Jean de La Fontaine, disciple of Master François The Fables (1668–1694)

In his Fables, La Fontaine gives a prominent place to Rabelais, through around sixty proper nouns, substantives, adjectives, verbs, and expressions, spread over more than forty fables. The Chinon-born writer appears here as an aesthetic model, an original disseminator of Aesopian apologues, a master of the “old language,” and an advocate of a playful style. A joyful complicity develops with the reader, who has to fill in the blanks in the text and find Rabelais wherever he is hiding.