Reynard the Fox: A New Translation

by James Simpson (Translator), Stephen Greenblatt (Foreword by)

Overview

One of the greatest characters of medieval literature, the trickster Reynard the Fox, comes to life in this rollicking new translation.

What do a weak lion king, a grief-stricken rooster, a dim-witted bear, and one really angry wolf have in common? The answer is they’ve all been had by one sly fox named Reynard. Originally bursting forth from Europe in the twelfth century, Reynard the Fox—a classic trickster narrative centered on a wily and gleefully amoral fox and his numerous victims in the animal kingdom—anticipated both Tex Avery and The Prince by showing that it’s better to be clever than virtuous. However, where The Prince taught kings how to manipulate their subjects, Reynard the Fox demonstrated how, in a world of ruthless competition, clever subjects could outwit both their rulers and enemies alike.

In these riotous pages, Reynard lies, cheats, or eats anyone and anything that he crosses paths with, conning the likes of Tybert the Cat, Bruin the Bear, and Bellin the Ram, among others. Reynard's rapacious nature and constant "stealing and roving" eventually bring him into conflict with the court of the less-than-perceptive Noble the Lion and the brutal Isengrim the Wolf, pitting cunning trickery against brute force. Unlike the animal fables of Aesop, which use small narratives to teach schoolboy morality, Reynard the Fox employs a dark and outrageous sense of humor to puncture the hypocritical authority figures of the “civilized” order, as the rhetorically brilliant fox outwits all comers by manipulating their bottomless greed.

As James Simpson, one of the world’s leading scholars of medieval literature, notes in his introduction, with translations in every major European language and twenty-three separate editions between 1481 and 1700 in England alone, the Reynard tales were ubiquitous. However, despite its immense popularity at the time, this brains-over-brawn parable largely disappeared. Now, for the first time in over a century, the fifteenth-century version of Reynard the Fox reemerges in this rollicking translation.

Readers both young and old will be delighted by Reynard’s exploits, as he excels at stitching up the vain, pompous, and crooked and escapes punishment no matter how tight the noose. Highlighted by new illustrations by Edith E. Newman, Simpson's translation of the late Middle English Caxton edition restores this classic as a part of a vital tradition that extends all the way to Br’er Rabbit, Bugs Bunny, and even Itchy & Scratchy. As Stephen Greenblatt writes in his foreword, Reynard is the "animal fable's version of Homer's Odysseus, the man of many wiles," proving that in a dog-eat-dog world the fox reigns supreme.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780871407368
Publisher:	Liveright Publishing Corporation
Publication date:	03/09/2015
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

James Simpson is the Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of English at Harvard University. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Stephen Greenblatt (Ph.D. Yale) is Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. Also General Editor of The Norton Anthology of English Literature, he is the author of eleven books, including Tyrant, The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve: The Story that Created Us, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (winner of the 2011 National Book Award and the 2012 Pulitzer Prize); Shakespeare's Freedom; Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare; Hamlet in Purgatory; Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World; Learning to Curse: Essays in Early Modern Culture; and Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. He has edited seven collections of criticism, including Cultural Mobility: A Manifesto, and is a founding coeditor of the journal Representations. His honors include the MLA’s James Russell Lowell Prize, for both Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England and The Swerve, the Sapegno Prize, the Distinguished Humanist Award from the Mellon Foundation, the Wilbur Cross Medal from the Yale University Graduate School, the William Shakespeare Award for Classical Theatre, the Erasmus Institute Prize, two Guggenheim Fellowships, and the Distinguished Teaching Award from the University of California, Berkeley. He was president of the Modern Language Association of America and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and Arcadia—Accademia Letteraria Italiana.

Table of Contents

Foreword Stephen Greenblatt 15

Introduction 17

A Note on the Translation 33

Animal Dramatis Personae 36

Part I

1 The lion, King of all beasts, commands all animals to come to his feast and his court 41

2 The first accusation against Reynard, made by Isengrim the Wolf 42

3 The accusation of Courtoys the Dog 43

4 Grimbart the Badger, the fox's nephew, speaks up for Reynard, in the presence of the King 45

5 The cock accuses Reynard 49

6 The King calls for counsel 52

7 How Bruin the Bear fares with Reynard the Fox 54

8 Bruin eats the honey 57

9 The bear accuses the fox 65

10 The King sends Tybert on another embassy to the fox. How Tybert fares with Reynard 66

11 Grimbart the Badger brings Reynard to law, before the King himself 73

12 Reynard confesses himself 75

Part II

13 Reynard comes to court and excuses himself before the King 85

14 Reynard is arrested and condemned to death 88

15 Reynard is led to the gallows 90

16 Reynard makes open confession in the presence of the King and of all those who would hear it 94

17 Reynard endangers all who wished to execute him, and secures the King's grace 97

18 The wolf and the bear are arrested through the work of Reynard the Fox 108

19 Isengrim and his wife Arswind are obliged to have their shoes plucked off. Reynard puts the shoes on to go to Rome 110

Part III

20 Cuwaert the Hare is slain by the fox 117

21 Reynard sends the head of Cuwaert the Hare to the King, with Bellin as carrier 122

22 Bellin the Ram and all his lineage are put into the hands of Isengrim and Bruin. Bellin is killed 125

23 The King holds his feast. Lapreel the Rabbit accuses Reynard the Fox before the King 127

24 Corbant the Crow accuses the fox of the death of his wife 129

25 The King is terribly angry at these accusations 131

26 Grimbart the Badger warns Reynard that the King is angry and wants to kill him 135

Part IV

27 Reynard returns to court 139

28 Reynard excuses himself in the King's presence 148

29 Rukenawe the She-Ape answers on behalf of the fox to the King 157

30 A parable of a man who saved a serpent from death 161

31 The friends and kin of Reynard the Fox 167

Part V

32 The fox subtly proves himself innocent of the death of Cuwaert the Hare and of all the other charges laid against him. With flattery he regains the King's goodwill 171

