Title: Reading undercover
First published: 1998
Description: This study examines author/audience relations in the works of the seventeenth-century French poet Jean de La Fontaine. Focusing on the Fables, Les Amours de Psyche et de Cupidon, and the Contes, Anne L. Birberick explores how La Fontaine remains a largely subversive artist, even while he seeks to establish himself within a conventional system of literary patronage.

Birberick offers an "anatomy" of readers as she shows how La Fontaine simultaneously appeals to multiple readers whose tastes range from the literal to the ironic, from the orthodox to the heterodox. To negotiate successfully between and among such diverse audiences, the poet employs techniques of concealment and disclosure to foster an anticanonical public.
Subjects: History, Books and reading, Authors and readers, Authority in literature, Reader-response criticism, Criticism and interpretation, La fontaine, jean de, 1621-1695, French poetry, history and criticism, French fiction, history and criticism
Places: France
People: Jean de La Fontaine (1621-1695)
Time periods: 17th century
LC classification: PQ1812 .B47 1998