The Fables of Jean de La Fontaine are present at (almost) all stages of the school career of French students, according to our partner The Conversation.
The strength of their style, the richness of their meaning, the complexity of their language and their interpretation make La Fontaine's Fables just as likely to be studied in high school and university as they are at school. and in college.
The analysis of this phenomenon was carried out by Camille Delattre and Paola Tomarchio, doctoral students in literature at the University of Lorraine.
This year we are celebrating the four hundredth anniversary of the birth of Jean de La Fontaine. On this occasion several tributes are paid to the author, including the recent publication of an unpublished work by Michel Serres on the famous fabulist. The event is also celebrated at school. The Ministry of National Education, Youth and Sports is organizing a national competition to encourage students to study the
Fables
from CP to 3rd.
This incentive is also widely visible in school curricula.
For two years, the
Fables have been
included, for example, in the compulsory works to be studied in first class.
Since 2018, they have been at the heart of a system promoting reading among children when they enter middle school, the operation “A book for the holidays”, which consists of offering each student leaving CM2 a collection of several illustrated fables. .
VIDEO - Operation "A book for the 2021 holidays" (National Education)
How to explain this presence of
Fables
at all stages of the student's school career?
Its recognized aesthetic qualities, its rich cultural perspectives and its definite educational advantages, qualities shared by other classics, do not seem to be sufficient to account for this exceptional posterity.
"Everything speaks in my work, and even Pisces"
If children are now used to fictions in which animals express themselves like humans, talking animals are rare in the literate production of the 17th century, and are an exception in some allegorical, burlesque and / or gallant texts. La Fontaine played a large part in their development, albeit quite relative, in the French literary landscape: this is evidenced by the numerous collections of fables that emerged in the 18th century, and are part of his lineage.
These funny characters are particularly conducive to developing a taste for reading in children.
Thus, Martine Courbin, who is interested in the “presence of the fable in middle school textbooks” observes that almost all of the extracts presented in them, since the beginning of the 21st century, feature animals, so that they are absent from about one in three texts in the first of the twelve books of
Fables
, the main breeding ground for the pieces chosen for the school.
La Fontaine's fables illustrated by Benjamin Rabier © Wikimedia, CC BY-SA
Beyond this playful aspect,
Fables
can be used as a support for the acquisition of various skills.
They are often used, for example, for the famous exercise of recitation, which works both elocution and memorization.
They are also linked in school curricula with the study of the characteristics and specificities of literary genres and characters in the story, or with various activities, from staging to inventive writing as on the occasion of “Fables Festival, Make Fables” contest.
"What they say is for everyone as long as we are"?
The strength of their style, the richness of their meaning, the complexity of their language and interpretation make the
Fables
just as likely to be studied in high school and college as they are in school and college.
In 1668, the date of their first publication, they were dedicated to the young Dauphin, the son of Louis XIV, but were nonetheless read by a worldly and literate public.
The
Fables
could therefore be aimed at a varied audience by their ability to offer different levels of reading.
VIDEO - Ariane Ascaride reads "Plague-sick animals", by La Fontaine (France Culture, April 2020)
For a child, the story of the turtle who “struggles” to beat the hare on the run, who “despises such a victory”, jokingly embodies the moral “There is no point in running;
we have to leave on time ”.
An initiated public will also see the opposition between two ways of writing: one full of detours and irregularities like the hare race, the other clear and rigorous.
He will be able to find with pleasure in Boileau's Poetic Art the same image of the erratic or constant progression, which opposes the profusion of baroque writing, "insensate ardor", and the sobriety of classical writing:
“The path is slippery and painful to walk;
As long as one deviates from it, immediately one drowns: The reason for walking often has only one way.
"
However, under this apparent diversity of possible receptions, the ancient state of the language, the complexity of the versified form, are not without problems for a young audience.
Two lines from one of
the most famous and most learned
Fables
, the first in the collection, have thus caused much ink to flow among specialists themselves: “The Ant is not a loaner;
That's the least of his problems ".
The cicada and the ant, illustration by Calvet-Rogniat © Wikimedia, CC BY-SA
Patrick Dandrey, professor emeritus in French literature, in his article Du nouveau sur La Cigale et la ant?, Collects the difficulties of interpretation pointed out by various specialists in the notes of their editions.
Not to be a "lender", is it to have the vice of avarice, or the virtue of prudence? The name "defect", which can designate both a moral defect and, in a neutral way, a simple lack, does not help to clarify the matter. The adjective "lesser" is not clearer: should we understand that not being a "lender" is the smallest of the faults of the Ant, which has many others? Or that the Ant does not have the defect of being unconsciously lavish because it is far-sighted?
With these lexical questions, it is in fact the interpretation of the whole fable that is at stake: should we blame or praise the Ant?
It is by a lexical analysis of the word
lender
that Patrick Dandrey proposes to resolve the case.
Contrary to what an intuitive reading would suggest, the word is not an adjective, which could be substituted by "generous" or "lavish".
