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La Fontaine, the most versatile and most widely celebrated nondramatic poet in seventeenth –century France. He has often experienced the misfortune of having the artistry of his works obscured by a host of myths, half-truths, prejudices, and nonaesthetic issues. ....

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.... government official who inspected forests and waterways. His mother Françoise Pidoux, who came from a nobler family from Poitou. He also had a younger brother who was born two years after La Fontaine. He also had an older step sister named Anne de Jouy on his mothers side of the family. (Carter, pg. 46) Burns 2 The education and formative years of young la Fontaine are not documented. Most biographers state that, in all likelihood, he attended château- Thierry "college". This is a secondary institution where humanities were taught to the sons of the middle class. (Encarta n.pag.) He then attended a school at Reims. From there he ....