Part VI

33 Reynard's story of his father's medicinal skill in the service of the King, and other stories targeted at Isengrim the Wolf 187

Part VII

34 Isengrim the Wolf accuses the fox 197

35 A fair parable of the fox and the wolf 202

36 Isengrim presents his glove to the fox as a challenge to fight 208

37 Reynard the Fox takes up the glove, and the King sets a day for their combat 209

38 Rukenawe the She-Ape gives Reynard tactical coaching for his fight with Isengrim the Wolf 210

39 The fox comes into the field of combat 213

40 The fox and the wolf fight together 215

41 Reynard the Fox, under the wolf, cleverly flatters him, so allowing Reynard to get back on top 21

42 Isengrim the Wolf is beaten and the combat resolved. Reynard the Fox is the winner 22

43 The fox offers a parable to the King after he's won the field 22

Part VIII

44 The King forgives the fox everything, and makes him the most powerful lord in all his territory 23

45 The fox and his friends and kin depart nobly from the King and return to Wickedhole. 233

The Translator Tares Leave of His Book

The translator reflects on how the world is now dominated by foxlike humans 237

Reynard carries on 240

The truth of this story 241

Acknowledgments 243

Editorial Reviews

"Reynard…is one of the defining documents of a vast tradition in Western art, indeed, in Western consciousness: the trickster tale…. [James] Simpson says that his version is the first readily accessible English translation to appear in almost a hundred years. I am glad that he rescued it."

The New Yorker - Joan Acocella

"[Reynard the Fox] is clearly a satire, one that exposes the greed, corruption, and lying that poison institutions and social relations, above all at court…It helps, of course, that this is an animal fable, so what might otherwise seem like pages taken from King Lear or Othello come across as episodes from a "Road Runner" cartoon or an episode of The Itchy & Scratchy Show. Still more, the literary artistry of Reynard the Fox—its pace, its deft twists of plot, its zany characters, and its savage humor—persuades us that to survive in this world it is more important to pretend to be good than actually to be good. To this extent at least, Reynard is the secret twin of his great contemporary Niccolò Machiavelli."

Stephen Greenblatt from the foreword

"When I read Reynard the Fox for the first time…I instantly knew that Reynard could be enjoyed by everyone over a certain age: the literary pleasures of this work are instantly accessible to all lovers of great narrative…We are all political animals who need to survive, whatever we do. And all of us like laughing. And all of us are fascinated by animals, not least because we are ourselves animals who need to pretend otherwise."

James Simpson

★ 02/01/2015
The fox is one of the great animal tricksters in Western culture, the counterpart to the African Anansi the Spider, the Native American Old Man Coyote, and the East Asian Monkey King. Among the most important repositories is the Old French Roman de Renart, composed between the 11th and 13th centuries and translated into many European languages. In 1481, William Caxton, the printer of Chaucer and Malory, produced the first English translation based on a Flemish version. Simpson (Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of English, Harvard Univ.), who has published many books on medieval and Reformation culture, here has converted Caxton's Middle English prose into vigorous modern English. The adventures of Reynard and his dealings with the court of the lion king are raucous and bawdy and boast a strong satirical and political edge. Simpson's translation aims for the fun and spirit of the original rather than linguistic accuracy. While there are two translations of the French Roman de Renart available, by Patricia Terry (1992) and D.D.R. Owen (1994), Simpson's is the first of Caxton's influential version. VERDICT Simpson's translation is both an important contribution to literary scholars, and an accessible, delightful, and entertaining read.—Thomas L. Cooksey, Armstrong Atlantic State Univ., Savannah

Library Journal

2014-12-16
Timely translation of the medieval story cycle about a fox who constantly outwits the "not only dim-witted but also greedy, coarse and self-interested" folks in charge.Reynard the Fox rolls up all the best wiles of Odysseus, Harpo Marx and the Coyote of North American Indian mythology; he's a trickster, a court jester and a buffoon who, somewhat freer to speak truth to power than the rest of us, shows time and again that the emperor's clothes are threadbare. The exiled English printer William Caxton understood this, and his 15th-century translation of the Old French Roman de Renart, though subtle in its satire, made it plain "how clever subjects can survive enemies and kings." So Greenblatt writes in his introduction to this new translation by Simpson (English/Harvard Univ.), which properly places the stories about Reynard, which emerged as long ago as the 1100s, in the tradition of Aesop and other fabulists. Simpson's translation is fully serviceable, though there are some oddly herky-jerky clashes of diction scattered throughout: "Cousin Reynard, now's the time to open up your bag of tricks: if you're so clever, I suggest you help yourself. You're in a fix, buddy." "The wolf said: ‘Just listen to this guy! I'm the one who's suffered and have cause to complain, and he wants me to pay him!' " If the characters sound like Sir Walter Scott at one moment and Lou Costello the next, that doesn't diminish the bite and force of the stories, which, though surely not to everyone's taste, are plenty of fun to read—especially when Reynard, having outwitted Lion and Wolf and Cat and every other creature in the French barnyard, finally talks himself into a cushy government job, at last securing a sinecure to guard the henhouse. Those who are able to navigate early modern English would do better to read Caxton, but this new version has the virtue of making the Reynard stories easily accessible.

Kirkus Reviews