Indeed, this adjectival use is not attested in the dictionaries of the seventeenth century, except to make reference to these two lines.
Thieves and the donkey, illustration by Benjamin Rabier © Wikimedia, CC BY-SA
It is in fact a noun: La Fontaine feminizes the name of the profession of "lender", to say the least deprecated, associated with the greed and laziness of those who want "to make money work instead of working. oneself ”.
At the same time as the grammatical nature of the word, it is therefore the virtue of the Ant which is rehabilitated, since it refuses the immoral financial game of the Cicada.
Faced with such difficulties, we understand the reservations of Rousseau who questions in
Emile or education
(1762) the relevance of reading the
Fables
in the education and instruction of children.
He imagines the astonishment of a child reading
Le Corbeau et le Renard
: "We do not say about a tree perched, we say perched on a tree".
And the difficulties of his instructor:
“Allied.
This word is not used.
You have to explain it;
it must be said that we no longer use it except in verse.
The child will ask why we speak differently in verse than in prose.
What will you answer him?
"
The fox and the stork, illustration by Gustave Doré © Wikimedia, CC BY-SA
To overcome these difficulties, editions dedicated to young audiences can use footnotes and illustrations, like those of François Chauveau in the first collection of
Fables
published in 1668. Certain media allow a different approach to the texts. , comic strip or oral readings like those of Louis de Funès.
"Truths that serve as a lesson"
One of the specificities of the genre of the fable resides in the presence of an implicit or explicit morality, so that the study of La Fontaine's work is frequently linked to the theme “Morality in questions” and with the moral and civic education program to “acquire or strengthen reference values (equity, loyalty, generosity, solidarity, empathy, courage)” and help young students “build a personal ethic”.
The
Fables
are therefore considered representative of a conception of citizenship that it would be desirable to transmit to the pupils.
However, the presupposition of their moral value has been demolished: is not the Lamb eaten by the Wolf?
Rousseau remarked in the
Emile
that the child prefers to identify with the wicked character, like the Fox, than with the deceived and ridiculous character, like the Raven.
The wolf and the fox, illustration by Gustave Doré © Wikimedia, CC BY-SA
The
Fables
teach children less to be fair, loyal, generous, supportive, empathetic, courageous, than to be lucid about the world in which they live. This lesson in clairvoyance is often even based on a spectacle quite contrary to the moral sense of its readers, that of the cruel fate reserved for the characters who are steeped in illusions. The Raven is stripped of its property by the flatterer, the Frog who believes he can come out of his condition bursts before the eyes of the indifferent Ox and the reader, the Cicada is condemned to death by his carelessness after the final mockery of the Ant.
Thus, according to Patrick Dandrey the world represented in the
Fables
is "immoralist, destroyer (of illusions) and trainer of the spirit more than intended to raise the soul and to lead the child on the right path to perfection".
"I sing the Heroes of which Aesop is the Father"
If La Fontaine parodies Virgil in the first verses of his dedication to the Dauphin, it is to Homer that Taine compares him.
“It is La Fontaine who is our Homer”, he writes before adding: “he gave us our most national, most complete and most original poetic work”.
The textbook
Le Tour de France par deux enfants
, used in the classes of the Third Republic, also presents the author as a national hero, "one of the writers who immortalized our language".
VIDEO - Jean de La Fontaine (What History / TV5 Monde)
The
Fables
, at least since the 19th century, have therefore been a “classic” of literature, an appellation which
a priori
designates
a work worthy, because of its aesthetic qualities, of having access to the cultural heritage of its country.
It is therefore for this reason that they are anchored in a school culture, which must open the pupils to a common culture.
In fact, it seems that the relationship between cause and consequence should be reversed.
Nowadays, the presence of La Fontaine in the textbooks is not denied and even tends to be reinforced.
Indeed, Martine Courbin observes that from 2008, La Fontaine is mentioned nineteen times in a corpus of seven textbooks, against seven times between 2002 and 2008.
Our “Literature” file
The reasons for this proliferation are, according to her, the explicit mention of
Fables
in the curricula from 2004. By way of comparison, in 1991 Michel Schmitt found only nineteen fables in a corpus of 116 textbooks. We can thus see the importance of the role played by the educational institution in the posterity of literary works and therefore in the process of their “classicization”.
However, this very process operates a diversion of their literary value in favor of what Alain Viala calls their “exchange value” in the article “What is a classic?
".
The
Fables
become a particularly precious symbolic good, because recognized by a whole nation, "in a time of political, economic, ideological uncertainties, when the great systems of reference falter or collapse, they who could distribute labels of value. , to which we adhered or contested, but at least they provided a frame of reference ”.
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This analysis was written by Camille Delattre and Paola Tomarchio, doctoral students in literature at the University of Lorraine.
The original article was published on The Conversation website.
Declaration of interests
Camille Delattre and Paola Tomarchio do not work, do not advise, do not own shares, do not receive funds from an organization that could benefit from this article, and have not declared any affiliation other than their research organization.
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