No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
By keeping the frame-characters before the reader while they visit Versailles and listen to the tale of Cupid and Psyche, and by informing us of the kinds of emotions Psyché's adventures inspire, La Fontaine uses the elaborate framework to place into perspective our reactions to his art. The frame makes the reader recognize his reactions to the story, mirrored in the four friends responses, as well as to the poet's stylistic devices: badinage, reminders of the tale's oral narration, a variety of rhetorical and narrative modes including verse passages that decorate the tale. The friends intrude according to temperament; each prefers a different literary style for the emotions it induces. Their comments lead to the central “digression” on tragedy and comedy, between Parts I and n of Psyché's adventures. This discussion permits transition between the tragic and comic parts of the tale, and the analysis of pity there prepares for Part n in which compassion is the principal emotion experienced by the characters in the tale and the frame. La Fontaine's strategy of holding the frame-characters before the reader is his most significant contribution to his version of Apuleius' tale.
1 The edition cited will be that of Pierre Clarac in La Fontaine, Œuvres diverses (Bibliothèque de la Pléiade; Paris: Gallimard, 1958). This paper was written while I held a Lawrence Chamberlain Fellowship in the Humanities for which I thank the Dean of Columbia College. I also want to thank my friend and colleague, Donna Winter, who prepared the final typescript.
2 The importance of the allegorical function of the tale becomes evident when one realizes that Apuleius' version of the transformed ass tale celebrates the Isis-Osiris cult. Apuleius changed the tale of the voyeuristic Lucius into the edifying story of a man permitted through the grace of Isis to pass beyond sexual and bestial obsessions to the perception of spiritual truths: his journey becomes a pilgrimage toward the saving grace of Isis. The humiliation of Psyche and her final apotheosis reflect the same progress presented at a time early in Lucius' experience as an ass, assuring the reader, if not the character, of the man's ultimate transformation to a human form and higher spiritual state as a priest of Isis.
3 Œuvres diverses, p. 827, n. 1.
4 On the problem of the four friends', see Antoine Adam, “L'Ecole de 1660—Histoire ou légende,” Revue d'Histoire de la Philosophie, vu (1939), 215–250; Jean Demeure, “Les Quatre Amis de Psyché,” Mercure de France, cci (15 jan. 1928), 331–366; and Demeure, “L'Introuvable Société des quatre amis,” Revue d'Histoire littéraire de la France, xxxvi (1929), 161–180, 321–336. The bothersome aspect of the historical searching is that it contributes nothing to an appreciation of the work itself.
5 “Les aventures de Psyché lui avaient semblé fort propres pour être contées agréablement. Il y travailla longtemps sans en parler à personne. Enfin il communiqua son dessein à ses trois amis; non pas pour leur demander s'il continuerait, mais comment ils trouvaient à propos qu'il continuât” (p. 127).
6 Poetry, it should be noted, is also used for descriptions of Cupidon's palace, its luxurious contents, its gardens, for the same reason. These lengthy accounts (pp. 145–146, 149) decorate the tale, as the narrative itself is suspended. Since the palace and gardens are unusual, highly imaginative works of art that provide a decorative setting for the activities of Cupidon and Psyché, it is only appropriate that La Fontaine decorate his tale with poetic descriptions of them. A work of plastic or architectural art in the tale provides a pretext for a poetic work of art, whose function, like that of the works in the tale, is purely decorative. (The analogy of poetry and art, of course, already operates in the frame-introduction at Versailles.)
7 In the Préface, La Fontaine makes a point of indicating these episodes as original without, however, revealing why he added them: “Il y a quelques épisodes de moi, comme l'aventure de la grotte, le vieillard et les deux bergères, le temple de Vénus et son origine, la description des enfers, et tout ce qui arrive à Psyché pendant le voyage qu'elle y fait, et à son retour jusqu‘à la conclusion de l'ouvrage” (p. 124). The adventure of the grotto in Part i, in which Psyché has a romantic encounter with her husband, adds to her curiosity concerning his identity while permitting La Fontaine to narrate a scene of “dépit amoureux” followed by a tender love scene (pp. 150–151). The additions to Part ii, however, do not fit into the structure of the narrative as the grotto scene does in Part i—unless the reader realizes that La Fontaine employs them less for their actual content (the plot) than for the emotional situations they evoke in Psyché, whose bad fortune is neither improved nor worsened by her adventures with the old man. In the temple, though, the worshipers’ mistaking her for Venus does contribute to the plot's development—although not so much as to the character development of Venus: she hears of the confusion of identity, “ce qui la fit accourir le visage en feu, comme une Mégère, et non plus la reine des Grâces, mais des Furies” (p. 228). Her pitilessness motivated by jealousy characterizes Venus until nearly the end. Every character in Part ii except Venus and Proserpine extends compassion to Psyché—and Proserpine is pitiless also because she is jealous (p. 246). Even the Furies in the Underworld feel pity for her: “La pitié entra pour la première fois au cœur des Furies” (p. 246). The episodic nature of La Fontaine's original adventures can be excused if one realizes that in Part ii following the “digression,” he was evoking the sentiments of tragedy and tragicomedy; fear, in the journey to the Underworld, as well as pity.