SOURCE: “Reynard the Fox and the Manipulation of the Popular Proverb,” in The Learned and the Lewed: Studies in Chaucer and Medieval Literature, edited by Larry D. Benson, Harvard University Press, 1974, pp. 265-78.

In the following essay, Sands analyzes the proverbs found in great abundance in Reinaerts Historie and explains their purpose in terms of truth and irony.

The anonymous Middle Dutch poem Reinaerts Historie (usually referred to as R II) was written sometime around 1375.¹ Its first half (3,480 lines) amounts to a close retelling of a poem written perhaps one hundred years before called Van den vos Reinaerde.² Its second half (4,314 lines) is a continuation and conclusion of the earlier poem. Van den vos Reinaerde (usually referred to as R I) is a surprisingly unified piece of narration, but it can also be said that a sense of unity—this, however, arising chiefly from tone and style—informs...