The Romance of Reynard the Fox

Reynard the Fox is a literary cycle of medieval allegorical Dutch, English, French and German fables. The first extant versions of the cycle date from the second half of the 12th century. The genre is very popular throughout the Late Middle Ages, and in chapbook form throughout the Early Modern period.

The stories are largely concerned with the main character Reynard, an anthropomorphic red fox and trickster figure. His adventures usually involve him deceiving other anthropomorphic animals for his own advantage or trying to avoid their retaliatory efforts. His main enemy and victim across the cycle is his uncle, the wolf Isengrim (or Ysengrim).

While the character of Reynard appears in later works, the core stories were written during the Middle Ages by multiple authors and are often seen as parodies of medieval literature such as courtly love stories and chansons de geste, as well as a satire of political and religious institutions. ( )

I read this as part of my BA in English in 2012 and liked it more than expected.

The characters are all animals with human characteristics. Sometimes this is confusing, such as when the fox is described as having a thumb, and on another occasion when he’s riding a horse, which evokes weird visuals.

Good fun on the whole, but not something I’d give a second reading. ( )

So far, and this is hard for a medievalist to say, I'm finding the Reynard stories excruciating. Threw it on a syllabus for an independent study on Animals in the MA, and lord do I regret it. I suppose the task here is to account for why they're animals at all...

Cultural historians have no doubt loved the rich attention to 12-13th c. Northern French culture: we see, for example, the use of cudgels in judicial combat, and a joke about Bruin the Bear's bleeding face as a the habit of an unidentified monastic order (because, get it?, many new orders founded in the 12th c.! Hilarious!).

Oh, god, finished it. I'll never assign it again. ( )

Une oeuvre du Moyen Age qui a le plus profondément marqué peut-être la culture européenne et en même temps l'œuvre la plus universelle : les récits qui la constituent se retrouvent pour certains dans le monde entier, particulièrement dans les traditions indienne, arabe et hébraïque. Le Roman de Renart s'est constitué par agglutination de courts poèmes ou 'branches' composés entre la fin du XIe et la fin du XIIIe siècle. On retrouve, de l'un à l'autre, Renart le trompeur et sa famille, son adversaire et sa victime, le loup Isengrin, son cousin et allié, le blaireau Grimbert, tous les animaux enfin qui forment la cour du roi Noble, le lion. Leurs aventures transposent dans le monde animal la peinture satirique de la société de leur temps, mais aussi celle de l'éternelle nature humaine.