Jean de La Fontaine
Literature & Poetry • Historical Archive • 🇫🇷 France • 10 views

Jean de La Fontaine 🇫🇷

Jean de La Fontaine (Known as "Master of the French Fable / The Fabulist of Versailles")
Poet, Fabulist, Member of the Académie Française
Born 8 July 1621 🇫🇷 Château-Thierry (Champagne), France
Passed Away 13 April 1695 Paris, France
Lifespan 73 years old
10 views
Notice / Correction
"Rien ne sert de courir ; il faut partir à point. (There is no use in running; one must set out in time - The Hare and the Tortoise). On a souvent besoin d'un plus petit que soi."

Archival Overview

Preeminent French fabulist and poet whose 243 Fables—adapting Aesop and Indian Panchatantra tales into sparkling verse like The Crow and the Fox—provided a witty, razor-sharp critique of court politics and human nature.

Biographical Record

Jean de La Fontaine (1621–1695), born in Champagne as the son of a forestry warden, possessed a lifelong love of nature and animal life. A loyal friend to Superintendent Nicolas Fouquet, La Fontaine courageously refused to abandon his disgraced patron even after Louis XIV imprisoned Fouquet for life.

Between 1668 and 1694, La Fontaine published twelve books of Fables. While ostensibly written for the education of the young Dauphin, his talking foxes, ravens, ants, and cicadas offered a brilliant, subversive mirror of the absolute monarchy of Versailles. As he famously observed: 'I use animals to teach men.' His irregular poetic meter and effortless, conversational musicality made his fables the most memorized lines in the history of French education.

Key Life Milestones

31 March 1668 CE

Publication of the First Six Books of Fables

Dedicated to the six-year-old Dauphin, establishing the defining collection of modern French fables.

2 May 1684 CE

Induction into the Académie Française

Overcame royal hesitation to be received into the Académie Française, succeeding Jean-Baptiste Colbert.

Memorial Guestbook & Tributes

0 messages recorded

Leave a Respectful Tribute

No tributes recorded yet. Be the first to leave a message in honor of Jean de La Fontaine.

Final Resting Place

Perpetual Memorial
Père Lachaise Cemetery (Division 25, Tomb alongside Molière)
Paris, France
GPS: 48.8598, 2.3929
View on Memory Atlas
Archival Standards PastLegacies adheres to strict neutral biographical guidelines and legal standards of remembrance. Next-of-kin may request modifications or removal at any time via our expedited process.