Le Roman de Renart is a vast construction site on which more than twenty more or less talented authors worked for almost a century, from 1175 to 1250. In perpetual metamorphosis, constantly modified by oral transmission and by writing that very quickly seized the tales of the fox, subject to numerous manipulations, it is a moving work, in a constant interaction of language, imagination and reality, so much so that it is difficult to date its components with certainty, despite the suggestions of Lucien Foulet. It is in fact impossible to discover a single Roman de Renart: from its appearance, there have been several collections that differ in order, content, and length. This vast puzzle, this novel forever open, whose chapters do not have a defined and unique form or place, has been cut up in many ways. To designate the parts, a new term was used, that of branch, which appears for the first time, in its literary sense of "tale", just before the adventure of the well (branch IV). Each episode comes out of the Foxian trunk like the branches of the tree, and one can see a malice in it, because until then, the comparison was used in religious and moral literature to designate the qualities that come out of a principal virtue or the defects of a major vice. This principle of the tree structure, which consists of grafting a new story onto the common trunk, will remain alive to this day, since Louis Pergaud recounted La Tragique Aventure de Goupil (1910) and Maurice Genevoix, after giving a new version of the novel (1958), added, in Bestiaire sans oubli (1971), a final chapter, the capture of the fox by diabolical hunters who play on his paternal instinct. - [Author]

Language: French

DOI: 10.3406/litts.1989.1478