SOURCE: “Early Branches of the Roman de Renart,” in Reynard the Fox, Twayne Publishers, 1983, pp. 33-69.

[In the following excerpt, Best describes and summarizes the various French tales collected under the name of the Roman de Renart.]

About the year 1176 a trouvère named Pierre de Saint-Cloud wrote what seems to be the first medieval beast epic in a popular language.¹ It consists of some 2,410 eight-syllable verses in rhymed couplets, and its plot is devoted principally to another feud between the fox, named Renart, and Ysengrin the wolf, both of whom are barons in Noble the lion's kingdom. It was so well received that imitations soon appeared. By circa 1250 some twenty-six Gallic tales about Reynard (the exact number depending on how one counts) were circulating as so-called branches, in the same verse form as Pierre de Saint-Cloud's poem, and were being collected as the Roman de Renart. Initially the public may have referred to Pierre's novelty as the “Romance of Reynard,” and the poets who first followed his example possibly thought of their creations as offshoots from that trunk. If so, the title nevertheless soon became generic, while branche was kept as the technical term for a Reynard epic in French.

Extant manuscripts of the Roman de Renart do not preserve its branches in any meaningful order. They deny Pierre's pioneering venture due prominence, for example, and even break it up most ignominiously. Standard numbering of the Roman's branches today still reflects that confusion, despite the chronology established by Foulet.² Those poems are usually identified according to their order in Ernst Martin's edition of 1882-87,³ which does not improve on the manuscripts. Pierre's original is known as Branches II and Va combined, and what is termed Branche I was not produced until after II-Va, III, IV, and XIV were already in existence (circa 1179).

Branches XV and V (which share the curious fate of having been joined to parts of II-Va)⁴ probably also antedate I, though we cannot be sure that they do. There are allusions in I to II-Va, III, IV, and XIV but not so definitely to XV and V, while XV failed to influence the Middle-High-German epic Reinhart Fuchs, which was written during the 1190s and combines material from Branches I, II-Va, III, IV, V, VI, X, and maybe VIII. Branche V seems to anticipate XIV, however, and to be indebted to XV in turn. Because XV refers only to II-Va and III for certain, we will place it chronologically right after III, with V immediately following IV. The branches concerning us in this chapter are therefore II-Va, III, XV, IV, V, XIV, and I, in that presumptive order of composition. Among all the Roman de Renart's branches only II-Va and I are major works, but tracing the likely development of the beast epic from II-Va to I is an interesting part of our whole endeavor.

We will utilize Martin's edition rather than more recent ones, since it seems closest to the original version of each branche which we want to study.⁵

BRANCHE II-VA

Whereas Nivardus composed Ysengrimus, with its difficult Latin, inverted structure, and comments on ecclesiastical personages, to be read by educated clerics, Pierre de Saint-Cloud wrote for recitation to lay nobility, addressed at the very beginning of his poem as seigneurs.

In a twenty-two-line prologue he asserts that he is breaking new ground, and he indicates that Ysengrimus was unknown to the general public. To familiar stories like those about Paris and Helen or Tristan, he declares, he will add an account of Renart's vendetta with Ysengrin, about which his audience has never heard. Because he ends his prologue by telling us to listen to what brought about the two barons' feud, we expect his work to open with the casus belli or at least with some background history, but we find that the first 1,000 lines contain only a series of episodes involving Renart's attempt to prey upon the rooster Chantecler, upon an unnamed titmouse, and upon Tiecelin the crow, as well as to injure the wildcat Tibert. Those verses do not at all deal with reasons for a war against the wolf.

As Foulet has pointed out,⁶ Pierre was evidently influenced by Bruno the bear's poem in Ysengrimus, which relates how Reinardus endangered Sprotinus the cock and then befouled the wolf cubs. Pierre composed his narrative by building onto each of those disparate incidents, for he wanted to portray more than just a feud, despite not saying so in his prologue. We will see that what he created is in fact a satire on the seamy side of knighthood, so that the two major parts of his work are thematically related.

Whereas Nivardus identifies Reinardus right away as a fox, Pierre does not explain who Renart is, implying that in the folklore of northern France the fox had become better known during the generation since Ysengrimus appeared. The gentlemen for whom Pierre wrote seem to have been acquainted in advance with both Ysengrin and Renart, though not with a conflict between them. In contrast to that pair, all other named animals are carefully introduced. Because they are, Pierre should probably be credited with having christened most of them himself, following Nivardus's example. Only in regard to the fox, the wolf, and Brun the bear was he clearly not original.

Branche II, Verses 23-1026. Altering Sprotinus's seduction and escape, Pierre handled in his own way the first episode which he borrowed from Nivardus. The French version appears to begin on a morning in July.⁷ Renart, characterized as a master of devilish deceit, dives through the palisade around Constant des Noes's garden, landing among cabbage plants that conceal him. Constant's hens, who see something sail through the air, run for their roost, but Chantecler is sure that all of them are safe. So convinced is he that he acts like a fool, says Pierre (line 121), for he goes to sleep on a manure pile. He even dismisses a dream which his favorite wife Pinte interprets as a warning that before noon a fox will seize him by the throat.

During the second nap Renart lunges at him but misses out of impetuosity. To prevent him from flying away, the fox pretends that no harm is meant because the two are cousins. A resultant cry of relief inspires Renart to claim that the song of Chantecler's father, who crowed with his eyes shut, could be heard for a league, and the fox declares that losing a foot would be better than hurting a relative. What Renart does not intend to be a two-step process becomes one, as in Ysengrimus, for the cock initially preserves sufficient caution merely to wink. When he is persuaded to close both eyes, his beguiler grips him by the neck and prances off.

In order for Chantecler's plight to be discovered, Pierre has the time suddenly become evening (line 371), even though Pinte's prediction of an attack before noon (line 252) indicated that only slightly earlier it was still morning. The sun has lurched, as in Nivardus's fishing episode. Because of the late hour, at any rate, a woman comes to put the chickens in their coop and espies the rooster slung across his abductor's back. She cries for help, sending all the farm hands in pursuit, and Constant sics dogs on Renart, who has managed to carry his booty back through the palisade.

Chantecler grows clever in adversity, appealing to the fox's pride just as the fox has appealed to his. Without telling Renart to lay him down first, he maintains that Constant should be taunted. Cooperatively the fox then barks, “In spite of you I'm taking what is mine,” permitting what he thought was his to fly into an apple tree. He squats below on a dungheap by way of showing that he has assumed the rooster's role as dupe. Like his counterpart in several of the fables reviewed in connection with the Sprotinus incident, he curses the mouth which opens when it should be shut, while a wiser Chantecler curses the eye which shuts when it should be open. Despite the latter's sneer that Renart must move along to keep his fur intact, his pursuers have vanished, as not only in Ysengrimus but also in Gallus et Vulpes and Marie de France's Esope.

Rather than keep Chantecler in his remark of the Sprotinus episode's second stage, Pierre substituted another bird, the titmouse. With a different prey the peace ploy stands a better chance of succeeding. Pierre must have known either Marie's Esope, in which her fable about the fox and the dove immediately follows the one about the fox and the cock, or an earlier version of it, but perhaps he considered the dove a less worthy match for Renart than the tit, whom Marie presents elsewhere as “very wise, perceptive, and sly.”⁸

Still reproaching himself for his stupidity, Renart spots that bird near her nest in a hollow oak. He asks her to come down and greet him with a kiss, but instead of complying she scolds him for his deviousness. To put her off guard, he says very nearly what he told Chantecler, lying that he never dreamed of displeasing her and reminding her that he is her son's godfather. He justifies his demand for a peck by claiming that King Noble has suspended all hostilities, to everyone's relief, though rather than wave a piece of birch bark in specious confirmation, like Reinardus, he encourages the tit to kiss him by promising to close his eyes.

She purports to acquiesce, but only in order to tease him. While he squints, she brushes his whiskers with leaves and moss. Of course he snaps, and she chides him for nearly breaking the putative law he has just cited. Excusing himself with the assertion that he was only joking, he urges her to kiss him again, just as he twice coaxed Chantecler to crow with eyes closed. The tit darts past his jaws, but too quickly to be caught. When Renart tries to elicit a third kiss, “in the name of holy charity,” he gets no response at all. The stalemate that has developed is ended—not, as in Ysengrimus or Esope, by the bird professing to see hunters approach—but by a group of riders who really do intervene with their dogs, forcing Renart to search elsewhere for dinner, while the titmouse jeers.

So far in this escapade Pierre has combined three motifs, adding to the truce idea the complementary concepts of osculation and nictitation. The kiss's likeliest source is the Salaura episode of Ysengrimus, where bussing is also sought in the name of peace and where it is only a euphemism for biting. Foulet argues reasonably that closing the eyes is a carry-over from the Chantecler adventure.⁹ Besides mingling several borrowed motifs in this episode, Pierre also extended it by annexing a subordinate affair apparently of his own invention.

Running down a path, Renart meets a lay brother with two bloodhounds on a leash. Such a pious gentleman should be fair and not interfere with the race in progress, the fox requests, for its stakes are high. Moved by Renart's eloquence, the lay brother turns away, commending to God and Saint Julian what would have made a splendid trophy. By galloping as if on horseback the fox outdistances his pursuers, who were stopped mysteriously while he conversed, reminding us of the peasants in Nivardus's fishing fiasco.

Tibert the cat approaches, twirling along as he chases his tail. Renart pretends to be at war with Ysengrin already and asks the bearer of sharp claws to join his mercenary army. Tibert consents, having a bone to pick with the wolf hic[elf, and pledges his loyalty. Soon the perfidious fox attempts to lure him into a trap beside their trail by facetiously asking for a sample of his “equitation.” Though neither of them is actually mounted, Renart requires the cat to demonstrate a make-believe charger. Tibert humors the fox by acting as if he were riding, but he discovers the trap in time to dodge it.

