Le Corbeau et le Fromage: Fable à ma fontaine

Abstract

I first encountered the author's " L'Agneau qui avait une faim de loup: Fable à ma fontaine" from 2021 and liked it so much that I investigated what else she had done. Here is the first of her three books, apparently hard to find and quite expensive. Perhaps other people have found her work as engaging as I do! This 2015 book from the same publisher is likewise unusual in size at 9" x 13¼" and has the same feature of a partial cut-out covering some of the title-page, in this case leaves continuing those on the front endpaper. In this version of FC, a singing crow encounters a cheese walking through the woods ready to sell a part of himself. The crow remembers the unhappy event reported in FC. The crow is determined to reverse and revenge that outcome! The crow then offers a parody of the fox's address in that earlier event: "Ah, Monsieur du Fromage, how well aged you seem!" The cheese offers himself and denudes himself before the eager crow. Of course, we readers cannot help but open the cheese's dressing gown to see what is inside! The crow then throws himself into the liquid center of the cheese and covers himself with it. When he goes off to the river to bathe, a fox who has been watching the whole event -- eats him! What fun! "Mal acquise, la leçon ne redore pas le blason." "A lesson badly acquired does not restore one's image."