Description
Book SynopsisLa Fontaine was a great French lyric poet of the 17th century. This study is almost as much about Louis XIV as about La Fontaine. It provides analysis of the absolutist politics and attempts by the King to enforce an official cultural style, and the plight of the artist under such a ruler.
Trade Review" . . . a fascinating account. . . The Poet and the King, written by a brilliant scholar who can see the grand designs behind the events he describes, should prove rewarding both for readers interested in life under Louis XIV, and for lovers of French culture in general." —The Times Literary Supplement
“One comes away from a reading of The Poet and the King with a new appreciation of the meaning and value of La Fontaine’s poetry and of its place in the cultural history of his times.” —H-France Reviews
“Fumaroli... has produced a biographical reading that is singularly rich and illuminating.” —American Historical Review
"The Poet and the King not only offers a history of one of France’s greatest poets but also carries the message that great literature and art can be created in spite of repressive cultural and political regimes.” —Translation Review
“Fumaroli ... is a gifted writer who deftly weaves La Fontaine’s personal history with the broader cultural and political events in France. Readers ... will appreciate this engrossing account of the struggles of a creative man against a smothering tyranny.” —Booklist
“Fumaroli’s readings of La Fontaine’s poetry are both probing and brilliant. For those accustomed to the idea of La Fontaine as a schoolboy’s poet, these fresh readings will come as nothing less than a revelation.” —Journal of Modern History
"Fumaroli lucidly and thoroughly studies the role of the poet in speaking to the sycophants of power and fashion . . . 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 how the 17th century remains intensely alive in contemporary thought." —Library Journal
“Even for readers uninterested in La Fontaine and his career, this book is invaluable as a fully researched and masterfully constructed case study of literary politics and survival in an increasingly authoritarian state. Should that not be enough, there are the undeniable pleasures of Fumaroli’s dense, resonant, and allusive prose, which alone would justify his eminence on the French literary (as well as academic) scene.” —Virginia Quarterly Review
“... an original and largely persuasive presentation of the reign of Louis XIV as the end of the Renaissance, and as the inauguration of the modern insistence on mobilization of the intellectual resources of the state for its political ends.” —Renaissance Quarterly
“... detailed, erudite account of the conflict between one of France’s greatest lyric poets, La Fontaine, and its grandest monarch, the Sun King. Jane Marie Todd’s translation of the 1997 Le Poète et le Roi (Paris: Èditions de Fallois) was a finalist for the French-American Foundation’s 2002 Translation Prize. It was a well-deserved honor both for her graceful rendering of Fumaroli’s text, as well as the translations of the many citations from La Fontaine and other writers.” —Seventeenth-Century News
