"The Fables belong to comedy; the pure comic vision, different in that respect from that noble hybrid, satire, requires that the reader should appreciate it intellectually without being emotionally involved. In La Fontaine, as in Molière, the detachment of the comic vision prevents the tragic element from making its impact on the reader directly, although the upsetting implications are there. The device of using animals as protagonists makes it easier to assume this attitude of detachment: while we watch the adventures of the animal, although they are our own adventures, we benefit from our ordinary feeling of superiority over the animals; and this feeling of being superior and of being different, which we automatically have, helps us to watch the tragedy of the world from the point of view of the gods."