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Tag Archives: Nivardus of Ghent

Reynard the Fox, the Itinerant

23 Sunday Oct 2011

Posted by michelinewalker in Literature, Roman de Renart

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Goethe, Jill Mann, Nivardus of Ghent, Reinhart, Reynaerde, Roman de Renart, Uncle Remus, Ysengrimus

Reineke

Reineke Fuchs 

Photo credit: Wikipedia and Google Images (all)

Born as Reinardus in Nivardus of Ghent‘s Ysengrimus, c. 1150, Reynard the Fox, our sometimes adorable but wicked rascal, is a traveller (un itinérant).[1] We have seen him appear in, at least, two medieval (before the 12th century) beast poems: the anonymous  Ecbasis Captivi, a 1229-line poem in hexameters about a calf stolen by a wolf and rescued by other beasts, and Paul the Deacon’s (c. 720-799) Ægrum Fuit Fama (Once upon a time). But the Sick Lion tale reaches its maturity in the above-mentioned Ysengrimus, a 6,574-line elegiac distich Latin poem translated into English by an admirable scholar: Jill Mann (1984-1985).

Le Roman de Renart :  c. 1170 – 1250

Illumination from a manuscript of the Roman de Renart, end of the 13th century

Illumination from a manuscript of the Roman de Renart, end of the 13th century

 

About twenty years later, Reinardus migrates to France. In c. 1170, Pierre de Saint-Cloud wrote the first “branches” of the Roman de Renart  (yes, with a ‘t’). However, our hero was particularly successful in the Low Countries as Van den Vos Reynaerde, the Reynaert Historie, and other works.

van den vos Reynaerde

Title credit: About Reynard the Fox. (Nederland Film, 1943)
Courtesy Nederland Filmmuseum (frame enlargement Ole. Schepp).

Reynard in England:  Caxton 1481

In the fifteen century, a version of Le Roman de Renart is translated into English by printer and writer William Caxton (c. 1415-1422 – c. March 1492) who entitles his beast epic the Historie of Reynart the Foxe (1481). In 1884, Ernst Voigt publishes an edited translation, into German, of Nivardus of Ghent’s Ysengrimus. Jill Mann writes that

Ernst Voigt, the editor of the only critical edition of the poem, called it ‘comprehensive, systematically planned, wittily and artfully executed work of one of the greatest poets of the middle Ages.’ (Voigt 1884)[2]

Renart in German-language Countries

Our itinerant Renart also travels to German-language countries. Among German language works, he is the protagonist of a Middle High German poem entitled Fuchs Reinhart (c. 1180), a masterpiece of 2,000 lines, written by Heinrich der Glïchezäre. Later, in 1498, a Low German translation of Reynard the Fox, entitled Reynke de Vos, is published. In 1752, J. C. Gottsched publishes his High German prose translation of Reynard the Fox. This is the translation Goethe used to write Reineke Fuchs (1792), in which Reineke has a “treacherous heart.” According to Roger H. Stephenson,

Goethe was also dismayed by the incompetence and fecklessness of the aristocracy at the head of the counter-revolutionary forces.[3]

As Jill Mann states, “[i]t is the comedy of this satiric vision that should be emphasized, since it is this that saves the poem from narrow vindictiveness.” (Mann, in Varty, p. 15.) It would otherwise be somewhat unpalatable. For instance, when the wolf of the Sick Lion tale is divested of his coat, it does not hurt him and he does not die. “The animals talk as if the wolf’s skin was only a garment, easily and painlessly removed.” (Mann, in Varty, p. 10). The comic mode is a self-redeeming discourse. It is an “all’s-well-that-ends-well” narrative.

The Tales of Uncle Remus

Reynard in America:  The Tales of Uncle Remus (1880)

In Joel Chandler Harris’ 9 December 1845 – 3 July 1908) Tales of Uncle Remus, Br’er Fox is in Georgia, US. The manner in which the fox as trickster crosses the Atlantic and journeys to Georgia is difficult to determine. However, one can hypothesize that Renart was brought to the Black population of Georgia by deported Acadians (1755). One can also hypothesize that the Acadians’ status as deportees put them on an equal footing with the black population. Moreover, Chandler Harris had married French-Canadian Mary Ester LaRose.

But in the Tales of Uncle Remus, the fox ceases to be a trickster. He is metamorphosed into a rabbit and, later, the trickster figure is the coyote.

Reynard the Fox also goes in and out of beast epics (unitaires) and fables (parcellaires), Jean Batany’s[4] distinction. For example, there are many fables featuring a fox or another animal that has lost his/her tail. The severed tail motif is very popular in beast literature. In the Aarne-Thompson Motif Index, it is AT 2. However, Reynard is not the Æsopic fox who visits the sick lion’s den and walks away when he notices that the footprints are those of animals walking into the den.This fox may not be our Reynard, but he is a cunning fox, which is his literary role.

Fishing with one’s tail through a hole in the ice

But let us tell one of Renart’s nasty deeds. He says to the wolf that he can catch fish, eels in particular, if he puts his tail down a hole though the ice. Ysengrin is very naïve and does as Reynard suggests.The water freezes so the tail is caught in the ice. Ysengrin loses his tail running away from the people.

 

[1] Kenneth Varty, ed. Introduction, Reynard the Fox: Social Engagement and Cultural Metamorphoses in the Beast Epic from the Middle Ages to the Present (New York & Oxford: Bergham Books, 2000) p. XIII.

[2] Jill Mann, The Satiric Fiction of the Ysengrimus, in Varty, p. 1.

