Once Again, La Fontaine: Sixty More Fables

Abstract

Here is the hardbound version of a book I had found only in paperback earlier. I will include my comments from there. Shapiro and Schorr are at it again! This marks their third book together on La Fontaine. It is, I believe, another triumph. The translations are crisp. I enjoyed, for example, The Charlatan (115). I am surprised at how copiously David Schorr illustrates this volume. I noticed only perhaps four fables that are not illustrated. Schorr discusses well in his foreword the possibilities for the use of visual space in a bilingual translation. While he exploits again here the polarity of a fable's antagonists, he also plays with other design possibilities, involving among other things the outer margins and the gutter. I enjoy particularly SS (18-19), The Drunkard and His Wife (30-31), the before and after views of the weasel (40-41), the child sleeping on the rim of the well (90), and SW (104-5). The latter repeats a motif from Schorr's earlier work, perhaps in The Fabulists French. I believe that there are only about forty La Fontaine fables left for these two to work on. This book includes an audio CD featuring twenty-six of the fables in English. They are rendered in very lively fashion.