La Fontaine

Summary

Dominique Pagani often returns to La Fontaine's debt to Aesop, who inspired a large share of the fables, as he points out from 2016 to 202512. He draws political formulas from the Fables: "the reason of the strongest" serves him as an example of the traditional argument of de facto power3, and he reads the "Depending on whether you are powerful or wretched" of The Animals Sick of the Plague as a matter of possession4. He reads The Heron closely. The expression "faire le héron" means being fussy. He notes how the author lingers on the riverbank, drawn in by it, just as The Dove and the Ant opens by a stream5. He also cites "the water was transparent" as an example of reflection, in a reflection on surfaces6. He brings up The Oak and the Reed in connection with the wind that shakes the trees. He also cites the early tales and the libertine texts of the seventeenth century, and places La Fontaine among the great poets of that century.

1. 1#10.2 Dialectics of identity and difference6 Oct 2021 · 1:03:39
2. 2“Speech is the best and the worst of things” (Aesop)19 Oct 2022 · 8:04
3. 3What is to be done? 2/329 Jan 2016 · 28:26
4. 4#3.6 From Ulysses to Daedalus1 Aug 2017 · 42:37
5. 5#12 From Kafka to Proust, the dialectical passage from the intermezzo to the perpetuated edge7 Apr 2022 · 1:46:09
6. 6Who is hiding beneath the surfaces? Aesthetics and politics20 May 2022 · 1:06:10

Summary produced automatically from 17 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.