From Library Journal
Fumaroli (rhetoric & society in Europe, Coll ge de France) lucidly and thoroughly studies the role of the poet in speaking to the sycophants of power and fashion. But rather than Virgil to Caesar or Horace and Ovid to Augustus, the interplay studied here is of Jean de la Fontaine (1621-95) to Louis XIV in 17th-century France. Fumaroli traces La Fontaine from the provinces to Paris and through years of obscurity and crisis, placing special emphasis on the fall from power of La Fontaine's patron, Nicolas Foquet. La Fontaine is shown to be a poet oddly prone to silence and concealment, a poet finding his way, translating himself around a royalty in attire inspired by Venetian opera costumes. In the process, we see that "great poetry is political, it is so by definition, since it seeks a foundation for the commonwealth in the truth of the heart." Neither a biography nor a literary critique but a study of power, this work is highly recommended for anyone interested in the bridge between aesthetics before and after the French Revolution and particularly in how the 17th century remains intensely alive in contemporary thought. Scott Hightower, Fordham Univ., New York City
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
La Fontaine is generally regarded as the greatest French lyric poet of the seventeenth century, his art and his life intimately intertwined with the political and cultural milieu fostered by the "Sun King," Louis XIV. Despite the purported cultural brilliance of seventeenth-century France, an intense resistance to free expression generally characterized the attitude of the royal court toward literature and art. Instead, artists were constantly pressured to promote the interests and "glory" of the regime. It is La Fontaine's struggle to maintain his artistic intensity against omniscient oppression that forms the core of this narrative. Fumaroli, a professor of Rhetoric and Society in Europe at the College de France and a member of the Academie francaise, is a gifted writer who deftly weaves La Fontaine's personal history with the broader cultural and political events in France. Readers will greatly benefit if they have a solid grounding in the history of the period; however, even those without such grounding will appreciate this engrossing account of the struggles of a creative man against a smothering tyranny. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
