The battle of the rats and the weasels

Le Combat des Rats et des Belettes

The battle of the rats and the weasels (French: Le Combat des Rats et des Belettes ) is the sixth fable from the fourth book of the collection of fables, Fables Choisies, Mises En Vers by Jean de La Fontaine .

The content of this political fable is the war, the policy of conquest and the longing for peace during the monarchy of King Louis XIV. The animal fable has a clearly pronounced moral: in a fight between weasels and rats, the rats are put to flight and the rat leaders, who are addicted to cleaning, succeed Not to hide from the weasels in cracks in the rock because of their large helmet bushes .

Aesop and Phaedrus (mice in Phaedrus) dealt with the same subject ; however, their characters only represent moral units and evoke vice or virtue. La Fontaine, on the other hand, personifies the animals by giving them conspiratorial names: Ratapan, Artapax (bread eater), Piscarpax (crumb eater), Méridarpax (chunk eater). He also introduces the weasels in great detail ("the long-backed animal") and underlines their hostility towards the rats.

Individual evidence

^ Jean de La Fontaine: Fables Choisies, Mises En Vers. Pp. 10-12 , accessed on January 12, 2020 (French).
^ Jürgen Grimm , Susanne Hartwig: French literature history . Springer-Verlag, 2016, ISBN 978-3-476-00733-9 , pp. 182 ( google.de [accessed on January 12, 2020]).
^ Ulrich Broich: Studies on the comic epic: A contribution to the interpretation, typology and history of the comic epic in English classicism 1680–1800 . tape 13 . Max Niemeyer Verlag , 2018, ISBN 978-3-11-095277-3 , pp. 195 ( google.de [accessed January 12, 2020]).
↑ Karl Canvat, Luc Collès , Jean-Louis Dufays: La Fontaine aujourd'hui: Des parcours pour lire, dire, réécrire les Fables en classe de français . Presses universitaires de Namur, 2006, ISBN 978-2-87037-517-4 , pp. 78 (French, google.de [accessed January 12, 2020]).

[1] Jean de La Fontaine: Fables Choisies, Mises En Vers. Pp. 10-12 , accessed on January 12, 2020 (French).

[2] Jürgen Grimm , Susanne Hartwig: French literature history . Springer-Verlag, 2016, ISBN 978-3-476-00733-9 , pp. 182 ( google.de [accessed on January 12, 2020]).

[3] Ulrich Broich: Studies on the comic epic: A contribution to the interpretation, typology and history of the comic epic in English classicism 1680–1800 . tape 13 . Max Niemeyer Verlag , 2018, ISBN 978-3-11-095277-3 , pp. 195 ( google.de [accessed January 12, 2020]).

[4] Karl Canvat, Luc Collès , Jean-Louis Dufays: La Fontaine aujourd'hui: Des parcours pour lire, dire, réécrire les Fables en classe de français . Presses universitaires de Namur, 2006, ISBN 978-2-87037-517-4 , pp. 78 (French, google.de [accessed January 12, 2020]).