Jean de La Fontaine, the great French fabulist, turned his peerless wit to shorter, darker, more mischievous terrain. These tales and novels reveal a storyteller unbound by the moral certainties of his famous fables. Here, lovers scheme, husbands grow jealous, wives prove dangerously clever, and vanity leads its protagonists into absurd and enlightening predicaments. The collection opens with "Joconde," a prince so convinced of his beauty that he wagers his domain on a contest no one can win, only to discover that love and vanity make strange bedfellows. Throughout, La Fontaine applies his gift for observation to the follies of the human heart: desire, pride, and the endless games people play in the name of both. The humor is sharp, the satire occasionally biting, and the storytelling pulses with a devilish charm that distinguishes these works from his more decorous fables. For readers who love wit over sentiment, who prefer a sly wink to a broad moral, these tales offer the pleasure of 17th-century French literary culture at its most playful and knowing.