While the cat is dashing back and forth, on orders from his commander, two mastiffs burst into sight, just as other dogs terminated Renart's mischief with the tit. The fox's retreat on this occasion is less felicitous, however, because Tibert pushes him so that he steps into the trap himself, as he flees past it with the cat, and in place of an obliging lay brother he is confronted by the owner of the two mastiffs—a peasant with an ax. Tibert bounds away, scoffing like the cock and the tit. The peasant swings the ax but misses, smashing the trap and releasing Renart, who outruns the dogs despite having been injured. Though his foot was not cut off, we are still reminded of Nivardus's wolf on the frozen pond.

The affair with Tibert differs in a couple of ways from the adventures with Chantecler and the titmouse, as well as from the contest with Tiecelin, which follows. All three of those episodes have known antecedents, while the Tibert incident does not. It was probably invented by Pierre, like the brush with the lay brother. The other three encounters are also attempts at fowling for the sake of food, whereas with the cat Renart is only proving how gratuitously malicious he can be.

The dialog with Tiecelin the crow is carefully placed in a locus amoenus, which augurs a happy end. While the fox reclines on grass beneath a beech tree, near a river between two mountains, Sir Tiecelin lights on a limb above him, successfully completing what Pierre portrays as a knightly adventure. The crow has stolen a cheese. Instead of holding it in his beak, like his counterpart in such fables as Marie de France's thirteenth,¹⁰ he presses it between his feet and pecks at it. This procedure is more practical and also permits a dramatic crescendo, since Tiecelin can talk without at once dropping his prize. Alerted by a falling crumb, Renard eulogizes the crow's late father Rohart, “who knew how to warble so well.” To prove that he too can sing, Tiecelin curdles the air with his sour croak, which the fox sweetly praises. This routine is twice repeated, the raucous caw growing louder and shriller each time, until with the strain the cheese is released. Thus Pierre has Renart reuse the technique which proved effective with Chantecler¹¹ rather than compliment Tiecelin on his beauty and wish that his song were comparable.

Fox-crow fables regularly conclude when such cajolery pays off, but Pierre decided to append a second act to his version of the little farce, in order to impress on us Renart's (and many a cavalier's) wicked cunning. Just as he sought to murder Chantecler and the tit and at least to hurt the cat, so Renart now has designs on the life of Tiecelin. Rather than gobble up the redolent cheese, he spurns it as if it were nauseous. Exposing his damaged foot, much as foxes in bestiaries trick crows by playing dead, he whines that strong odors are bad for cripples. Tiecelin believes him and hops down, having not yet eaten enough. As with the rooster, Renart's inevitable pounce goes awry, leaving him with only a mouthful of feathers. He wants to soothe the crow as he soothed the cock, but Tiecelin flutters away. The episode, and thus the whole series of episodes, concludes with Renart being forced to dine less harmfully than intended.

Although the four little dramas are not a part of the feud which Pierre heralds in his prologue and they even lack unity among themselves, on account of the lay brother and Tibert, Pierre must have included them not just to introduce the fox, as Foulet surmises,¹² but to caricature various types of unworthy knights—complacent ones, like Chantecler; thieving ones, like the crow; and deceitful, vicious ones, like Renart, who did not even scruple to scheme against allies and ladies. Surely the fox's failure in each of these early capers reflects his author's disapproval of him. His acquisition of the cheese is not so much his reward as Tiecelin's punishment, and it is more than offset by his wounded foot. (Lameness serves him right especially on account of his assertion that he would rather be a cripple than harm Chantecler.) Pierre was most concerned about the causes and conduct of feuds, however. Not only does his prologue indicate that he was; he also devoted the greater part of his poem to Ysengrin's struggle with Renart. In doing so he no longer strung episodes together like Nivardus but rather told a single, continuous story. Though it has different stages, the one underlying conflict throughout is between the fox and the wolf.

Branche II, Verses 1027-1392, and Branche Va, Verses 257-1272. After nourishing himself with the cheese, Renart roams about and chances upon a cave. In a parenthetical comment the author informs us that the long-awaited fray with “Constable Ysengrin” is about to begin. Nivardus's unfrocked monk has been promoted to high officialdom, like the earlier wolf in Ecbasis Captivi or as in Marie de France's sixty-eighth fable. (See the sick-lion episode in Chapter One.)¹³ Pierre had no use for a mindless embodiment of clerical rapacity, and he wanted the fox's foe to be politically powerful, for a reason that will become apparent near the end of the epic.

Not until Renart enters the cave does he realize that it is Ysengrin's abode. The master is out on the prowl, but the mistress Hersent is nursing four cubs. She jumps up, reproaching her guest for his unsociableness in not having visited her sooner. Renart apologizes by explaining that her husband hates him in the belief that he loves her. Thus the fox and the wolf are at odds here not, as in Ysengrimus, on account of the universal threat posed by lupine gluttony but rather because Ysengrin fears being cuckolded. Treated as a rival, Renart reacts as one, especially now that Hersent encourages him. She makes her spouse's jealousy the grounds for a real affair, since unlike her equivalent in Nivardus's epic she is too lascivious to be faithful. She is what Ysengrimus's loyal wife became in the interpolation at the end of Nivardus's wolf-den episode, giving Ysengrin good reason to be suspicious. In a parody of courtly love à la Tristan she asks the red knight to kiss her, and the couple embrace.

Before departing, Renart also takes advantage of the chance to gorge himself at his adversary's expense and to mistreat the latter's offspring. In effect he declares war by sprinkling the whelps with his urine, throwing them from their bed, and calling them bastards. As though she despised them too, Hersent does not interfere. Insead of chasing the fox, she even pleads with her young not to inform their father. They tell him everything when he returns, however, and he furiously berates his wife. She placates him by offering to vindicate herself with a test of her innocence, by pledging him total obedience, and by vowing to kill Renart if she ever can. At this point the sun, which was already sinking low more than 800 lines earlier, is finally allowed to set.

Several days later the two wolves chance upon the fox and run after him as he figuratively “spurs” for home. Ysengrin falls behind, leaving Hersent to pursue vengeance alone. When she reaches Renart's den, called Valcrues,¹⁴ she tries to ram herself through its narrow entrance, like her counterpart at Reinardus's burrow in Ysengrimus, and becomes stuck. She is also raped, although the fox knows that her mate is looking for him. He may be motivated less by lust than by malice, and he does not stop belaboring Hersent until he is discovered at work. In typically two-faced fashion he denies the obvious, however, insisting to Ysengrin, who is still at a distance, that he has only been trying to dislodge the impetuous lady. He offers to swear formally that he is above reproach, for he fears God no more than the wolf. After he has withdrawn, Ysengrin concludes Branche II by digging Hersent loose.

Her efforts to please her husband have backfired. He is as angry at her as he was in their cave, when the story is resumed in Branche Va. She calms him down this time by pointing out that she has obviously been abused, and he welcomes her proposal that they complain of the assault at Noble's court, to which they make their way at once. Since Renart has committed a crime, the shortest route to revenge could be the one to the royal throne. The wolves' decision seems reasonable, and it is indeed logic more than Ysengrimus's influence that determines how the plot unfolds from this point on.

Because of his position, his smartness, and his learning (he knows several languages) Ysengrin is likely to win out over Renart provided he can bring the latter to trial, Pierre remarks (lines 292-98). Even though we may be surprised to see intelligence attributed to the wolf, the author is not ironic here, since Ysengrin definitely does have rank. The comment helps reveal, instead, to what extent Nivardus's dolt has been altered.

When the wolf couple enter Noble's palace (or tent, according to line 506), they find all manner of subjects there, with the sovereign's suite in a circle around him. Everyone is silent. Ysengrin steps forward and charges Renart with having broken an imperial law safeguarding marriage, as Hersent can confirm. She testifies that since she was a girl Renart has hounded her, finally possessing her against her will. Ysengrin, who reports having observed the outrage, adds an account of what its perpetrator also did to his children and concludes with a reference to the oath which Renart volunteered to swear.

Averse to chastising a gentleman for an amour, despite the law against adultery, Noble impugns the she-wolf's credibility until her mate objects, whereupon he seeks advice from one Musart, a Lombard camel. This droll creature is a papal legate visiting the lion's court (and the caricature of an actual legate, Pietro di Pavia, in France from 1174 to 1178).¹⁵ Surely with tongue in cheek now, since musart means “foolish,” Pierre terms the camel “very wise and a good jurist.” In pidgin French flavored with Italian and Latin Musart proclaims that the fox must be severely punished if not exonerated; but Noble hints, when calling for a verdict from his barons, that Renart should be pardoned for gallantry.

Pierre informs us that “more than a thousand” courtiers huddled to argue the fox's case. We hear from only Brichemer the stag (Noble's seneschal), Brun the bear, Baucent the boar, Plateax the fallow deer, and the monkey Cointereax, however. While sympathizing with Ysengrin, Brichemer goes objectively and at once to the heart of the matter—the absence of a reliable witness, since a spouse's testimony is suspect—only to be contradicted by Brun, who contends that the constable is too eminent to be doubted. Baucent sides with the stag, while Plateax seconds the bear.

In an effort to support the wolves, Brun relates in a 141-line digression how he himself was victimized not long ago, Renart having duped him into believing that he would find honey at Constant des Noes's farm when in reality he only served to decoy both men and dogs, who nearly killed him, while the fox abducted a chicken unscathed. Brun also reports that Tiecelin, Tibert, and the tit have recently lodged complaints against Renart. Returning to the present situation, Baucent, endorsed by Cointereax, maintains that standard procedure demands an examination of the defendant. Again Brun prolongs the debate, insisting that justice be short-circuited and the accused, against whom he is biased, be summarily treated as a convicted adulterer. Pierre's attention to the bear's lynch mentality implies that it was of topical importance, but a modern reader is likely to sigh with relief over Brichemer's resolution of the 360-line controversy. What the stag proposes, winning the court's approval (though surely not the wolves') is that Renart should swear his oath of innocence. Since Noble is about to leave the country, the universally respected mastiff Roonel should officiate at the ceremony, to be held the following Sunday.

