SOURCE: Noble, Peter. “Wace and Renaut de Beaujeu.” French Studies, XLVII, no. 1 (January 1993): 1-5.

In the following essay, Noble argues for Wace's influence on Renaut de Beaujeu's romance Le Bel Inconnu.

Critics are generally agreed that Renaut de Beaujeu had an excellent knowledge of his predecessors and drew quite heavily on some of them in Le Bel Inconnu. Madeleine Tyssens, for example, twice underlines the enormous debt which Renaut owes to Chrétien. She comments that ‘Renaut a donc pillé toute l'œuvre de Chrétien’¹ and argues later in the same article that there is no need to look elsewhere for the sources of Renaut's imagination. ‘Dès lors, lorsque ce roman s'apparente par quelque trait à l'un des romans de Chrétien, il est sage de s'en tenir à l'explication toute simple du plagiat et de faire ainsi l'économie de quelques prototypes qui, français ou celtiques...