Prior to the appearance in the late twelfth century of the loosely connected tales whose main character is a crafty fox named Renart, the French word for fox was goupil. The goupil Renart was so popular that the word for fox changed to renart, and ultimately to the present-day spelling: renard.
By the fifteenth century, the word goupil had disappeared from the language. But Renard did not only capture the popular imagination: a thirteenth-century abbot complained that the priests in the monastery preferred to decorate the chapel walls with the animals inhabiting Renard's world rather than with images of the Virgin. In fact, during this period, only Tristan et Iseut and Le Roman de la Rose rival the impact of Renard the Fox.
| Go To A Link! An interesting and comprehensive reference to French literature of the Middle Ages! Geocities: Medieval French Literature PageUse Your Back Button to Return to the Le Neon website |
Many of the stories in Renard the Fox depict various episodes in the feud between the clever and often malicious Renard and the somewhat stupid and greedy Ysengrin. But Renard does not limit himself to playing tricks on the wolf: his pranks humiliate and injure almost all the other animals in the kingdom.
As an anti-hero, Renard challenges our perceptions of the heroic knight and mocks the courtly tradition. Nevertheless, in spite of his often malicious intent, Renard is able to win the readers' sympathy and affection with his cleverness and charm.
What makes the best of the tales truly appealing, however, is the extraordinary balance between animal and human attributes. We can enjoy the anomaly that Hersent's embarrassment results not in a feminine blush, but in the fur rising on the back of her neck and the irony that the fox is on trial for killing a chicken a moment both poignant and ludicrous.
Fables are one of the earliest literary forms to use animals to reveal human flaws and teach moral truths. Aesop's Fables exerted a significant influence, particularly on Marie de France, who brought this genre out of the monasteries and to the wider society in the early twelfth century. She was the first to write fables in the vernacular and to endow each animal with particular or "stock" characteristics, like the nobility of the lion, the vanity of the rooster, or the craftiness of the fox, that appear later in Renard the Fox. But even more significantly, she transformed the stories to comment on the twelfth-century society. Strong animals represented the aristocracy; weak ones the peasants, and their interactions and conflicts reflected the important issues of the day.
The medieval bestiaries, ostensibly scientific works on animals, actually used beasts, both real and imaginary, as vehicles for understanding Christian truths. By the twelfth century, they were one of the most popular forms of literature. Unlike the fables, animals in the bestiaries do not talk; what the two literary forms have in common, however, is that the stories of the actual animals are secondary to their purpose of teaching moral lessons.
Another animal parable, the beast poem, first written in monasteries in the eighth century, grew in popularity at the same time as Marie de France introduced her fables. The beast poems, usually in Latin, featured talking animals in fictional narratives, but they moved beyond the fables and bestiaries which offered an explicit moral. Often these beasts poems were composed to be read aloud, sung, and staged in monasteries or at court. By the eleventh century, long epics with animals as protagonists began to appear, and one of the most influential, the twelfth-century Ysengrimus, introduced the characters who later appeared in Renard the Fox. Significantly, this epic was probably the first in which animals received proper names.
The fables, the bestiaries, and the beast poems all connected humans and animals in the medieval imagination by portraying animals behaving like humans, and they paved the way for Renard the Fox which shows its debt to all three literary forms, sometimes explicitly, sometimes more subtly. Here specific animals with distinct and individualized personalities engage in activities that parody human behavior.
The world of Renard does not offer a romanticized picture of courtly love and heroism as do the chivalric tales, "la litt‚rature courtoise," but one which caricatures the passions and foibles of the lords and their ladies. In fact, many scholars insist that these narratives actually mock the themes and characters depicted in the great epics, likeLa Chanson de Roland, Chr‚tien de Troyes' Le Cycle du Graal, or other King Arthur legends. The rooster Chanteclerc's foreboding dream echoes that of Charlemagne; the Council of the lion, King Noble, and his barons as they decide affairs of state resembles the Knights of the Round Table; and Renard's illicit affairs with Hersent and, in other episodes not featured in this production, FiŠre, King Noble's queen, comically evoke the love between Lancelot and Gwenevere in King Arthur's court.
While the characters and events in many of the branches of Renard the Fox expose injustices, hypocrisies, and stupidities of the nobles, the clergy, and the peasants, the stories also deal with issues of significant import to medieval society. We can all laugh at the Archbishop, a donkey, who rambles on in nonsensical Latin, or at the greediness and stupidity of the military elite as represented by the wolf Ysengrin and the bear Brun.
But for those who lived in twelfth-century France, the threat to stability, peace, and the supremacy of the monarch posed by the feud between the two strong vassals Renard and Ysengrin or by the breaking of the universal truce proclaimed by King Noble (a truce which paralleled that of Louis VII in 1155) echoed events that were happening around them.
For the king to remain in power, he had to undermine those who threatened his authority; even family members were not exempt. For instance, Henry II, king of England during the period in which Renard's adventures first enthralled the people, imprisoned his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine because of her political maneuvering and her plotting with her sons to overthrow their father. In addition to her behind-the-scene schemes, Eleanor had considerable influence on twelfth-century court life, culture, and literature that structured medieval life and consequently posed a threat to Henry II. Conflicts caused by this and other struggles for power appear in a variety of forms in Renard the Fox.
| Go To A Link! A Compilation of Links to Medieval Pages and Medieval Re-enactors' Sites! Angelfire: Sharon Spanogle's Medieval & Renaissance Fact & Fiction Links PageUse Your Back Button to Return to the Le Neon website |
By the nineteenth century, several translations of the tales appeared in many languages, and Renard became a favorite character of children's books. Even more recently, one can see the characters from Renard the Fox in the Disney version of Robin Hood. The universality of Renard's adventures and narrow escapes have never ceased to amaze readers throughout the centuries. Just as twelfth-century audiences loved these tales for their revealing truths about the powerful members of society, today's audiences can find many parallels between the world of Renard the Fox and present-day politics.
By Susan C. Haedicke
|
TICKET PRICES, SHOWTIMES & SPECIAL EVENTS
| HOME |