Talk:Jean de La Fontaine

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Neutrality?[edit]

"Choice in every sense: utterly correct, balanced, exquisite in rhyme" - biased? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.108.232.88 (talk) 02:13, 14 March 2007 (UTC).[reply]

Inaccessible?[edit]

"Perhaps the best worth recording of all these stories is one of the Vieux Colombier quartet, which tells how Molière, while Racine and Boileau were exercising their wits upon le bonhomme or le bon (by both which titles La Fontaine was familiarly known), remarked to a bystander, Nos beaux esprits ont beau faire, ils n'effaceront pas le bonhomme. They have not." - If this story is truly worth repeating, it should possibly be repeated with an added translation into English, this being the English portion of wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.222.135.93 (talk) 01:24, 27 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'd have to agree with this, especially since putting it through an online translator comes out with "Our finest minds have beautiful so, they will not erase the man". Perhaps it would be good if someone who was bi-lingual could do a translation that brings through the essence of the sentence rather than the literal word-by-word translation?--81.101.136.128 (talk) 00:27, 15 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Copy-Paste[edit]

I smell an article that's been heavily copy-pasted from some literary introduction to La Fontaine or something like that. It's especially apparent in the latter parts. The copy-pasting isn't as big an issue, though, as the tone, which is inappropriate for an encyclopedia. Corbmobile (talk) 21:37, 3 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. Much was copy-pasted from the article in the 1911 Britannica, which is probably the source of some POV problems, but does treat in depth. The {{1911}} notice was originally at the bottom of the article, but I have moved it to the references where it is not quite so obscure. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 16:35, 30 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Doré's illustrations to La Fontaine's Fables[edit]

Could someone please place in Wikimedia Commons, photos of Gustave Doré's illustrations to La Fontaine's Fables? Nihil novi (talk) 09:22, 4 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

/* External links */[edit]

I deleted this link because it led to a pay per view site, not to the audio to which it purported to lead:

Fables from La Fontaine read by a French native speaker —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.210.95.26 (talk) 05:46, 3 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Non-neutrality[edit]

The parts that I've bolded have got to go:

In this first issue, comprising what are now called the first six books, La Fontaine adhered to the path of his predecessors with some closeness; but in the later collections he allowed himself far more liberty, and it is in these parts that his genius is most fully manifested.
wisely dedicated to "Monseigneur" Louis, le Grand Dauphin, the six-year-old son of Louis XIV of France

There may be more, those are just the first two that caught my eye. --N-k (talk) 15:45, 22 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Missing references[edit]

No trace of Kalîla wa Dimna so far.

Wrong image?[edit]

There's an image captioned "Title page, vol. 2 of La Fontaine's Fables choisies, 1692 ed.". But what it shows is a djvu file of volume 1 from 1678 (very cool, didn't know we could put djvus here). Some mistake, perhaps? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 22:09, 20 September 2011 (UTC) lol długie mi to i .jego najlepsza bajka to kruk i lis — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.160.207.10 (talk) 11:24, 20 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Language[edit]

The tone is very inappropriately informal. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.111.70.63 (talk) 18:39, 14 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. It feels as though as if a younger person wrote it. 64.30.37.124 (talk) 17:17, 8 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

To be fair to young people, the weird tone is primarily because George Saintsbury wrote it. Phil wink (talk) 18:10, 8 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The second anonymous account above, which has a history of vandalism, went on to add a template to the article charging that it was inappropriately worded. I made a few clarificatory changes and have now removed the template as inappropriate itself. As can be seen from other comments on this page, American users find British usage (especially that of a century ago) unfamiliar. In fact, it was mostly the biographical opening paragraphs from EB1911 that were used for the article. There was an equally long and very opinionated section dealing with La Fontaine's writing, which was hardly used at all here. Mzilikazi1939 (talk) 07:03, 1 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

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Eugenie Santa Coloma Sourget used La Fontaine’s text for her song[edit]

This information was removed from the article: Eugenie Santa Coloma Sourget used La Fontaine’s text for her song “La Cigale et la fourmi.” Source: https://www.lieder.net/lieder/get_settings.html?ComposerId=39387 T. E. Meeks (talk) 11:41, 18 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Quite rightly removed. Hundreds of his fables have settings; to list them in a biographical article is WP:UNDUE. Sweetpool50 (talk) 14:17, 18 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm the editor who removed the text; see this thread on the original poster's talk page for more context. I came across this message because "The Ant and the Grasshopper" just happens to be on my watchlist; there are many musical settings already there (along with a much lower bar for notability) so adding one more won't hurt. Graham87 14:56, 18 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]