The Fables of Marie de France

The Crow and the Fox, The Cricket and the Ant, The Lion and the Mouse… these are just some of the fables that seem familiar to us because we read and memorized them as children. However, what is less well known is that five hundred years before Jean de La Fontaine, the poet Marie de France was the first to write these fables inspired by Aesop in French.
Full of inventiveness and freshness, the 25 fables by Marie de France in this collection have been translated by Christian Demilly, who has managed to transcribe their musicality and overcome the technical difficulties of Old French to reach a 21st-century audience. Fred L.’s refined and humorous illustrations bridge the gap between the almost thousand-year-old voice of the first French fabulist and today’s children.

“Marie de France’s Fables are indeed worthy of their illustrious successor: clear, rhythmic, funny and biting, sometimes even cynical, they retain an astonishing freshness ten centuries after they were written. They reflect a hierarchical, harsh, religious society, but also a freedom to think, to criticize, to resist tyranny, and a sense of humor that could well be the seeds of the Enlightenment.”