His Majesty happily sanctions this compromise and dispatches Grimbert the badger to apprise Renart, the two being kinsmen.¹⁶ With court adjourned, Grimbert travels straightway to the fox's residence, which is now called either Malpertuis, Valpertuis, or Malcrues, depending on the manuscript.¹⁷ Renart concurs, intending to perjure himself, but Ysengrin takes steps to overtrump him.

The constable visits Roonel, requesting that this court-appointed judge side with him. Despite having been portrayed by Brichemer as a paragon of virtue, Roonel suggests a particularly impious way of tricking Renart. Since the latter is to swear on a holy relic, the mastiff will pretend to have died; Renart can be asked to sanctify his oath by touching the open jaws of this “saintly” personage. Of course they will snap shut, like the trap in the perjury episode of Ysengrimus. Ironically, Roonel will be borrowing the vulpine ruse which Renart varied with Tiecelin and subjecting the fox to what Reinardus brought upon the wolf in Nivardus's poem. Should Renart balk, a small army of other dogs will be lurking in ambush. Not yet content, however, Ysengrin recruits more supporters, including Brichemer, Baucent, and Cointereax, who thus abandon their prior impartiality. In the France of his day, Pierre wanted to say, equity was undermined by politics. The wolf has become a dignitary in order to possess enough influence for that point to be made. He cannot obtain an improper verdict, but he can subvert the verdict which he does obtain. Musart sides with him, and Noble sends him a personal deputy, the leopard, while Tibert, once an opponent of the wolf, understandably joins Ysengrin's party now. Renart is not without allies, too, his principal backer being Grimbert.

At the appointed time both factions come to where the mastiff is playing possum, sprawled on his back with fangs bared. Hidden in a nearby orchard are more than a hundred canine cronies, thirsting for fox blood. Brichemer instructs Renart to acquit himself by proclaiming, with his right hand on Roonel's teeth, that he has been falsely accused. At this climactic moment the fox detects the “corpse's” breathing and steps back. Grimbert, who has also noticed Roonel's ruse, asserts that the crowd is pressing too close. When Brichemer has everyone make room, Renart decamps.

The dogs from the orchard race after him, parodying knightly chases and terminating the conflict with Ysengrin in much the same fashion as the designs on Chantecler, the titmouse, and Tibert were concluded. Pierre spends the last eighty-eight lines of his poem identifying seventy-eight of the pursuers and describing how they nipped the fox's fur before he reached home (Malpertuis). As if everyone were mounted, the leader of the pack, Roonel, is said to carry a lance. Bleeding in more than thirteen places, the scoundrel Renart escapes death but not vengeance, so that a moral of “crime does not pay” can be inferred. Both in the first 1,000 lines of the story and in the last 1,400 he neither fails nor succeeds completely. More sinned against than sinning as regards the fox, Ysengrin ultimately seeks justice in an unjust way, making it appropriate that he settle for less than he likes.

Pierre burlesques deceit, violence, and corruption on the part of supposedly noble knights. All too often, he hints, they behaved like animals, especially when feuding. Some of them were not above rape and the abuse of children in their belligerence, which was frequently occasioned by a woman (like the Trojan War, referred to in the prologue).¹⁸ Even society's pillars might lean toward one of their number when he himself ethically sagged. Albeit inspired by Ysengrimus, Pierre was not preoccupied with greed, and he was in no way critical of the clergy. He lampooned Pietro di Pavia because he objected to that dignitary as a person and a lawyer¹⁹ rather than as an ecclesiastic. Musart's religiousness is never impugned. It was the secular elite—the kind of men who must have listened to his poem—that Pierre took obliquely and facetiously to task.

Another facet of Ysengrimus which he forsook, perhaps because his plot compelled him to drop it, is Reinardus's role as the wolf's invidious adviser. Brun's account of how Renart misled him once is the only instance in II-Va of malign counsel by the fox. Renart does not really give advice even to Tibert, while he has no occasion to urge a course of action on Ysengrin. The relationship between fox and wolf established by Nivardus was implicitly restored in Branches III, IV, XIV, and I (Renart's confession), and it was made explicit again in Branche V, as we will see.

That Pierre bestowed more attention on Renart than on Ysengrin overall did not result from a preference for the former but, on the contrary, from aversion to the combination of duplicity and viciousness which characterizes a fox better than a wolf. Renart may not have been more popular than Ysengrin before 1176, though most of Pierre's imitators certainly did favor the fox, probably on account of his prominence in the first 1,000 lines of Branche II-Va and also because a wolf is not supposed to be so capable and clever.

BRANCHE III

In what must have been a very short time after Pierre's epic became known, an anonymous minstrel composed 510-line Branche III. The fact that III resembles II-Va in containing no allusions to any other branche suggests that it was produced quite early, yet Pierre's prologue indicates that his work still takes precedence chronologically. In III the fox also starts a feud with the wolf, moreover, so that Pierre could not have made his claim to “originality” if III antedated II-Va.

Like him, the author of III begins by addressing an audience as seigneurs, but in contrast to Pierre he wanted to entertain rather than to satirize. Another difference is that no prologue follows in III, just as there is none in Ysengrimus. We are plunged immediately into the narrative by being informed that the season is winter. More precisely, we are later told, it is shortly before Christmas. As hungry as at the outset of II-Va, Renart leaves his now nameless burrow and hunts for food. In the first two of the branche's three episodes (though only for the sake of the second) the den is said to be a castle with windows and a door that opens and closes.²⁰

As he lurks beside a road, the fox sees a couple of fish merchants driving their wagon toward him. He plays dead, better than Roonel in II-Va, and for the sake of his pelt the two men toss him atop their load. While they travel on, he gobbles over thirty herring and wreathes himself with eels. His astonished benefactors chase him when he bids them adieu, but he has too fast a horse, as the author jokes in line 141.

One of that poet's major innovations is to have blessed the fox with a family. Although Reinardus indicates that he has cubs in the wolf-den episode of Ysengrimus,²¹ we never see them or hear of them again, and his wife is not even mentioned. Pierre de Saint-Cloud drops no hint that Renart has either a mate or offspring in II-Va, but in III we find him married to gentle Hermeline, who has borne him two sons, Percehaie and Malebranche. The three of them welcome him heartily, and not just because of his viands, though they quickly prepare the eels for roasting.

Their supper's aroma reaches the nostrils of half-starved Ysengrin, who in his stupid voraciousness is much more Nivardus's wolf than Pierre's. He squats outside a window to the fox's residence and howls for its door to be opened, but Renart, who pretends that the building is a cloister belonging to the order of Tiron (which actually existed), refuses to admit a layman. “Nomini dame!” Ysengrin exclaims, introducing into vernacular Reynard epics the use of comically corrupt Latin, reminiscent of cominus ovis cum in the monastery episode of Ysengrimus. When the wolf asks what the brothers are eating, Renart alleges that they always dine on seafood (and the Tiron monks did).²² He extends a sample, expressing the hope that Ysengrin will join their congregation. Just for being tonsured the wolf can consume any amount of fish, Renart affirms. Naturally Ysengrin consents, so the fox has him stick his head inside and pours boiling water over it.

In addition Renart stipulates that the “novice” must be tested for a night, by catching fish for the “abbey.” He leads Ysengrin to a frozen pond, where there is still a hole in the ice cut by farmers for their cattle. The wolf sits there till dawn, with a bucket tied to his tail. Renart does not have to lure a mob to the scene, because a vavasor named Constant des Granches (after Pierre's peasant Constant des Noes) comes hunting with his men. Drawing a sword, the chasseur tries to accomplish what Aldrada sought in Ysengrimus, yet he also misses twice, whacking the fisher's tail in two on his second attempt. After fighting off the hunters' dogs and escaping, Ysengrin ends Branche III by vowing enmity against Renart, who has meanwhile returned to his home, now called a den (line 445).

Ysengrimus probably inspired both the second and third episodes of this poem, as Foulet has argued,²³ but whereas Nivardus included a sham ordainment primarily so that monks in general might be satirized by means of his wolf, the author of Branche III saw Ysengrin's induction into a putative cloister as merely an excuse for twofold torture (through both tonsuring and testing). While Renart, like Reinardus, entices the wolf into monasticism for the sake of food, moreover, the author of Branche III changed the kind of food initially proffered. Instead of cakes he has his fox bait Ysengrin with eels, in anticipation of the fishing affair and in accordance with medieval folklore, which often combined the first caper with the trick on the frozen pond.²⁴ Although Branche III is episodic, it is unified both by the importance of fish throughout and also by the fact that the third adventure develops from the second and the second from the first. The Tiron order's ban on meat, making the order apropos, is probably why Renart identifies with it.

BRANCHE XV

Consisting of two episodes rather than three, 522-line Branche XV is also well integrated. Its pair of tales resemble each other to some extent, sharing the same moral. They also share one of the same characters, but he is Tibert rather than Renart. Even though Ysengrin is totally absent, the unknown author ridicules greed, like Nivardus, particularly on the part of clergymen. His first anecdote, involving Tibert, Renart, and a sausage, is varied in the second, where two priests replace the fox and the cat. Tibert then partly functions like the sausage, which has been appropriately eliminated because the cat himself has eaten it. The avarice of both Renart and Rufrangier, the fox's substitute in the later episode, is punished by Tibert, with the priest being chastised worse, since his is the greater sin. Probably no accident in this thoughtfully constructed piece is the alliteration linking Renart to his equivalent, while Torgis is the name of the cat's counterpart.

