Bold Reynard With His Wits So Fine

By Tara Hodgson & Barnie Matthews

In our culture, foxes are usually depicted as sly, devious and cunning, from the Redwall novels to Blackadder’s “as cunning as a fox who’s just been appointed professor of cunning at Oxford university”. Which might seem a little strange to anyone who’s ever encountered a real life fox: while foxes are certainly intelligent, they are also frequently shy and skittish and have spent hundreds of years running in fear from human hunters, not executing elaborate plots against them. So where did the idea of the cunning fox come from?

Even when foxes live close to humans, such as in today’s cities, they are usually more reclusive than their Machiavellian reputation would say

Answer: from Reynard, the vulpine hero of the 12th century.

Reynard – also called Reinaert, Renart, Reineke or Renartus – is an anthropomorphic fox and trickster figure who was hugely popular in medieval literature. His first appearance in written literature was in Ghent in around 1150, in the mock-epic Latin story collection Ysengrimus, and later in the French poem Le Roman de Renart (the Tale of the Fox) from around 1170. From there he made his way into French, German, and ultimately English, literature, but we will concentrate on these early tales for now.

Most Reynard stories follow the classic trickster pattern: he is set up against an adversary, and overcomes them with misdirection and ingenuity. The first tale in Ysengrimus has Reynard captured by the wolf Ysengrim (or Isengrim). Ysengrim initially wants to eat him, but the fox manages to convince him to let him go by offering to get a piece of bacon for them both to share. Reynard then acquires the meat by finding a peasant carrying some, and pretending to be so exhausted that the peasant puts down the bacon to try and catch Reynard and take his pelt. And while Ysengrim ends up taking the prize for himself (the only time Reynard is outwitted in all these tales), Reynard makes up for it in subsequent stories. The next tale in Ysengrimus has Reynard getting Ysengrim’s tail frozen into a river, where it is chopped off by an enraged woman. While Ysengrim is the most frequent target of Reynard’s tricks, other animals are featured too. In Roman de Renart, Bruin the Bear has an ear ripped off and Tybalt the cat gets blinded in one eye while trying to catch Reynard.

An illustration from a 13th century edition of Roman de Renart, showing a knightly Reynard stabbing Ysengrim- a bit more blunt than his usual style

So why should we care about these stories? Well, partly because the character of Reynard continues to be relevant today. Reynard didn’t invent the idea of the fox as a cunning trickster (many of his stories have a basis in previous beast-literature, folklore and oral tradition), but he did crystallise a lot of those ideas into a cohesive, defined character for the first time. And he was hugely popular: as his many names imply, Reynard went on to be translated into many different languages and his story reimagined countless times. He became so ubiquitous that the French name for a male fox changed from goupil to renard, which it remains to this day, and reynard is still an English name for a male fox in some parts of Britain. A cunning fox called Russell appears in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. In Romeo and Juliet, the character Tybalt is referred to as the ‘Prince of Cats’ in homage to the Reynardian adversary, a subtle reference which gives you some idea of the popularity and staying power these stories had. And as Reynard’s stories spread, so did his characterisation. The verb ‘to fox’ (meaning to mislead) came into use in the 13th century and the idea of foxes as devious tricksters, cunning rogues, and as perennial adversaries has persisted ever since.

But more importantly, Reynard tells us a lot about the ideology of the medieval age. Many of the creatures in Reynard’s story have real-world counterparts: most obvious is the lion, who is depicted as a king and who Reynard treats with great respect. Other beasts (like Bruin and Tybalt) hold office at his court, implying that they represent the nobility. Ysengrim is once told that a mob of angry villagers are going to “renew his tonsure” for him and boasts of his learning in medicine, suggesting a clear parallel to monks. And Reynard himself? He is a fox of the people: a creature of the woods and fields, always striving to outwit and outmatch the aristocracy and clergy alike. Without the strength of the lion, the wolf and the bear, he represents a peasant-hero, armed only with his wits.

The animal court from a 15th century Reynard story. The ruling lions (at the back, with crowns) are particularly obvious.

This, combined with the fact that he made his way into our language, suggests that Reynard was not just a written character: he was popular among illiterate commoners too. And with this in mind, the stories of Reynard take on a new importance, because they give us a unique glimpse into how ordinary people of the 12th century thought about their world. For example, there are attitudes to royalty: while Reynard often cocks a snoot at the nobles and church, he shows great deference to the kingly lion. In one of the Ysengrimus tales, for example, Ysengrim is asked to divide up a calf between himself, the lion and Reynard. When he divides the three equally, the lion is enraged and skins the hapless wolf: but is much more impressed when Reynard gives most of the calf to the lion and his family, and keeps only a foot for himself. In spite of his learning and proud morals, Ysengrim consistently falls back to greedy behaviour, and there are those who argue this is meant to show how the wolf (or monk) will always fall back to his essential nature no matter what good he preaches. Either way, the lesson is clear: the church might have often been seen as corrupt or greedy, but to most people the king was beyond reproach and deserved supplication.

Additionally, Reynard is frequently violent: as well as blinding, skinning, de-earing and otherwise mutilating his foes, he even rapes Ysengrim’s wife in a later version of the tales (while Reynard’s own wife is a seldom-seen presence in his stories- feel free to form your own conclusions on what this says about medieval attitudes to women). This may in part be a reference to the real fox’s violent handiwork towards chickens and similar, which agricultural commoners would have been all too familiar with. But it also reflects the harsh reality of medieval life, and its proximity to violence that seems shocking today. In a world controlled by the physical might of knights, Reynard’s goal is also the physical domination of his enemies, even if he uses his wits to do it.

What Arthur and Lancelot were to the nobility, Reynard was to those who tilled the fields. And since those people rarely wrote books, that makes him a unique source of insight. Reynard the Fox is not just a character from a story, but a voice of all the voiceless from 12th century Europe.

One thought on “Bold Reynard With His Wits So Fine

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *