When the Middle Ages, its institutions and its literature recently gained favor in Europe, one of the first works of that time that attracted attention was the Roman de Renard, which had excited the verve of so many storytellers, amused our fathers for more than two centuries, and of which inexact and incomplete extracts still linger on the quays to this day for the use of the people. The various manuscripts of this famous poem were used, several stories were drawn from them, and, the taste for this work having increased, Méon finally produced a carefully collated edition of all the branches of the Fox. However, this book, without explanations or observations, of a high price and written in a language today not understood by the majority, while being able to be considered as the work of a scholar, did not yet put the pleasant adventures of Master Fox in the public domain. ... Mr. Willems having edited, by order of the Belgian government, an old text, based on a very old Flemish manuscript, purchased at the sale of the famous bibliophile Héber, and having enriched it with a quantity of interesting and curious notes, we have undertaken to give a translation of this work by one of our most able philologists. In order that it presents a more complete whole, we have added to it the analysis of what several French authors have written on the novels of the Fox, as well as the summary of these poems. By this addition, we will have, in the volume that we are publishing, a summary intended for all classes, of what concerns these amusing and satirical stories which have enjoyed so much reputation, and from which the storytellers of almost all nations have drawn. - [Editor]

Language: French