Without any prologue we are informed that the treacherous fox sets out to appease his hunger. Though Pierre de Saint-Cloud does not indicate that Renart would eat Tibert in Branche II-Va, the author of XV states that the fox is eager to devour the cat, so famished is he, when he meets Tibert again. He also wants revenge for what happened in II-Va. To put his quarry off guard, he acts friendly, telling the cat not to run away but to honor the pledge of assistance made in Pierre's poem. Tibert remains, monitorially sharpening his claws, and for thirty-nine lines he is lectured on selfishness. Like Ysengrin, who recently became a monk, says Renart in an illusion to Branche III, everyone seeks his own advantage at others' expense, but malice will backfire. For that reason he does not want to be false, the fox alleges falsely. It was egotistic of Tibert to abandon him before, Renart continues, referring once more to their encounter in II-Va, but he pretends that the cat must still have been distressed over his peril. He concludes his sermon by relating that the peasant missed him. With a show of good will on both sides, the fox and Tibert restore their previous relationship, vowing mutual loyalty, but the author warns that it will not be of much duration.

Indeed, the pair soon find a long sausage, which Renart is unwilling to share, despite his championship of altruism. As he carries it in his mouth, dragging each end on the ground, the cat protests that he is spoiling it. Tibert offers to demonstrate a proper manner of conveyance, and the fox acquiesces, thinking that he can overpower his partner when the latter is encumbered. Seizing one tip of the sausage and tossing the rest across his back (the way Renart shoulders Chantecler in II-Va), the cat declares that they will be safe on a nearby hill, where a tall cross stands. There they can see whoever approaches. The fox, who wanted to seduce Tibert, is hoist by his own petard in accordance with his speech on perfidy, for the cat dashes ahead and scampers up the cross, on an arm of which he eats the meat. All in all, therefore, Tibert essentially repeats his role at the trap in II-Va, though the fox has a different part to play on this occasion. He essentially repeats his role at the foot of the oak tree in Pierre's titmouse episode, since he is teased at length. Ultimately he is even forced away by a hunter with dogs. A feud, observes the author, has now commenced between Renart and Tibert.

After the fox has been removed, Rufrangier and Torgis ride toward the cross on their way to a synod. Discovering Tibert still perched on high, they long for his pelt, much as the two fish mongers crave Renart's in Branche III. Rufrangier, who dreams of a cat-skin hat, consents to pay Torgis one-half of Tibert's appraised value. Ignoring the cross's symbolism in his avarice, he stands on his horse in order to reach the cat, who slaps him to the ground with those claws which threatened Renart. Tibert then leaps onto the empty saddle and is whisked to Rufrangier's house. When he arrives, his galloping palfrey bowls over the priest's concubine, so that she is punished in roughly the same fashion as her lover. He suffers more, however, for he is scratched as well as felled, and he hits his head when he lands, nearly braining himself. Instead of proceeding to his conference, he goes back home, convinced that a devil has hexed him.

BRANCHE IV

This little work in 478 verses has a thirty-two-line prologue in which a nameless minstrel tells his listeners that he is going to amuse them with a branche (and he uses that word) comprising a single anecdote about the fox. To arouse our curiosity and maybe also to incline us toward accepting what will happen to Renart, the author concludes his introduction with a proverb cited by both Nivardus and Pierre de Saint-Cloud when their roosters trick their foxes: “No one on earth is so wise as not to be sometimes a fool.”

If the anecdote is single, it still has two main parts (like Branches II-Va and XV), and they can be further divided. The first principal section, inspired by Pierre's Chantecler episode, sets up the second, in which Renart blunders by riding a bucket to the bottom of a well like Brer Rabbit in Uncle Remus. As we will see, however, he does not do so for the same reason as Brer Rabbit, who seeks a cool respite from hot summer work. His motive is also different from his counterpart's in the fable which must have served as the source for the second half of Branche IV.²⁵ Chapter 23 of Petrus Alphonsi's early twelfth-century storybook Disciplina Clericalis is about a fox taking a wolf at night to a well in which the full moon is mirrored. Believing this reflection to be a cheese the fox has promised him, the wolf orders the fox to bring it up, though he offers to help if needed. The fox descends in a bucket and claims that the cheese is too big for him, so the wolf climbs into the other bucket, not realizing that when the second goes down the first will go up. Being lighter, the fox ascends, hops out, and leaves the wolf to thrash about in the water.

The plot of Branche IV begins one evening as Renart, again half starved, comes upon a Cistercian abbey, the barn of which houses delectable chickens. After leaping through the surrounding wall, he has second thoughts about risking his life any further, but hunger drives him on. He sneaks into the barn and kills three chickens, at once devouring two of them. The third he plans to take home and cook, though whether he ultimately does so the author neglects to state.²⁶ A comic touch is applied by portraying the chicken thief parodically as a knight attacking a castle, rather like the way Pierre handles Tiecelin's theft of the cheese. Renart is said to want to “joust,” for example, and to be in danger because the monks might hold him for ransom. Thus, and not because he is actually on a horse, we are also told that he does not “rein in” until he reaches the chickens.

The whole point of the preliminary incident is to bring the fox into the monastery and make him thirsty enough to inspect its well before leaving. Aware that he cannot safely reach the water, he gazes at it sadly and discovers his reflection, even though no moon is mentioned, in contrast to the Disciplina-Clericalis story. Mistaking his image for his wife Hermeline, he asks what she is doing down there, and the echo strengthens his illusion. In order to check on the woman he loves, he descends in a bucket, no longer mindful of reality. His senses are restored as soon as he hits the bottom, but then he is trapped.

How can he become so foolish that he mistakes his echo and reflection for his wife? He is not Petrus Alphonsi's stupid wolf. Indeed, he is not just any fox. The prologue declares that he is the clever and wise Renart we have already come to know, and later references to events in Branche II-Va will certify that both he and Ysengrin are supposed to be the same figures portrayed by Pierre. The wolf is more the embodiment of appetite that we found in Branche III and Ysengrimus, however, while so far in Branche IV Renart is too naive to have an antecedent in any of the works we have seen. Pierre's fox is tricked by Chantecler, the titmouse, and Tibert, but divine justice is on their side and they can be crafty, whereas a well is always simple.

The author of the variant in Manuscript H (note 26 to this chapter) must also have been unhappy with the fox's romantic delusion. He eliminated it, sending Renart into the depths only because the fox needs a drink after eating. Unfortunately, this simplification is also infelicitous, for it necessitates an ignorance of buckets on a pulley that is unlikely in a chicken thief accustomed to farms. (Brer Rabbit's misadventure suffers from the same sort of flaw.) After puzzling over the arrangement, the fox jumps into the pail at the top of the well, thinking it full, and vanishes down the shaft.

Returning to Branche IV's initial version, we find that before long Ysengrin explores the abbey in his own search for victuals and happens by the well. As he peers into it like Renart ahead of him, lines 155-58, which described how the fox hung on the edge, staring pensively down, are duplicated (lines 203-206), so that the parallelism in both actions is stressed.²⁷ In the manner of Renart, the wolf sees his reflection and assumes his spouse to be sojourning under ground, yet because he perceives the fox there, too, he infers that he is being cuckolded again, as in Pierre's classic, a knowledge of which the author of Branche IV (like XV's author) presupposed on the part of his audience.

No sooner does Renart speak up than Ysengrin forgets about Hersent and his reflection, however, for the fox professes to be in heaven, having died not long ago. He describes paradise as such a happy hunting ground—full of cattle, sheep, goats, and hares²⁸—that the wolf wants access to it also, but Renart asserts that Ysengrin has been too wicked, making false accusations at court. The fox plays further with the wolf by telling him he must beg God to forgive his sins before being weighed in the balance (the buckets), so his good deeds will be heavier than the bad ones. Ysengrin, who says that he has already confessed to (i.e., consumed) a rabbit and a nanny goat, consequently genuflects and howls at his Maker, uncouthly pointing his rear toward the east just as his spiritual mentor has reversed the directions of heaven and hell in this sneer at religion.²⁹ Renart then refers to what are probably the reflections of stars and calls them candles burning on the water as a miraculous sign of Christ's forgiveness. The wolf jumps into the empty bucket and plummets down, while the fox rockets up. As they pass, Renart shouts that Ysengrin is really going to hell, not heaven. According to folklore, wells are indeed entrances to the underworld,³⁰ but the fox simply means that his foe is bound for bedevilment.

Some monks who attempt to draw water the next morning discover the bedraggled bather cowering in the lower bucket. They call for reinforcements, and every member of the fraternity arrives, armed with something.³¹ Ysengrin is pummeled when hoisted aloft, though the abbot spares his life. In staggering away he meets one of his sons, who vows revenge not only for this atrocity but also for what Renart did previously in their home (during Branche II-Va). Ysengrin limps to the cave, where doctors restore him.

BRANCHE V

Much like the concluding lines of Branche III, the last three verses in IV state that the wolf will avenge himself if he comes upon the fox. Those verses form a nice transition to 246-line Branche V, which consists of two main parts without a prologue. The first section is an abbreviated version of Nivardus's ham episode, and the second is a basically similar but otherwise unknown encounter between Renart and a cricket, abruptly terminated by an incursion of dogs.

When Renart meets the wolf one day, Ysengrin threatens to swallow him, ripping up his fur with much more violence than in the Latin source. Because the fox lies still, the wolf becomes alarmed at the possibility of having killed his “counselor,” as he says, acknowledging that his relationship to Renart is the same as Ysengrimus's to Reinardus. He also resembles Nivardus's wolf by being the fox's uncle rather than merely Renart's godfather, as in most branches (though he is that, too).

