Monarchy and literature in La Fontaine's work

Everything speaks in my work. With these words Jean de La Fontaine refers to his Fables a work which - in the literary panorama of 17th-century France - remains one of the most emblematic and studied by critics. We know that the fabulist lived in a highly complex period with many implications for the relationship between power and literature and between the writer and society. La Fontaine inviting us not to limit our reading to a superficial analysis prompts us to question his work: in what sense does his work speak and is there a direct influence of political power on his work? How can a work such as the Fables apparently conventional and at the same time charged with universal significance fit into a wider project of criticism and denunciation of society and particularly of the political hierarchy? How does La Fontaine achieve his aim of making his fables a genre born of antiquity ever relevant and open to interpretation in the light of the historical events the author experiences?