Jean de La Fontaine
8 July 1621 – 13 April 1695
Jean de La Fontaine (1621-1695) was a French poet, the most famous fabulist in European literature. His twelve books of Fables, published between 1668 and 1694 and drawing on Aesop and other sources, became classics of French literature and are still memorized by French schoolchildren today.
Lived at the same time
Well-documented people whose lives overlapped with Jean de La Fontaine.
- Aurangzeb (1618–1707) Overlapped 74 years →
- Wang Fuzhi (1619–1692) Overlapped 71 years →
- George Fox (1624–1691) Overlapped 67 years →
- Christiaan Huygens (1629–1695) Overlapped 66 years →
- Jan III Sobieski (1629–1696) Overlapped 66 years →
- Otto von Guericke (1602–1686) Overlapped 65 years →
Life events
La Fontaine was born into a bourgeois family; his father was a supervisor of waters and forests. He was baptized on 8 July 1621.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgAfter briefly entering the Oratory, La Fontaine studied law in Paris and was received as an avocat.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgLa Fontaine married the fourteen-year-old Marie Héricart in an arranged match; the couple later lived largely apart.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgLa Fontaine took over his father's post supervising waters and forests at Château-Thierry, duties he performed with little enthusiasm.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgLa Fontaine became a protégé of the superintendent of finances Nicolas Fouquet, for whom he wrote poems including Adonis; he remained loyal after Fouquet's arrest in 1661.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgLa Fontaine's licentious verse tales, drawn from Boccaccio and Ariosto, won him popularity but later royal disapproval.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgThe first six books of Fables choisies, mises en vers, dedicated to the Dauphin, appeared in Paris and were an immediate success.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgAfter initial resistance from Louis XIV, La Fontaine was elected to the Académie française and formally received in May 1684.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgThe last book of Fables, dedicated to the young Duke of Burgundy, completed a corpus of some 240 fables written over more than 25 years.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgLa Fontaine died in Paris after a period of illness and religious repentance and was buried in the Holy Innocents' Cemetery.
Source: en.wikipedia.org