Descrying a peasant with a ham, the fox proposes that they trick the man out of it. With a pretense of lameness he causes the rustic to pursue him, discarding the ham and stumbling far afield. By the time Renart returns, Ysengrin has downed all the meat, saving only the rope by which it hung. Instead of reproaching his perfidious uncle, Renart excuses himself to insure his safety, alleging that he must visit Santiago Compostella.

For two weeks he wanders around dressed as a pilgrim,³² yet without the attitude of one, because he desires revenge. He also wants something to eat as he arrives at a priest's house teeming with rats. He is unable to catch any of them, but with a detachable sleeve he manages to bag a cricket chanting near an oven. Just as Reinardus behaves like Ysengrimus in regard to Sprotinus, so Renart behaves like Ysengrin here. Whereas Ysengrin seems not to have been serious about devouring Renart, however, Renart is quite serious about devouring the cricket. When the cricket (named Frobert by the author of Branche I)³³ objects that murder misbecomes a pilgrim, Renart avers that he merely wanted to ingest the caroler's psalter in order to know more hymns. Hoping to put his prey off guard with a pious pose, he pretends that he is about to expire and asks whether he might confess his sins to the cricket, since the priest at whose house they are is not around. “You're about to have plenty of ‘priests,’” the cricket cries, hearing hunters with their dogs, which chase Renart until he eludes them by hiding atop the oven. As if God were heeding the fox's wish for vengeance, Ysengrin appears, and the dogs nip him much as he nipped Renart two weeks earlier.

Having flatly plagiarized Nivardus in his first episode, the author of Branche V was a less slavish imitator in his second incident, for it is essentially a recasting of the contest between Sprotinus and another would-be pilgrim who is also put to flight by dogs. Sprotinus's hounds are mere make-believe, but the effect is the same. (Although Foulet sees influence only from Pierre de Saint-Cloud in the second episode, he contends correctly that it manifests itself in the dogs' names.)³⁴ To tie the two incidents together, through a combination of elements from both, Branche V's author added the coda in which Ysengrin is punished by Renart's pursuers.

The cricket's ironic reference to hunters as “priests” (lines 200-201) resembles a joke by Tibert in lines 314-24 of Branche XV. Probably inspired by the Salaura episode of Ysengrimus, the cat speaks there of invading dogs as “a company … celebrating mass and matins.” The similarity between that jest and the cricket's in Branche V could be coincidental, but both structurally and thematically V mirrors XV, which likewise consists of two related episodes concerned with greed. The artistic superiority of XV, which is more imaginative than V, suggests that it was V's model rather than vice versa. The author of V took his structure from XV, his contents from Ysengrimus, and his theme from both. Foulet misjudged V in affirming that its creator did not follow ham dupery with ice fishing like Nivardus simply because Branche III was already in existence.³⁵

BRANCHE XIV

Like all preceding poems in the Roman de Renart, 1,088-line XIV opens with a hungry fox looking for food. The resemblance is greatest to III, for Renart is initially at his home (called Malpertuis), but the time is in May, near Ascension Day rather than Christmas. The action in XIV, as in IV, commences at night, though in neither work are we told so explicitly. Unlike IV, XIV has no prologue.

Near a farm belonging to a peasant named Gonbaut, Renart again meets Tibert, who wants some milk which Gonbaut's wife keeps in a bin. Together the cat and the fox find a hole in Gonbaut's palisade and proceed to the house, Renart agreeing to assist his companion before attacking any poultry, which might awaken Gonbaut's dogs. While Tibert laps contentedly, down inside the hutch, Renart obligingly strains to hold up its heavy lid. Not only does the cat take his time, but when he has drunk his fill he spills what is left of the milk to prevent the fox from enjoying any. In Branches XV and XIV together he therefore cheats Renart out of both food and drink, but in XIV the fox gets even, dropping the lid too soon and bobbing Tibert's tail when the cat finally jumps from the bin. By averring that the loss is really a gain, since Tibert will have less to lug around, Renart reminds us of Ysengrimus telling Corvigarus that the sacrifice of some flesh would help the horse to run faster.

At the chicken coop the fox accepts the cat's malicious advice to take the rooster rather than any of the hens because the latter are molting. When he has seized the cock, which is said to be perched next to Pinte, even though the flock belongs to Gonbaut instead of to Constant des Noes, Tibert asks him whether he is holding his prize securely. Renart repeats the old mistake of opening his mouth to reply. This time the cock not only escapes but also rouses Gonbaut by crowing. The farmer sets two dogs on the fox, who is roughed up and chased away. Tibert absconds ahead of him and will not be seen again in Branche XIV.

The enterprise of Renart and the cat to some extent resembles the fox's and Brun's as recounted by Pierre's bear at court. In each story Renart and a comrade sneak into a farm for their favorite food, but in Branche XIV the comrade succeeds, while the fox is attacked. Rather than exploit the cat like the bear, moreover, Renart is exploited himself, since he vainly props the lid.

Through the remaining 890 lines he plays a succession of five tricks on Ysengrin's brother Primaut, a character invented by XIV's author. Thus, as Foulet has pointed out,³⁶ the basic format of this poem seems to have been derived from Pierre's, where the fox warms up with several lightweight but agile sparring partners before his main bout with a ponderous wolf. There is no question of a single conflict between Primaut and Renart, however, and Primaut in his obtuse voracity apes the Ysengrin of Branches III, IV, and V or Nivardus's wolf much more than Pierre's. A fox giving a wolf misleading advice in a series of episodes is also reminiscent of Ysengrimus.

After outrunning Gonbaut's dogs, Renart discovers a box of hosts dropped by a tipsy priest. He eats all but two of them, and when he meets Primaut he gives the rest to the wolf, alleging that he found them in a nearby village church. Because Primaut wants more, Renart conducts him to that sanctuary, just as Reinardus lures Ysengrimus into Saint Peter's with cakes. By digging under the threshold, Renart and Primaut enter, finding not only more hosts but also meat, bread, and wine, hidden away by the same priest who lost the hosts outside and is therefore a gluttonous hamster as well as a drunk. In the course of banqueting, Primaut swills too much wine, like Ysengrimus in the monastery cellar, with the result that he wishes to hold a vesper service. The hour is not quite appropriate, but an alb, a chasuble, and a missal are lying on the altar. The author of Branche XIV was probably thinking of Ysengrimus's mock consecration as bishop, though Nivardus is less sacrilegious. The leering disrespect for religion in this episode also transcends what we found in Branche IV.

Foulet asserts that Ysengrin is replaced with Primaut primarily because he had become too well known as the fox's foe for Renart and him to consort as Renart and Primaut do here.³⁷ Being Reinardus's enemy does not prevent Ysengrimus from being duped repeatedly by Nivardus's fox, however. A better reason is that the author of XIV wanted a farcical tonsuring as a preliminary to burlesquing vespers, and Ysengrin had already received one in Branche III. He had no need for another. The depilation in XIV reflects that in III, where boiling water is poured over Ysengrin's head, because Renart shaves Primaut after dousing him with urine.

Feeling qualified to proceed with the service on account of his baldness, Primaut rings the church bells, dons the vestments, leafs through the missal, and howls, oblivious to danger and Renart, who slips out and packs shut their hole beneath the door. Awakened by the noise, the curé peeks through a crack and beholds the wolf, whose presence he announces to parishioners by shouting through the village streets. Everyone hops out of bed, arms himself, and batters the unwelcome worshiper, rather like Bovo's congregation in the fishing episode of Ysengrimus.

Renart has kept one herring for Primaut after fooling some merchants as in Branche III. Despite the feast in the church the wolf is still hungry enough to try the fox's ruse, when he rejoins Renart in the forest. Instead of being tossed aboard the fish cart, however, he is almost killed. Just in time to avoid being stabbed with a sword, he jumps up and reels back to Renart, aching from new blows.

His third unhappy adventure harks back ultimately to an ancient Greek fable, related in somewhat different form by Horace, which tells of a famished fox gorging itself to such an extent on bread and meat in a hollow tree that it cannot squeeze out through the opening.³⁸ Renart leads Primaut to a peasant's cabin where three hams await them on their entrance through a chink in the wall. The wolf eats till only his head will fit through the crack again. The fox pulls him by the ears and by a withe around his neck, forcing him to yelp and wake the master of the house, who advances in the dark with a club and a candle. In the first clash the candle is extinguished. The peasant bends down to relight it at the fireplace, and the wolf bites his rump, refusing to let go until the man's wife opens their door to call for help. Primaut then rips out a hunk of flesh and bolts into the woods, knocking the woman down. When he finds Renart he tells the fox to taste the peasant meat, but Renart disdains such unsavory fare. Geese are preferable, says the fox, and he recommends a gaggle of them close at hand.

Although the author does not say so, day has presumably dawned when the wolf invades the flock, only to meet two mastiffs which Renart has neglected to mention. Able to outrun them, Primaut furiously mauls the fox for giving bad advice. As he stomps on Renart's stomach, a whimper for mercy moves him to pity, and like Ysengrin in Branche V he stops short of murdering his counselor.³⁹ After insisting he knew nothing of the dogs, Renart threatens to complain at court about the beating he has suffered, so intimidating Primaut that the wolf proposes a sacred oath never to harm him again.

Like the fox in Nivardus's perjury episode, Renart takes the wolf to a place where a saint is supposedly buried but where in fact a trap is concealed. By kneeling there, the fox declares, Primaut can make his oath binding. He swears that he will never hurt Renart again and plops down on the iron teeth, which crush one foot. Ignoring his pleas for help, the fox skips home to a warm reception, like the one in Branche III.

