The Middle English Vox & Wolf starts with a fox driven out of the woods by an overwhelming hunger. This is the beast’s only characteristic; in the absence of any name or physical description, the fox is identified as pure hunger, the strength of which is stressed over the first four lines of the poem through intensitives, an emphatic accumulation of negatives, and the repetition of the key-word afingret. The narrative thus originates in the statement of a desire which will motivate all the actions in the poem. This fox appears from the outset as very different to the French Renart, such as we see him in Branch IV of the Roman de Renart which relates the episode of the well. Most striking is his self-centred nature, and the lack of any mention on the narrator’s part of the fox's cunning. - [Author]

Language: English

0925-4757; DOI: 10.1075/rein.3.07sau