SOURCE: "Under the Pear Tree: Cognitive Space and Deceit Structures in Five 'Magical' Contes of La Fontaine," in French Forum, Vol. 16, No. 1, January 1991, pp. 21-38.

In the following essay, Grise contends that when one character dupes another in La Fontaine's Contes or Tales, the reader participates in a pleasurable sense of superiority for being in on the deceitful jokes.

At the end of "Joconde," the first of La Fontaine's Contes, one of the characters asks a significant question: "Et si par quelque etrange cas/Nous n'avons point cru voir chose qui n'était pas?"¹ The theme of the tale is cuckoldry; two husbands discover their wives inflagrante delictu and, seeking revenge, determine to seduce other men's wives. The evidence on which each husband bases his judgment of his wife's infidelity is first-hand and visual. However, even in these circumstances La Fontaine muses about how deception and illusion can...