La Fontaine’s imitator in England: John Gay, the first English writer of fables in verse

Abstract

The present article focuses on the English writer John Gay, regarded in his country as one of the best burlesque and satirical poets of his time; more specifically about his work The Fables, which consists of sixty-eight fables: fifty published in 1727, to which eighteen were added in 1738. For English criticism Gay is the first English author to compose fables in verse, imitating the French Jean de La Fontaine, although before him other writers experimented with the fabular genre: the printer William Caxton (c. 1422-1492), the Scottish Robert Henryson (c. 1425-1490), the poet and prose writer Nicholas Breton (c. 1545–1626), the painter, engraver and illustrator Francis Barlow (c. 1626-1704) and the monk and poet John Lydgate (c. 1370-1449). After a brief biographical sketch of the figure, the translation into Spanish of the first of his fables appears: “The Lion, the Tiger, and the Traveller,” followed by some remarks on literary translation.  A second section deals with the very famous French translation of the Fables carried out by the notable writer Mme de Kéralio.