La poule aux oeufs d'or
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Authors
La Fontaine, Jean de
Issue Date
2017
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Abstract
This fable has a remarkably short text from La Fontaine. A promythium announces that avarice loses everything in trying to gain everything. That aphorism stands in a pleasant farm scene. The next page shows us the farmer with a golden egg and his hen, and the accompanying text announces him as the evidence for that promythium. The middle page has just one line: "He thought that the hen's body had a treasure inside." The next page shows the dead hen in the farmer's hand; the text announces that she was just like any other hen. Then comes a key line. In Michie's translation it runs this way: "Thus he destroyed through his own fault the great bonanza he’d enjoyed." The last page shows him looking at the dead hen on a stump as La Fontaine specifies that this is a moral for greedy or stingy people -- and notes that the turn from rich to poor overnight happens a lot lately through the desire to get rich too soon. Simple, broadstroke art, often set up almost as a two-dimensional cutout in front of a deeper background.
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Éditions Lito
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11620 (Access ID)