An edition of the Dutch Van den vos Reynaerde based on an edition printed in the Netherlands in 1479, and compared with the 1489 printed English edition of William Caxton.

It was initially our intention to simply reprint the oldest edition (G) diplomatically, with correction of the apparent printing errors and regulation of the very confused, sometimes nonsensical punctuation. We also assumed that actual textual criticism, the reconstruction of the text in its oldest form, was not permitted in a printed work in which there could be no question of copyist errors and their appurtenances. However, when the comparison of G with Reinaert II on the one hand, and with C. and on the other hand, had taught us that not all of G's sloppiness can be attributed to the prose writer, who, judging by the agreement of those older and younger editors, must have written a much better text in many places, when textual criticism of G therefore appeared to be just as permitted as of a medieval work preserved only in manuscript, the question arose whether we could and should not provide a completely critical text. In the end, however, we have stuck to our first plan, and for the following reasons. First, however probable the history of the text outlined above may be, we have no absolute certainty: it remains possible that C translated both according to the pen of Reinaert II, and that G therefore, except for the actual printing errors, really reproduces the text of the prose writer on the whole, which was then corrected by C. in translating according to Reinaert II. - [Editors]

Language: Dutch