Week 15 reading B: La Fontaine unit

The Dairywoman and the Pot of Milk,
illustrated by Frederick Tilney.
Source: Mille Fabulae

My two favorite stories from the second half of the La Fontaine unit were The Astrologer Who Stumbled into a Well and The Dairywoman and the Pot of Milk. I love poetry, and I really enjoyed the rhyme schemes employed in these two poems in particular.

The stories don't rely on one consistent rhyme scheme; instead they bounce back and forth among couplets, triplets, enclose and alternate rhymes, and most everything in between. I think this choice goes well with the nature of the stories; both are a bit chaotic with twists and turns, but the rhyming keeps them reined in so the reader can still focus on the message of the stories.

I also thought the illustrations were beautiful, and really added depth to the stories. Sometimes it can be hard to visualize scenes set in poetic verses of this style simply because, in order to stick to the rhyme scheme, authors often don't include long descriptions of the setting. These illustrations really help with that.