Jean de La Fontaine

Steve McKnight
Senior Seminar Project
12 January 2003
La Fontaine
Seventeenth century France was without argument a hotbed of literary and artistic creation. Countless numbers of artists and authors found their footing in Europe’s changing structure and celebrated cultural diversity. The boundaries of self-exploration were continually expanding and a new understanding of human behavior was beginning to take root, refurbishing ideas extending back to Antiquity. In this breeding ground for intellectual enlightenment Jean de La Fontaine stands above the rest.
La Fontaine, working for many different patrons throughout his years as an author, had an eloquence second to none, and he used his talent to its fullest focusing the majority of his writings on the behavior of one of the world’s most interesting species, humans. This subject, however captivating and significant, was not original in the least. History had produced countless volumes of works regarding human behavior and ...