And as Reynard’s stories spread, so did his characterisation. 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. A cunning fox called Russell appears in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. 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. 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. 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.
So why should we care about these stories? Well, partly because the character of Reynard continues to be relevant today. 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 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. While Ysengrim is the most frequent target of Reynard’s tricks, other animals are featured too. The next tale in Ysengrimus has Reynard getting Ysengrim’s tail frozen into a river, where it is chopped off by an enraged woman. 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.
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. 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. The first tale in Ysengrimus has Reynard captured by the wolf Ysengrim (or Isengrim). Most Reynard stories follow the classic trickster pattern: he is set up against an adversary, and overcomes them with misdirection and ingenuity. From there he made his way into French, German, and ultimately English, literature, but we will concentrate on these early tales for now. 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. Reynard – also called Reinaert, Renart, Reineke or Renartus – is an anthropomorphic fox and trickster figure who was hugely popular in medieval literature. 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 sayĪnswer: from Reynard, the vulpine hero of the 12 th century.
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.
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”.
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