Written in French.
It is not always known that Jean de la Fontaine also owes part of his inspiration to Ibn al-Muqaffa', an eighth-century Iranian, and his animal fables of Kalila and Dimna, which were themselves taken from the Indian book of the Panchatantra. The East used fables to make evident the...
Read more
Written in French.
It is not always known that Jean de la Fontaine also owes part of his inspiration to Ibn al-Muqaffa', an eighth-century Iranian, and his animal fables of Kalila and Dimna, which were themselves taken from the Indian book of the Panchatantra. The East used fables to make evident the human morality that La Fontaine brought to its pinnacle. In the 19th century, the French diplomat Félix Sébastien Feuillet de Conches dreamt of a crazy project: he sent his correspondents collections of La Fontaine's Fables to be illustrated by local artists. He received typical paintings from Egypt, Persia, Abyssinia, China, India and Japan - a treasure trove of illustrations preserved in the Musée Jean de la Fontaine in Château-Thierry which had never been published or revealed to the general public.
Close
