The flatterie in La Fontaine’s Fables: the court seen by a moralist of the 17th century

Abstract

This research aims to discuss the presence of the passion of the “flatterie” (flattery) in the fables of the seventeenth-century writer Jean de La Fontaine, especially when the flatterie appears as a trait of the French court. This passion has a different function in the fables, because sometimes it appears like an action that needs to be fulfilled, and sometimes like something that needs to be avoided. It is, however, a tool for the author to elaborate a typological portrait of the man of the court, and, for extension, of the own figure of the king, and somehow, to establish a general framework of the human nature – a highly valuable subject for the philosophical and moral thoughts of the 17th century. We intend, thus, to show the possible readings of this passion, as the fabulist author illustrates it.