A succession of rituals structures Branch XVII of the Roman de Renart, which narrates the death and burial of the fox, Renart. In addition to the religious rituals of confession, eulogy, sermon, and solemn procession that mark the funeral rites for the fox and the committal of his body to the earth, rituals of justice and, most important, rituals of play also feature in this branch. Special significance may be accorded to these ludic rituals because they may furnish the modern reader with a critical apparatus for approaching a reading of the Roman de Renart as a whole. This bold attribution of such importance to just one of the twenty-six branches of this text written by different authors, most of them anonymous, between 1174 and 1250° may be justified by the relationships of the branches of the Roman to each other. - [Author]

Language: English

DOI: 10.2307/3736626