In Beowulf, for instance, the Danes and the Geats are only seen quaffing beer in Heorot the only one who does a lot of eating is Grendel. The feast, therefore, is more of a symbol. Dishes may be described in detail, but the function is to foreground the richness of the repas and the generosity of the lord it is meant to impress the audience rather than actually draw their attention to the matter of the stomach. In those works, scenes of feasting are frequent, but the characters – the good ones, anyway – are never portrayed as gulping down their food. Such emphasis on food and, more importantly, on the actual act of eating greatly contrasts the chivalric romance and the epic genre. Reynard’s food is what any peasant would have wished to consume, and the way he eats it – in large quantities, and without reserve in fear of future starvation – is also how the members of the lower classes would want to consume food. Professor Anne Lair, having pointed out Reynard’s obsession with food, calls Roman de Renart, ‘a cultural text’, in that it ‘illustrates accurately what people consumed at the time’. Reynard knows it only too well that more often than not he takes advantage of these barons’ appetites and leads them by the nose. The barons of Noble’s court are also slaves to their stomach. One distinctive feature of Renart is how central a position food occupies: Reynard is forever seeking food, even on his way to the trial (and possibly to death) he cannot help but sigh deeply over how many chickens he has missed when he passes a convent’s farm. Reynard, therefore, has been more and more made into a voice of the common people he has become a peasant hero.Įven Roman de Renart, where the aristocratic is not ridiculed as much as in the later works, addresses the issues and conditions of the lower classes. Reynard as a Social Commentary Reynard as a Social CommentaryĪlthough it is debatable precisely to what extent Roman de Renart was meant to be read as a social satire, it is certainly satirical in tone and has indeed been intended so in its later adaptations: Renart le Countrefait, the last major French treatment of the Renart materials, criticises the political, social, and ecclesiastical disorder and corruption. Connections like these must have made the tales more laughable than they already were for the audience. The audience/readers would immediately recognise Chrétien de Troyes’ Arthur in the indecisive, inactive, and now cuckolded King Noble. Likewise, although Reynard has practically raped Queen Fière, Fière takes it as ‘love’ and secretly helps him, on the condition that he must ‘by the love he has pledged her, to come and speak with her privately and with complete discretion’. When Reynard finally yields to King Noble the Lion’s command (and threat) and appears at court to be tried, he paints his affair with Hersent as a paragon of courtly love and turns Isengrin into the jealous, cuckolded husband that we frequently find in Marie de France’s lais. Even Isengrin refuses to let his wife to cleanse herself by walking into the fire, in fear of her imminent death. Hersent, however, is well-known for her lust – this is probably unavoidable, since she-wolves are thought to have an insatiable sexual appetite, and lupa, the latin word for ‘she-wolf’, is a synonym for prostitute. Hersent bravely volunteers to go through the ordeal by burning fire, apparently taking the example of Iseult. The Roman de Renart became immensely popular at the end of the twelfth century and, between then and around the mid-thirteenth century, a narrative that has been customarily divided into 26 ‘branches’ was developed.įor instance, in the first branch, when Sir Isengrin – a stupid yet pompous wolf who is Reynard’s life-long enemy – accuses Reynard of violating his wife, the lady Hersent. The stories of Reynard, the trickster fox, are generally attributed to Aesop, a slave from Samos in the sixth century BC, but the version we are familiar with really comes from the Middle Ages. Although Renart’s medieval audience did not necessarily exclude the higher classes, it is the aristocracy that often came off the worst in these stories, and by borrowing from other noted romances or chanson de geste, such passages would appear more comical in the reader’s eyes. Rather, it makes fun of chivalry and the aristocracy - William Caxton’s fifteenth century English edition, The History of Reynard the Fox, was even labelled as an ‘anti-romance’. Despite being a roman, the story of Reynard is no romance in the traditional sense.
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