Complete Tales in Verse

Generations of children have been brought up on La Fontaine's "Fables." Only an absent-minded or perversely liberal parent, however, would leave the sane author's "Complete Tales in Verse" lying around for the children to find. La Fontaine's "Complete Tales in Verse" are the fruit of his wicked delight in Boccaccio, Ariosto, Rabelais, and other writers. Retelling their stories in his own words, La Fontaine comments wryly as he goes along, making the resulting tales very much his own. Marital misdemeanors, resourceful females, and foolish husbands are the stuff of La Fontaine's saucy variations on the human comedy. "The Tales in Verse" brought La Fontaine cesnure, yet they were an underground success. Guido Waldman's Englush translation, the first since the nineteenth century, demonstrates why La Fontaine deserves a place among France's comic genuises.