[3] Roger H. Stephenson, The Political Import of Goethe’s Reineke Fuchs, in Varty, p. 191.  The revolution Goethe bemoaned is the French Revolution (1789 – 1794).

[4] Jean Batany, Scène et Coulisses du « Roman de Renart » (Paris : Sedes, 1989), pp. 48-49.

Reineke Fuchs

Reineke Fuchs

© Micheline Walker
23 October 2011
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Reynard the Fox: the Trickster

22 Saturday Oct 2011

Posted by michelinewalker in Beast Literature

≈ Comments Off on Reynard the Fox: the Trickster

Tags

anthropomorphism, Beast Epics, Goethe, goupil becomes renard, Kalila wa Dimna, Machiavelli, Nivardus of Ghent, Panchatantra, Pierre de Saint-Cloud, Roman de Renart, The Prince, Ysengrimus

Renart.reading

A studious fox in a monk’s cowl, in the margins of a Book of Hours, Utrecht, c. 1460
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

Sources: the Sick Lion tale

The fox is beast literature’s foremost trickster and, as we will see below (Townsend), he is a stock character, much as commedia dell’arte characters: the jealous, the boastful, tricksters, etc. As a trickster, he is as cunning as Machiavelli would want his prince to be.

In Western European literature, we find him first in the

  • Ecbasis Captivi, an anonymous Latin poem, written in verse, hexameters, which can be described as a fable (Innerfabel) within a fable (Außerfabel).[1] The Ecbasis Captivi contains the Sick Lion tale. We also find him, i.e. the fox, in Paul Diacre’s or Paul the Deacon’s;
  • Ægrum fama fuit (Paul the Deacon), FR a Carolingian (under King Charlemagne) text that also comprises the Sick Lion tale. The Ecbasis captivi and the Ægrum fama fuit culminate in Nivardus of Ghent’s
  • Ysengrimus (c. 1150), the birthplace of Reinardus who soon becomes Renart in the early “branches” of Pierre de Saint-Cloud’s
  • Roman de Renart (c. 1170). Other authors will write further “branches” or episodes of Le Roman de Renart.

However, the trickster as archetype is as ancient as the Sanskrit Pañcatantra and Persian scholar Abdulla Ibn al-Muquaffa’s Arabic rendition of the Pañcatantra, Kalīlah wa Dimna. In Kalīlah wa Dimna, a sage, Dr Pidpai or Pilpay, gives advice to King Dabscheleim.  The Tales of Kalīlah and Dimna have been translated by Ramsay Wood. In these ancient texts, the trickster figure, or archetype, is a jackal.

Anthropomorphism, or a fox is a fox is a fox

What is most important with respect to beast epics and fables, beast literature’s main genres, is the concept of anthropomorphism. Anthropomorphic animals are humans in disguise and therefore inhabit a comic discourse where the formulaic “all’s well that ends well,” makes comedy’s traditional marriage possible.Whatever the obstacles, in comedy, the young couple marries.

Similarly, in beast literature talking animals are animals. So, given that real animals do not talk, this allows the author to write the truth with impunity.The lion may be a king, but the King, vanity forbids, is not a lion.

There also exist zoomorphic animals who, like the Centaur we met in Chapter XVIII of Machiavelli’s sixteenth-century’s The Prince are half beast and half human, which the prince should be, given the corrupt world in which he lives. Like the Centaur, angels are zoomorphic. Zoomorphic creatures may also combine features borrowed from several animals. They are not anthropomorphic, or humans in disguise. In fact, they are not talking animals.

Renart is a talking animal, and talking animals protect authors because animals do not talk despite considerable eloquence, particularly in the case of Reynard. Reynard’s barat, or clever talkativeness, can pull him out of the worst possible circumstances. As we will see, the fox can talk himself out of raping and, thereby escapes the gallows. A modern example of anthropomorphism in literature is George Orwell’s Animal Farm.

Also central to beast literature are the archetypes. The trickster is an archetype. In his Preface to Æsop’s Fables, George Fyler Townsend states that “[t]he introduction [in fables] of the animals or fictitious characters should be marked with an unexceptionable care and attention to their natural attributes, and to the qualities attributed to them by universal popular consent. The Fox should be always cunning, the Hare timid, the Lion bold, the Wolf cruel, the Bull strong, the Horse proud, and the Ass patient.” This statement reflects an anthropomorphic vision of animals and expresses literary conventions (archetypes: ‘by universal consent.’)

The Sick Lion tale

In my favourite version of this tale, not a Æsopic fable, the Fox overhears the Wolf tell the Lion, already a king, that the fox has been remiss in not visiting the sick lion. So the fox goes looking for old shoes and returns to the lion’s den. He tells the Lion-King that he has travelled the world in search of a cure to the king’s illness and that he has the worn shoes to prove he has not only travelled in search of a cure, but that he has also found it. To get better, the King must wrap himself inside the skin of a wolf whose characteristics are those of the future Isengrim, the wolf on whom Renart will play all kinds of tricks.

 —ooo—

There is so much more to tell about Reynard, but now that we have the founding story, we can tell more. However, I should mention that Renart is a traveller. He is born in Ghent, migrates to France, goes to the Low Countries (Van den Vos Reinaerde) and then to Germany. He is Goethe’s Reinecke Fuchs (c. 1794) DE.

But I will close by emphasizing the popularity of the Roman de Renart. In French, a fox used to be called a goupil, so Renart was a goupil. However, le goupil became le renard (spelled with a ‘d’). Everyone knew Renart, the literary Renart.

—ooo—


[1] Jean Batany, Scène et coulisses du « Roman de Renart » (Paris : Sedes, 1989), p. 57.

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