REYMONT, Wladyslaw Stanislaw, Polish novelist and poet: b. 6 May 1863. The son of poor parents, he received but little education and, after trying his hand in various employ ments — on the railwa3r, on a farm, in a store and on the stage, he began his literary career in 1894. Though practically unknown to the English-speaking world, his novels, of which he has written dyer 20 volumes, have found their way into Russian, French, German, Swed ish and Spanish. His first story of
REYNARvD
THE FOX. The beast-epic, Reynard the Fox,' the property of the Frankish race of the Netherlands, northern France and western Germany, is perhaps their most original contribution to mediaeval litera ture. To be sure, there is scarcely a people without its animal fables, which in the case of celebrated stories like some of &sop's go back to remote antiquity, but none has developed a consistent epic such as the Middle-Franconian, Reinaert de Vos. A short poem in Latin com posed at the court of Karl the Great in the 8th century by Paulus Diaconus, retells the 2Esopian fable of the sick lion, who on the ad vice of the fox is cured by being wrapped in a fresh wolf's hide. The same story is found in the
called his enemy Isengnmus as early as 1112, on, the testimony of Petrus Alfonsus in (Disciplina The beasts apparently received their Teu tonic names in Flanders, so Reynard, from a root ragin + hard= strong in counsel; Isen grim, either iron helm, or iron fury; Tibeert, the cat, from' Theudebert, a Frankish king; Bruun = brown, the bear. Others like the Leopard Feirepeel, from varium pellem, spot ted hide, are French.• French.— From this time on the gleemen or traveling entertainers•take up the subject and include the •court and all ranks of people in their satire, with the result that poets, good and bad. develop a ,never ending Roman' de Renart in French, which is artistically arranged by an unknown editor in some 27 (branches* of more than 40,000 lines, including repetitions and variations. Ernest Martin thinks that perhaps nine of these were collected by 1180, that a few years later, perhaps at the be ginning of the 13th century Pierre de Saint Cloud added ((branch& 16 to complete the poem, thus rekindling a waning interest to which was due among others (branches 20, completed around about 1210 and the founda tion of the Flemish epic. Other ((branches"' were added in the 13th century by the editors from whose labors resulted two broad classes of manuscripts, numbering 15 in all. A lost compilation of 16 ((branches* was adapted about 1180 by the German Heinrich der Glichezare. Later continuations of the 13th and 14th cen turies were couronnement Renart,) (Renart le nouveau> and (Renart le conterfait.' cf. Rothe, M.A., Romans du Renard' (Paris 1845).
Of the personality of the poets we know • nothing. We can only judge from their dia lects, from the use of Flemish words, from place names, and scattered historical allusions that they came from either the Flemish and German border or the Isle de France. The older the composition the greater its merit. The later branches became more and more an thropomorphic, less and degenerated into fastidious allegory, the didactic purpose. of which became fatally tiresome, and the poem gradually sank into oblivion.