SOURCE: “Renart to Volpone”in The Fable as Literature, The Athlone Press, 1985, pp. 33-84.

In the following excerpt, Blackham provides an overview of the Roman de Renart, including its origins, themes, and influences.

(i)

Although a masterpiece of medieval French literature with an influence throughout Europe for more than four centuries, Le Roman de Renart is not a single work by one author. As J.J. Jusserand described it at the end of the last century, ‘It was built up, part after part, during several centuries … like a cathedral, each author adding a wing, a tower, a belfry, a steeple …’I risked likening the great Indian fables to opera in some aspects, and with the same looseness might liken Renart in some respects to jazz; not mainly in its popular appeal, but structurally in its improvisations, its continuations and repeats, its co-operation and virtuosities, even its differences of...