On Butterflies: Stories and Fables for Children from the 17th Century to the Present Day

Abstract

The flutter of a swooping butterfly. The feverish rush of readers as they move from poem to poem, text to text, as if from flower to flower, pursuing a personal pleasure guided by the law of desire and by reasons that reason has no knowledge of. In the Dictionnaire universel of 1690 Antoine Furetière illustrated the word with the following remark: ‘On dit proverbialement qu'un homme court après les papillons quand il s'amuse à des bagatelles’ (The proverb has it that a man is chasing butterflies when he takes pleasure in trivial things). We are also familiar with the words of Jean de La Fontaine, who did not mince epigrams when, four years earlier, he addressed his old friend thus:Toi qui crois tout savoir, merveilleux Furetière. (p. 646)(You who think you know it all, marvellous Furetière.)