In 1481 William Caxton translated a Flemish version of the epic and printed it as the History of Reynard the Fox. He has endured because we respond to his sense that life is a game, but one that might be won. Reynard is amoral and cynical he doesn’t care about good and evil or right and wrong. But there is something more at work in the Reynard stories than the simple humour of walking, talking animals, and the satirising of political vice. Anthropomorphic creatures always give an opportunity for humans to reflect on their own paradoxical status – half-animal, half-god – and to take delight in a fanciful refinement of the bestial world. The Vox and the Wolf is the only extant Middle English beast fable before Chaucer’s Nun’s Priest’s Tale, written a century or so later. Between the 12th and the 15th centuries there were at least three French versions of these stories, and the fox’s reputation spread to Germany, the Low Countries and England. In these mock epics Reynard and Ysengrimus, a wolf, try to get the better of each other both poems avoid didactic lessons or obvious morals and give their protagonists psychological complexity. The characterisation of foxes as wily had already been established by Aesop, but Reynard himself first appeared in the tenth-century poem Ecbasis Captivi (‘The Escape of the Captive’), and he returned in the 12th-century Ysengrimus. We are part of a long, proud and mocking tradition.T he word for ‘fox’ in medieval France was goupil – until a set of allegorical tales about a fox called Reynard became so popular that renard started to be used instead. It is heartening to think that our own affection and enjoyment of anthropomorphised animal characters in books and cartoon is not a modern foible. It is even famously referenced in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet when they refer to Tybalt mockingly as the Prince of Cats. ‘Father of English Literature’, the medieval poet Chaucer, uses some of the characters in his Nun’s Priests’ Tale. The allegorical tales have left their mark. He is often mocked and tricked by Reynard but equally he gets up to some bizarre adventures.
Tybalt, Prince of Cats, is a secondary character in the tales. It has some fantastic and unusual illustrations which are well worth a flick through.Īn image of Reynard chasing Tybalt, Prince of Cats, who escapes of horseback, from ‘Roman de Renart’ (f.63v) in National Library of France It is held the National Library of France and can be viewed online here. He stars in the manuscript Roman de Renart, written in the 14th Century. Although it is likely he was a pre-existing folklore character before this and multiple authors have moulded and shaped his curious tale. The first appearance of the trickster fox seems to be in the latin mock-epic poem Ysengrimus, written around the 1150s. These were often used as parodies of the popular courtly love and heroic epics of the Medieval Age, with sprinklings of political and social satire as well. It is an allegorical piece originating in Dutch, German and English folklore. Reynard in battle, from ‘Roman de Renart’ (f.73v) in National Library of France One of my favourite medieval fables is that of Reynard the Fox.įound in manuscripts throughout the Middle Ages, Reynard, the trickster, was an anthropomorphised fox who caused trouble for other animals and sometimes came up against Isengrim, the Wolf, or Tybalt, the Prince of Cats.
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