It is curious that the author does not end XIV at this point but appends another five lines (1084-88), stating no fewer than three times that Renart repents of his wrongdoing. Stressing his contrition through mere reiteration (rather than presenting it elaborately, as in the first 164 lines of Branche VIII) is a lame attempt at persuading us to accept what is markedly out of character. The author appears to have felt that we might be scandalized at a sinner who was never sorry, whereas an apology to God would permit Renart to have devil's-food cake, so to speak, and eat it, too. The imp could make heinous mischief without giving offense. Though his remorse is an asinine tail pinned onto the poem, it nevertheless determines how his conduct toward Primaut should be interpreted. It implies that he has persecuted the wolf not because the wolf endangers him, as Ysengrimus menaces Reinardus, but only because he himself is a spiteful prankster, whose behavior is unjustified. The same motive can also be imputed to him vis-à-vis Ysengrin in Branche III.

BRANCHE I

In all of the French works so far considered, except the fifteenth branche, Renart gets the better of a wolf, like Nivardus's fox. Even V, where he loses a ham to Ysengrin, concludes triumphantly for him, thanks to happenstance. In these poems he is also a threat to little creatures, though the only ones he manages to kill are the hens at the outset of Branche IV. In 1620-line I, by contrast, his role becomes more sinister and significant because his prey is all of society. He graduates from being primarily a tormentor of wolves to the status of a subversive at war with the whole establishment, and satire on society again becomes important, as it was in II-Va. There, however, the fox was very much a part of the system being ridiculed—he shared in those faults to which Pierre objected—whereas in Branche I he is outside society and the unidentified author's censure of it. In fact, through Renart, who represents him, most of that minstrel's scorn for French leadership at the close of Louis VII's long, inglorious reign (1137-80) is expressed.

In a ten-line prologue he chides Pierre, whom he deprecatingly calls Perrot, for having forgotten to complete the fox's trial at King Noble's court. He implies that he will supply a denouement for Pierre's poem, and Branche I is indeed conceived as a continuation of II-Va. Despite the fact that in his prologue the author of I cites only adultery with Hersent as the charge against Renart, it—along with Ysengrin's other indictments—is to be superseded by a more serious complaint.

When the story begins, some ten months must be presumed to have elapsed since the fox outran Roonel's pack at the end of II-Va, for the season is spring rather than summer. Ascension Day (mentioned at the opening of Branche XIV) has not yet come. In a cheerful setting of roses and hawthorn Noble summons the entire animal kingdom, and only Renart fails to respond, giving his enemies a splendid chance to blacken him, as in the sick-lion episode of Ysengrimus. Though the wolf is no longer said to be an official of any kind, he provides a transition from II-Va by out-shouting everyone else in a call for the vindication of his besmirched honor. He recounts how the fox raped Hersent, urinated on her cubs, and reneged on the oath of innocence imposed.

Again the monarch winks at illicit love, joking that nowadays even his own like are cuckolded, as Louis VII was rumored to have been by Eleanor of Aquitaine. Brun the bear, who is still Ysengrin's chief supporter, chides Noble for such indifference and requests a proper hearing, for which he would be willing to fetch the defendant. Bruyant the bull, a character we did not meet in II-Va, bellows that the disreputable fox's notorious affair needs no adjudication and that Ysengrin ought to dispense justice himself. Grimbert the badger, Renart's cousin, asserts that the fox's love for Hersent has done no damage and that a trial would compromise her even more than her husband's accusation. Swearing by the Virgin that she is chaste as a nun, she volunteers to prove her fidelity in an ordeal (essentially repeating her offer to Ysengrin after Renart's visit in II-Va). She so convinces Bernart of her sincerity that he wishes all women were as faithful, but Bernart is only an ass.

In general Noble's subjects feel that the fox must testify, while their king is more indulgent. So long as loyalty to the crown is maintained, he prefers to overlook a petty squabble between vassals. When the wolf threatens war against Renart, Noble vehemently objects, observing that the fox would probably beat him and reminding him that peace has been officially established throughout the land. It cannot be broken with impunity. The vengeance which Hersent back in II-Va suggested the court might provide is therefore to be conclusively withheld, so that a gloomy Ysengrin slumps to the ground, his tail between his legs. The end of hostilities, alleged to the titmouse in II-Va, has become fact rather than fiction in Branche I and is a precondition for Noble's eventual condemnation of Renart.

Scarcely has His Majesty informed us that the truce is in effect when Chantecler, Pinte, and three other hens bring proof that the fox has broken it. On a bier they carry the mutilated corpse of Pinte's sister Copee. To the court Pinte wails that after butchering her five brothers and her four other sisters Renart murdered Copee yesterday and fled before their master, Gonbert del Frenne (rather than Constant des Noes), could catch him. On completing her tale of woes, Pinte faints, together with the other female members of Copee's cortege, and solicitous knights sprinkle their faces with water. When they regain consciousness, they join Chantecler at the feet of the king in pleading for revenge. Noble, who has not been perturbed by Ysengrin's complaints, is furious over the chickens', thundering so loudly and thumping himself so viciously with his tail that everyone quakes. Couart the hare, an important new character in the Roman de Renart,⁴⁰ comes down with a fever. Because the lion promises Pinte to have the fox punished in her sight, however, Ysengrin is thrilled. The crime against Copee even induces Noble to accept the rape charge now. On behalf of the plaintiffs he accuses Renart of both disturbing the peace and adultery.

Before summoning the fox, he orders a funeral service for Copee. Brun officiates, being a priest in Branche I (perhaps as a gibe at sacerdotal corpulence), while Bruyant digs a grave. When the second day of the story dawns, Copee is buried in a leaden casket, with an epitaph proclaiming that she was “martyred” by the fangs of Renart. Noble then dispatches an eager Brun to fetch the fox, and the bear jiggles off on a horse, it seems, because he is said to have one later (line 580).

In this poem, which set a regrettable precedent for subsequent branches, various animals appear to be actually mounted at times and not just described as if they were, or instead of merely pretending to be, like Pierre de Saint-Cloud's Tibert.⁴¹ The cat really rides in Branche XV, of course, but he crouches atop the saddle and is transported passively to Rufrangier's abode. He is not sufficiently humanized to have feet in the stirrups and hands on the reins, controlling his palfrey.⁴² It is also unfortunate that the author of I leaves us unsure whether figures are equestrian or not. His intentions may well have been inconsistent.

The pause in the action caused by Brun's journey is used for a burlesque of miracles, in which Couart is cured of his fever by lying on Copee's grave. Taking advantage of this opportunity to increase opposition to Renart, Ysengrin feigns relief from an earache, on Roonel's recommendation, after likewise reposing above the “martyr's” remains.⁴³

When the scene shifts to Malpertuis (consistently a burrow in Branche I but often referred to as if it were a castle), we find big Brun, who cannot go in, calling Renart to come outside. The fox justifies his absence by modifying Reinardus's rationalization from the sick-lion episode of Ysengrimus. He implies that he has stayed at home because as a pauper he would not be fed well at court. While the rich dine sumptuously there, he pouts, the poor must eat from their lap, fending off dogs which snap at their meager fare.

Even if Renart really is impoverished, he would not be subjected to such indignities, because he is also a baron. His author, as a jongleur, might very well have suffered them, however. The fox's complaint, which is bitterly expressed, reads like a statement of his author's own resentment. If indeed it is, as other critics have thought⁴⁴ then a grudge againt the privileged helps explain why Renart is cast in the role of a left-wing radical. Through a rebel who snipes at the elite the author could revel in vicarious revenge for being demeaned as a mere entertainer.

The fox seduces Brun by fibbing that he has just enjoyed some honey. With an exclamation in broken Latin, reminiscent of Ysengrin's nomini dame in Branche III, the bear neglects his duty as emissary, galloping after Renart to the home of a woodsman named Lanfroi, A large split log, held open by wedges, has a honeycomb down inside, says the fox. When Brun sticks his snout and forepaws into the crack, Renart manages to pull the wedges out, clamping him fast. Until Lanfroi appears, the fox makes fun of the bear, scoffing that he wants to keep all the honey to himself. Renart then scoots away, leaving Brun for the fate which the forester prepares by solicting help from a nearby village, like the priest in Branche XIV.

Soon peasants—some of whom are satirized by being named as floridly as gentry—swarm through the woods, armed with clubs, hoes, and flails. Lanfroi leads them, brandishing an ax. In order to escape, the bear must yank himself from the log, tearing the hide from his face and paws and leaving both ears behind. Evidently he is not able to mount up at once (if we assume that he does have a horse), for he is dealt many a blow, including one by the local priest, who has been spreading manure and nearly knocks him down with a pitchfork. Eventually Brun escapes, and as he passes Malpertuis Renart jeers at him again, wanting to know which order he belongs to, since he wears a scarlet “hood.” We are reminded of Reinardus with the skinned wolf in the sick-lion episode of Ysengrimus, but even more similar is the fox mocking the flayed bear in Aegrum Fama Fuit, although that bear is the reverse of Brun—having lost hide everywhere except on his head and paws. When Brun reaches court, collapsing from loss of blood, the king bellows oaths and tears out mane in a tantrum. After vowing to avenge the bear, Noble orders the cat to bring Renart, and less for trial than for punishment.

Like the Tibert section of Branche XIV, Brun's calamity probably derives from his story in II-Va of how the fox used him as a stalking horse,⁴⁵ while the cat's mission now is patterned after the bear's. Tibert will also suffer because desire for a delicacy will make him incautious, even though he is apprehensive rather than complacent like Brun when he departs on what is termed his mule, praying for safety. As if anticipating the future, he addresses his prayers not only to God but also to Saint Leonard, “who liberates captives.”

It is perhaps not for nothing that we are told he starts out “to the left,”⁴⁶ and upon his arrival at Malpertuis in the evening a “Saint-Martin's bird” flies ominously to his left instead of to his right. Fearing the worst from Renart, whom he considers an atheist, Tibert does not venture into the den but halloos in Brun's manner. Since words cost nothing, as the author remarks, Renart croons back an amicable welcome and offers to face Noble obediently. Put off guard, the travel-weary cat requests something to eat. He is promised his fill of mice and conducted to the house of the priest who hit Brun with a pitchfork. Like his colleague in Branche V, this curé has a problem with rodents, or at least the fox says he does. At Renart's urging Tibert springs through a hole in the wall, only to be caught by a snare which the priest's illegitimate son Martin (heralded by the “Saint-Martin's bird”) laid for the chicken-stealing fox. Renart's designs on the cat, which failed in both II-Va and XV, finally succeed.

