Customer Reviews

La Fontaine's Bawdy: Of Libertines, Louts, and Lechers: Translations from the Contes Et Nouvelles En Vers (Lockert Library of Poetry in Translation)

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I had always thought of La Fontaine in terms of his fables, more or less for kids, and had no idea that he had written a whole different body of work, his contes in verse, which are definitely for an adult audience. I found them "bawdy", as the title indicates, but not at all vulgar or off-putting to me as a reader.

Shapiro nicely places the original 16th century French on one side of the page and the English translation on the other. The translations are wonderful! They are fun to read and really amusing! He manages to capture the feel of the epoch in which they were written, even rhyming as La Fontaine rhymed, and avoiding giving too modern a feel to the English. All in all, the book is a pleasure.