The Romance of Renart has often been described as an "animal epic," and Jacques Le Goff saw it as an "epic of hunger." However, the term epic is used in a broad sense, to evoke a kind of fresco with multiple episodes, and in no way claims to offer a generic characterization. We will obviously not dwell on this usage. Another classic connection with the epic lies in this novel's use of themes and techniques from chansons de geste, whose offbeat use has led to its being considered as epic parody. Thus Michéle Gally can write, summarizing the doxa: "Compared to the epic, the Roman de Renart constitutes an anti-song, a song degraded in its stakes, despite the epic theme of feudal wars between barons and between the rebellious baron and the king, from which all religious and national horizon has been evacuated". Jauss already considered that the attitude of the authors was fundamentally parodic with regard to the epic and courtly codes, which they sought to shatter without proposing a replacement structure *. All this is well known, and perhaps too well known. The question we are asking is indeed an idle question if it is a question of determining a generic affiliation, or of saying that there is in the Roman de Renart a "parody" of the chanson de geste. We know that in the Middle Ages the terminology of literary forms was confused and variable, and that the very relevance of the notion of genre was problematic for this literature; the very word epic was also unknown to it, since it only appeared in French in 1675, in a theoretical treatise by Father Le Bossu. - [Author]

Language: French