As Tibert is strangled, Martin awakens his parents. The clergyman rises naked from his bed, holding his genitals, while the concubine lights a candle, wielding her distaff. The scene calls to mind Primaut's skirmish with the peasant couple in Branche XIV, and just as the wolf bit out a chunk of buttock under duress, so pummeled Tibert claws out one of his unchaste assailant's testicles. The author of I may also have been influenced by Branche XV, where the cat rends Rufrangier. The suitably punished lover is incapacitated in I, his mistress swoons, and Martin tries to revive her, so that Tibert can escape. Since Renart has disappeared, the cat returns to court alone, bitter at being so cruelly deceived but partially consoled by thinking that the amorous priest can henceforth “ring” with only one “clapper.”

When, on the third day of the action, Tibert informs the king of what has happened, Noble does not again fly into a rage but, feeling rather helpless, simply commands Grimbert to fetch the renegade. The badger requests an official warrant stamped with a royal seal to certify his authority. Armed with it, he reaches his destination at dusk, after passing through a meadow, a forest, and a clearing, but no mention is made of a valley which both Brun and Tibert traverse. Since Grimbert is Renart's cousin, he is not afraid to enter the den, though he does creep in backwards. He is cordially received and dined at home instead of being led off to a trap in the mere expectation of food.

Only after supper does he broach the reason for his visit. In a funk portrayed by the author as genuine, however much it seems out of character for such a wanton spirit, Renart reads the summons, which threatens him with torture if he fails to be present on the following day to hear his death sentence pronounced. He asks his cousin for advice, and Grimbert recommends that he unburden himself of his sins. In the absence of a priest the badger can serve as father confessor (like the cricket in Branche V).

The fox consents, perhaps to amuse himself with a recollection of his fondest capers but surely not to save his soul as he claims. He really did commit adultery with Hersent, he admits, and he hurt Ysengrin in many more direct ways. For example, he says, he caused the wolf to fall into a pit trap and be thrashed after seizing a lamb (reminiscent of the eleventh-century Latin poem Sacerdos et Lupus);⁴⁷ to be caught again and beaten by three shepherds; to devour hams and be prevented by a bloated belly from escaping (as in Branche XIV); to be frozen into the ice while fishing (Ysengrimus and Branche III); to descend into a well at night, thinking the full moon's reflection was a big cheese (Branche IV and Disciplina Clericalis); to try deceiving fish merchants (Branche XIV); and to become a monk yet profess to be a canon when discovered eating meat (according to a Latin poem, De Lupo, from around 1100).⁴⁸ Whereas it is Pierre de Saint-Cloud's wolf who sets the plot of Branche I in motion, the wolf of Renart's confession is once more Nivardus's, as in Branches III, IV, V, and XIV.

The fox acknowledges further that he has sinned not only against Ysengrin but also against every other beast in the king's court. Specifically he mentions the previous night's hoodwinking of Tibert, the decimation of Pinte's clan, and (otherwise unknown) a trick he played on an army hired by Ysengrin: after defeating the wolf's mercenaries, he stole their pay, he concludes in contrite tones. Admonishing him not to backslide should God prolong his life, Grimbert absolves him from his sins.

The next morning, early in the fourth and last day of Branche I, Renart kisses his family good-bye and bids his sons to defend his “castle” by “raising its bridges.” Because it is impregnable, as he says and the end of the poem will confirm, he has no need either to obey the summons or to be afraid. He even has plenty of food now, in contrast to his situation in every one of the previous branches, where hunger is his motive for embarking on adventures. In lines 1121-22 he asserts that Malpertuis is sufficiently stocked to withstand a siege of “seven years.” Why, under these circumstances, does he risk his life at court, except that the poem's plot depends on his compliance?⁴⁹ Be that as it may, he indulges in more religiosity (comparable to his confession) by praying for acquittal and revenge,⁵⁰ by falling prostrate to pronounce himself three times a sinner, and by warding off devils with a sign of the cross. Such hypocrisy will later save him from the gallows.

After crossing a stream, mountains, and a plain, he and the badger lose their way in a forest and chance upon a prosperous farm run by nuns. The author states that the travelers err on account of the fox's grief, yet at the cloister Renart is not too distraught to allege that the direction they need to take is past the chicken coop. Grimbert scolds him vigorously for relapsing, whereupon the fox meekly yields, but as they journey on he repeatedly turns a wistful gaze toward the nunnery, evidencing his hopelessly vulpine nature. If his head were cut off, the author comments, it would fly to that poultry.

We are told that Renart is again afraid of what will befall him at court and that his horse expresses this fear by stumbling, while Grimbert's mule trots smoothly along. At their arrival, nevertheless, the tardy delinquent addresses King Noble in a self-assured manner. With his head held high he asserts that he is the most valuable of barons and declares that he has been slandered by jealous, egotistic flatterers who would ruin the realm if heeded. Brun and Tibert have only themselves to blame for being caught, he continues, and he has not mistreated Hersent because she and he have been in love. Copee and the other butchered fowl he wisely forbears to mention. He concludes his speech with an appeal for pity, averring that he is too old and weak—the hair on his chest is turning white⁵¹—to argue with the sovereign, who may dispose of him at will but ought to be fair.

Undeterred by this rhetoric, Noble snarls that Renart will not be spared unless he can clear himself. Grimbert warns that the fox, according to law, must be allowed to refute in public any accusation against him. Instead of granting due process, however, Noble is swayed by Renart's many enemies, who protest the badger's call for a fair trial. Without permitting any defense whatsoever, the arbitrary king requests a sentence from the mob, which clamors for a hanging. Hastily a gallows is erected, for Noble wants the fox strung up before he can escape.

As the crowd torments Renart, Couart casts stones from a safe distance, but a menacing shake of the prisoner's head still sends that poltroon scampering to a hedge, where Renart will later seize him. In Branche V the fox excuses himself from Ysengrin with the pretext of a pilgrimage to Santiago Compostella. Here he tells the king that he wishes to atone for his sins by going to the Holy Land. Noble's initial fondness for the colorful cavalier is rekindled, making the king most fickle, though he accedes to Renart's request only on condition that the dangerous adventurer remain permanently in exile. To the dismay of the multitude, Renart is therefore dressed as a pilgrim, pardoned, and released. The author states that the charlatan feels contempt for everyone but the royal couple, yet that observation must be ironic. Renart will soon insult Noble, and he swindles Noble's consort Fere⁵² out of a ring by promising to pay for it a hundred times over with prayers in her behalf.

By three in the afternoon he is able to depart, but the author states that he does so on his horse rather than on foot, and instead of heading for Jerusalem he contents himself with the hedge where the hare, a nice dinner for his pups at home, is lurking. When Couart tries to gallop away (for suddenly a mount is credited even to him), Renart grabs his reins (perhaps only metaphorically) and pierces him with the staff that is part of a pilgrim's accoutrement. Dangling the hare from his own saddle, if indeed he has one, Renart appears on the tallest of four rocks that tower above the court. After wiping his rear with his borrowed gear, he hurls it at Noble, shouting that the sultan of Syria and Egypt, Nur-ud-din,⁵³ sends greetings and that all heathens tremble before the Christian king.

Such is his scorn for the leader of that social system on which he has preyed (a scorn no doubt reflecting the author's attitude toward Louis VII, who was humiliated in the Second Crusade, 1147-49), but the establishment finally gains a modicum of revenge. Renart's indignity and an entreaty from wounded Couart, who is said to free himself from the fox's horse and ride his own to the court, move Noble to order a chase, vainly threatening death to the whole assembly if Renart escapes. An army of knights (led by Tardif the snail!)⁵⁴ pursues the obnoxious fox all the way to Malpertuis, “where he fears neither host nor assault,” nipping his fur and stabbing his flanks in a climactic scene obviously inspired by the close of Pierre de Saint-Cloud's epic.⁵⁵ More like Branche XIV, however, I concludes with a vignette of the hero ensconced at home amidst his doting family, although he does not repent of his misdeeds here. Instead, Hermeline, Percehaie, Malebranche, and Rovel, “more beautiful than the others” (perhaps because the author of I created the third son), lavish attention on their master until he recuperates.

Branche I presents a series of outrages perpetrated by the fox against his fellow animals. Ysengrin's grievances against him are taken over from II-Va, and Pinte's also result from wrongs committed before the story begins, while we see his abuse of Brun, Tibert, Couart, and Noble. Those whom he afflicts in this work range from the weakest to the strongest among the nobility and comprise a kind of cross section through that social class which is Renart's actual enemy, even though he belongs to it himself. The poem is unified by the fact that each individual conflict between the fox and another creature (or a family, in Pinte's case) is an aspect of his conflict with the establishment as a whole. Appropriately, all the knights—except Grimbert, of course—take part in the grand pursuit at the end.

Renart is a rogue, as the author repeatedly recognizes,⁵⁶ but he is still heroic, like all great villains, while his victims are gullible (Brun and Tibert), effete (Couart and the chickens), cuckolded (Ysengrin), or derelict (Noble), thus becoming contemptible. Because they represent the power structure, it is ultimately that bastion of authority and privilege which is satirized. The author longed to punish the feudal order he knew for its failings and apparently also for its disdain of him, but the court's superiority en masse constitutes an admission that the system was too strong for him, no matter how much he disliked it. What chafed could not be changed. Besides expressing his dissatisfaction with the state, he also wished to make fun of religion and the peasantry (especially as combined in the village curé), probably under the influence of Branche XIV.

