La Fontaine, ou comment ne pas être reçu à Versailles

Abstract

This paper tracks the people from Champagne who crossed paths with Jean de La Fontaine. The point is to question the influence the Champagne region may have exerted on the poet’s career. La Fontaine first acted as a bourgeois from the provinces—linked to the Parliament thanks to his family, he played his part of go-between involved in his network’s business in Paris and Château-Thierry. Presented to the court of Superintendent Nicolas Fouquet and to the family of the Dukes of Bouillon, lords of Château-Thierry, La Fontaine succeeded in taking advantage of the aristocratic social networks and winning the favour of the royal princes, thus getting closer to the heart of power. Once his maîtrise des eaux et forêts—a kind of deputy-ranger—settled in 1671, and once his office in the House of the Dowager Duchess of Orléans lost in 1674, La Fontaine was accommodated in Parisian houses and mainly lived on pensions granted by French grandees—he possessed no charges and was not attached to any aristocratic houses—he failed to become a royal courtier. After the 1670s, the weight of the Champagne region in his career seems insignificant, despite his friendship with François Maucroix in Rheims and a coterie of wits in Troyes. At that time, his link to his provinces, which was never broken, was inseparable from his social and poetic persona.