The victims: the lamb, the mouse, the fish, the ewe, and the ass are frightened, plaintive, pitiful, and cringing before their masters. In "Le Loup et l'Agneau" ("The wolf and the Lamb"), for instance, the lamb was drinking in a stream when a hungry wolf came from the other side of the river. To find an excuse to eat the lamb, the wolf accuses him of "mucking up [his] water", and of speaking badly behind his back; all the lamb's arguments are disproved by the hungry beast who at the end drags and eats his victim.

The irony continues when the priest dreaming of the fortune that the funeral services will bring, is brutally interrupted by the coffin that slides and kills him: "Notre cure suit son seigneur;/ Tous deux s'en vont de companie" ("Our curate meekly followed his lord:/ Both went off on the journey together") (34-35).

Even though La Fontaine's father, a lover of poetry, encouraged his son in his love for books, nobody knows exactly what motivated La Fontaine to write poetry. According to many critics, including Philip Wadsworth, author of Young La Fontaine, there is an anecdote by a certain d'Olivet that states that La Fontaine's poetic vocation was born when he heard, at 22 years old, an officer give an inspired reading of an ode by Malherbe; "He was impressed just as though he had been a musical genius, brought up in some secluded forest, who was hearing for the first time a well-played musical instrument" (11). Malherbe became La Fontaine's literary master.

Wadsworth says that La Fontaine's characters, whether animals, trees, or humans, "inhabit their own world... and their problems lead logically to some lesson or reflection" (205). This implies that each fable is an allegory because behind the characters and their situations La Fontaine is emphasizing on a "lesson" or "reflection". Among other things, the fables ask to keep a sense of measure and advise modesty and reason over pride, vanity, dreams, and illusions. In "Le Corbeau et le Renard" ("The Crow and the Fox"), a fox sees a crow settle in a tree with a piece of cheese in his beak; the cunning beast wants the cheese so he flatters the bird by telling him that he is han

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Approximate Word count = 2875
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page double spaced)