Along with Pierre's original Reynard poem in French, Branche I was favored with unusual popularity, evidenced by the string of half a dozen works which it inspired. They are Branches Ia, VI, X, and XXIII, plus the Franco-Italian delight Rainardo e Lesengrino and the Flemish masterpiece Van den Vos Reynaerde. We will have occasion to deal with Branche VI in Chapter Four, but Van den Vos Reynaerde is our immediate concern.

Notes

1. On both date and authorship see Foulet, Roman de Renard, pp. 217-37.

2. Ibid., pp. 100-19. See also John Flinn, Le Roman de Renart dans la Littérature Française et dans les Littératures Étrangères au Moyen Age (Toronto, 1963), pp. 16-18.

3. Ernst Martin, Le Roman de Renart, 3 vols. (Strasbourg, 1882-87).

4. See Foulet, Roman de Renard, pp. 239, 244-45, 251-52. It is doubtful that either XV or V was written for insertion into II-Va, since neither harmonizes with Pierre's epic and each is self-contained. Foulet's claim on p. 244 that Ysengrin would have no motive for attacking Renart in Branche V if V were not designed to succeed the rape scene in II-Va is invalidated not only by the author's possible presupposition of acquaintance with earlier branches but also by the fact that the wolf needs no motive, being mauvais (like Ysengrimus), as the fox states in line 8 of V.

5. See Martin, Roman de Renart, l:xxv.

6. Foulet, Roman de Renard, pp. 124-26, 143-56.

7. See Martin, Roman de Renart, 1:101, line 349; 104, line 472; 125, lines 1221-23; and 178, lines 641-42.

8. Warnke, Fabeln der Marie de France, pp. 154-55, fable 46.

9. Foulet, Roman de Renard, p. 153.

10. Warnke, Fabeln der Marie de France, pp. 47-49.

11. See Foulet, Roman de Renard, pp. 158-62.

12. Ibid., pp. 212-13. Pierre's audience did not need 1,000 lines to become acquainted with Renart.

13. See also Warnke, Fabeln der Marie de France, p. 40, fable 11, and Foulet, Roman de Renard, pp. 371-72, note 4.

14. See, however, Gunnar Tilander, “Notes sur le Texte du Roman de Renart,” Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 44 (1924):667, regarding line 1249.

15. See Foulet, Roman de Renard, pp. 218-26.

16. In Va, line 1075, Grimbert is said to be Renart's first cousin; in line 1154, his nephew. In Branche I they are consistently cousins. Although we will see much of Grimbert in subsequent epics, no badger figures in Ysengrimus. He is Pierre's invention.

17. See Martin, Roman de Renart, 1:187, line 954, and 3:174.

18. Pierre's contemporary Andreas Capellanus blames much warfare on love. See E. Trojel, ed., Andreae Capellani Regii Francorum De Amore Libri Tres (München: Fink, 1972), p. 330.

19. Juan Nogués, Estudios sobre el Roman de Renard (Salamanca, 1956), pp. 74-75, suggests that Pietro is derided as an exponent of Roman law.

20. Ysengrimus's cave and Ysengrin's in Branche II-Va also have a door that opens and closes.

21. Voigt, Ysengrimus, p. 301, line 742 of Book V. Reinardus is jesting, but he would not speak of his children if he had none. I disagree with Voigt, ibid., p. lxxix.

22. See Ernst Martin, Observations sur le Roman de Renart (Strasbourg: Trübner, 1887), p. 36.

23. Foulet, Roman de Renard, pp. 281-86.

24. See for example Krohn, Bär (Wolf) und Fuchs, pp. 46-54.

25. See Foulet, Roman de Renard, pp. 304-12.

26. MS H includes a different version of Branche IV after line 150, and in this variant the third chicken is remembered. See P. Chabaille, Le Roman du Renart, Supplément (Paris: Silvestre, 1835), pp. 113-21.

27. Lines 156 and 204 repeat line 439 of Branche II, where Renart wants Chantecler as badly as he wants water in IV.

28. It is surely meant to be incongruous that Renart also includes hawks and falcons (line 276), as if Ysengrin would have a bird catch his game in chivalric manner.

29. The author of the MS-H variant had more respect for Christianity. See Chabaille, Supplément, pp. 116-20. Note the change to paradis terrestre, which also occurs elsewhere—Martin, Roman de Renart, 1:214, line 616; 293, line 513, and 3:139, line 268.

    In Branche XVII, when Noble's court believes that the fox has died and it is conducting his funeral service, Ferrant the horse describes his putative afterlife. His soul will enter heaven backwards, says Ferrant, and will be seated next to the she-ass on a bed composed of chickens, which he dare not harm: In that way he will atone for having been the bane of poultry on earth, the horse concludes (Martin, ibid., 2:224, lines 997-1012). Renart will therefore fare like a second Tantalus, the reward envisioned for him containing a bit of punishment. Ferrant's fantasy derives from the fox's in Branche IV. Paradise, which includes its opposite in XVII, becomes its opposite in IV, while in both works it is said to feature its prospective occupant's favorite food. Other examples of backward entrances in the Roman de Renart (Branche I, line 964; Branche VI, line 38; Branche XVII, line 1579) indicate that the fox's soul will be afraid on its arrival in Ferrant's version of the beyond, and it has good reason to be. Its juxtaposition with the arnesse is probably meant to suggest Renart's duplicity (even though the she-ass is not described as fauve). See Branche I, line 1291; Branche VI, lines 161-62; and Arthur Langfors, Le Roman de Fauvel par Gervais du Bus (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1914-19), p. lxxxiv.

30. Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1927), 1:1677-80.

31. The scene may have been prompted by Nivardus's monastery episode, especially since the prior wields a candlestick (line 409).

32. This is the first time in the Roman de Renart (provided Branche V antedates XIV) that an animal really wears clothes of any kind.

33. The fact that the cricket lacks a name in Branche V (except for line 180 of MSS C, M, and H) indicates that V is older than I.

34. Foulet, Roman de Renard, pp. 250-51.

35. Ibid., pp. 249-50.

36. Ibid., pp. 314-15.

37. Ibid., p. 316.

38. Hausrath, Corpus Fabularum Aesopicarum, 1, pt. 1:36-37, and Horace's Epistles, 1:7, lines 29-33.

39. The similarity to Branche V could be coincidental but probably is not, justifying the assumption that V antedates XIV. See Foulet, Roman de Renard, p. 320.

40. Pierre mentions a Dant Galopin … li levres in line 1083 of Branche Va, Martin, Roman de Renart, 1:190.

41. For example, can Brun go all the way back to court fuiant … plus que le trot (line 702), having lost the hide from his front feet, if he is not indeed esporonant (line 705)?

42. Foulet, Roman de Renard, p. 256, is mistaken in saying that Tibert and Renart are mounted in the first half of XV. A esperon in line 182 is not meant literally.

43. Canterbury pilgrims were claiming in the 1170s that Thomas à Becket's tomb was thaumaturgic, and Louis VII visited it in 1179 (the year Branche I was probably written) to secure the recovery of his ill son Philip Augustus.

44. For example, Robert Bossuat, Le Roman de Renart (Paris: Hatier, 1967), pp. 113-14. The passage in question is Martin, Roman de Renart, 1:15-16, lines 505-30.

45. See Foulet, Roman de Renard, p. 333.

46. See Naoyuki Fukumoto, Le Roman de Renart, Branches I et la (Tokyo: Librairie France Tosho, 1974), pp. 202-203, regarding line 740 of that edition.

47. Jacob Grimm and Andreas Schmeller, Lateinische Gedichte des X. und XI. Jh. (Göttingen: Dieterich, 1838), pp. 340-42.

48. See Foulet, Roman de Renard, pp. 336-38. Cf. Voigt, Egberts Fecunda Ratis, pp. 195-96.

49. See for example Gaston Paris, Mélanges de Littérature Française du Moyen Age (Paris: Champion, 1912), pp. 413-14. Jauss (Untersuchungen, p. 264, note 1) maintains that Renart heeds Noble because he is a Schelm, yet even rogues avoid being hanged.

50. In lines 417-29 of Ecbasis Captivi the fox feeds the panther who has brought word of developments at court, and after leaving home he prays for pity, a safe return, and the wolf's defeat.

51. One is reminded here of the fox claiming senescence in lines 473-80 of Ecbasis Captivi, as mentioned in Chapter One, regarding the sick-lion episode of Ysengrimus.

52. Fere is not in evidence at court until the fox is about to leave (line 1440). At his arrival, for instance, he greets only the king.

53. The author did not know that Nur-ud-din had died in 1173.

54. Tardif's debut in the Roman de Renart occurs at Copee's funeral, in which he participates because Branche I's author needed limacons to rhyme with lecons (lines 409-10). Having created Tardif, the author could not resist the comic contrast which results from radically altering a snail's proverbial pace. That intentionally absurd anthropomorphism probably inspired the even better example of tongue-in-cheek topsy-turviness found in Branche XVII, where Couart rides a horse with a captured peasant around his neck (Martin, Roman de Renart, 2: 198-200, lines 61-108). Not only has the normally craven captor reversed his nature like the speedy snail; he has also switched roles with his catch. The peasant is a furrier, who customarily treats hares as the hare is treating him.

55. Whether the chase in Branche I is on horseback is ambiguous. Cf. Branche XVII's imitation, Martin, ibid., pp. 226-30. In both I and XVII Tardif carries a banner. Note the resemblance of Renart at the end of I to Walwein in lines 11741-78 of Wace's Brut.

56. Lines 9, 23, 480, 610-11, 833, 892, and 1499. Negative auctorial comments about Renart had become a tradition, begun by Pierre de Saint-Cloud, who was sincerely critical of the fox.