"The Middle Dutch Reynard the Fox. A translation of Arnout-Willem's poem Van den vos Reynaerde"

The Reynard the Fox legend is of very ancient origin. Modern research refuses to go as far as Jacob Grimm and assume that the animal legend is a common property of the Indo-European peoples. However, it agrees with him that not only Aesop and oriental fable collections were the sources of the medieval animal epics, but also the animal tales, those cheerfully entertaining stories like the Bremen Town Musicians that originated among the people in ancient times, which, themselves epic in nature, tend to be strung together in cycles, and which also have the peculiarity of giving the animals purely human names. - [Author]

Language: German