An edition of the two redactions of the Le Roman de Renart le Contrefait version of the stories of Reynard the Fox. With summaries of the chapters (branches).

Renart le Contrefait is the last form that the Roman de Renart took in the Middle Ages; it is presented in two versions of very unequal length, often identical, sometimes also completely different. The first, which we will call A, is contained in a single manuscript (A = Bibl. nat., fr. 1630) and comprises approximately 32,000 verses; the second, version B, is divided into two volumes (B¹, Vienna 2562, copy in Bibl. nat., fr. 369; B², Bibl. nat. fr. 370) and comprises exactly 41,150 verses, in addition to a fairly long section in prose (more than 60 pages), placed at the end of manuscript B². The author was a cleric from Troyes; he had to renounce the clergy for reasons of bigamy, in other words concubinage. He then devoted himself to the spice trade, previously practiced by his father. He was about forty years old in 1319 and had perhaps already abandoned his trade when he began to write to distract himself and avoid idleness. In composing Renart the Counterfeit he wanted, not to imitate the Romance of Renart but to imitate Renart, to take on his mask, his character, to say in covert writing what he did not dare to say in appearance and to be able thus, in the context of animal tales, to scourge the whole of society of which he believed he had cause to complain, and especially the high clergy and the nobility. The first draft was written between 1319 and 1322. We can easily recognize the beginner; the versification is weak, the sentence is heavy and drags on with difficulty; We can clearly feel that the author does not yet have his tools in hand. He is not free from the influence of the Roman de Renart either and draws largely on the animal epic. ... This edition, by making the text of Renart le Contrefait better known, will allow for a better study later on of what the author has drawn from the animal tales and the materials of all kinds that he has aggregated there. All those who are interested in the literary history of our country will be grateful to Mr. Gaston Raynaud for having undertaken such an important publication and for having done so much to bring it to a successful conclusion. - [Editors]

Language: French