REYNARD THE FOX, a beast-epic, current in French, Dutch and German literature. The cycle of animal stories col lected round the names of Reynard the Fox and Isengrim the Wolf in the I2th century seems to have arisen on the borderland of France and Flanders. The tales, like those of "Uncle Remus," were amusing in themselves ; they were based on widely diffused folklore, and Reynard and his companions were not originally men disguised as animals. Jacob Grimm (Reinhart Fuchs, 1834) maintained their popular origin.
The principal names of the Reynard cycle were German. Rey nard himself (Raginohardus, strong in counsel), Bruin the Bear, Baldwin the Ass, Tibert the Cat, Hirsent the She-wolf, had Ger man names, most of which were used as person-names in Lorraine. But it was in France that the cycle obtained its greatest vogue. The Roman de Renart as printed by Meon (4 vols., 1826) runs to over 40,000 lines. Renart was a popular epic parodying feudal institutions as represented in the romances of chivalry.
The early French originals are lost, the most ancient existing fragments being in Latin. The fable of the lion's sickness and his cure by the wolf's skin occurs in the Ecbasis cujusdam captivi per Tropologiam (ed. E. Voigt ; Strasbourg, 1875), written about Ysengrimus (ed. E. Voigt ; Halle, 1884), a clerical satire written by Nivard of Ghent about 1148, includes the story of the lion's sickness and the pilgrimages of Bertiliana the Goat. Most later versions of Reynard have been derived from the Flemish Van den vos Reinarde (ed. E. Martin, Paderborn, 1874), writ ten about 125o in East Flanders by Arnout and Willem. The
Flemish epic is a poem of 3,476 lines. The corresponding branch of the French Roman de Renart (for which see FRENCH LITERA TURE) is one of the earliest and best of the great French cycle.
The fable was known in England. The English poem of the Fox and the Wolf dates from the i3th century; and the "Nonne Preestes Tale" of Chaucer in which, however, the fox is Rossel and the ass Brunel, is a genuine Reynard history. A Dutch version of the Reynard poem, Hystorie van Reynaert die Vos, was printed at Gouda in 1479. On this Caxton based his Historye of reynart the foxe (reprinted by E. Arber, 1878), which he finished on June 6, 1481. As a satire on the church, especially on monks and nuns, Reynard became popular with reformers, and numerous versions followed in England and Germany. The modern German version (1794) of Goethe has been often reprinted, notably in 1846, with illustrations by Wilhelm von Kaulbach.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.—The best edition of the Roman de Renart is by Ernest Martin (3 vols., Strasbourg and Paris, 1881-87). See also Jacob Grimm, Sendschreiben an C. Lachmann caber Reinhart Fuchs (Leipzig, 1840) ; Leopold Sudre, Les Sources du roman de Renard (Paris, 1890) ; Gaston Paris, "Le Roman de Renard" in the Journal des savants (Dec. 1894 and Feb. 1895) ; Kaarle Krohn, Bar and Fuchs (Helsingfors, 1888) ; H. Gagering, Van den Vos Reynaerde (Munster, 191o). A mod ernized version of Caxton's translation appeared in 1926.