Les Fables de La Fontaine

Title

en_US Les Fables de La Fontaine

Description

en_US This is a hardbound book (hard cover)

en_US Language note: French

en_US Robert Wilson

Creator

en_US No Author See all items with this value

Contributor

en_US Wilson, Robert

Date

2016-01-25T20:11:31Z

en_US 2012-05

en_US 2004

Date Available

2016-01-25T20:11:31Z

Date Issued

en_US 2004

Abstract

en_US It has taken me a long time to engage this book! Did I see it first in Chateau-Thierry in 2006? And was it lost in that fated shipment of books bought in La Fontaine's home? At any rate, this is a fascinating piece of work. Wilson created for the Comédie Française a dramatic presentation of the fables that was biting, bloody, close to the throat. A NY Times review of an American performance by the Comédie Française spoke this way: With a palette of light and sound that finds a primal scream within the stately rhythms of a minuet, Mr. Wilson and company wrench La Fontaine out of his frozen niche in the académie and thrust him back into the real, teeming world he observed with such passion and dispassion. These are not La Fontaine’s 'Fables' as you studied them in introductory French literature, fluidly assembled verses with tidy morals and sharp bite; these are the fables as life itself, and you may never have another chance to see just how scary they are. What this book presents is suggested by the face confronting a reader on the endpapers: a bloody hostile head apparently on a human body wearing a suit. The passion of that first profile goes through many gripping images, stronger for having transparent slipsheets in front of them with snatches of La Fontaine's text: que vous êtes joli; la raison du plus fort est toujours la meilleure; la chétive pécore s'enfla si bien qu'elle creva; le phénix des hôtes de ces bois; il se dédit alors; and ventre affamé n'a point d'oreilles. A helpful English insert translates the major texts here: an appreciation of Wilson by Pierre Bergé; a tribute to Wilson by Marcel Bozonnet, General Administrator of the Comédie Française; a long guide to the fables by Marc Fumaroli; and a short biography of Wilson. Whoever originally sold the book charged $85.

Identifier

en_US 7761 (Access ID)

uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10504/83017

Publisher

en_US Fondation Pierre Bergé, Yves Saint Laurent

en_US Paris

Subject

en_US Ovr. PQ1808.W55 2004 See all items with this value

en_US Jean de La Fontaine See all items with this value

en_US Title Page Scanned See all items with this value

Type

en_US Book, Whole