Under the shadow of the gallows, Reynard makes an impassioned confession and promises to go on a pilgrimage to Rome if he is spared. ‘Reynard started to violently tremble, from his ears to the white chape of his tail, possessed with an aspen fear which was not altogether manufactured.’ Reynard makes his speech before the court, excusing his misdeeds but, so vehement are the voices against him that the king condemns him to death. Finally Sir Grimbert the badger, Reynard’s good friend, agrees to ‘bring him in’. First Sir Bruin, then Sir Tybert, who both suffer injury and humiliation without luring Reynard from his fortress of Malperduys. Tired of complaints of Reynard’s misdeeds, King Noble sends ambassadors to summon the fox to court to give an account of himself. ‘Barely able to see, bombarded with a thousand icy arrows, tore through the downpour, sinking into the mud and slipping on far slugs and wet hay and slopped cowpats for the long miles until he reached the river path.’ Thus we have King Noble the lion – privileged, fond of a drink, Sir Bruin the bear – bumbling, vain and greedy, Sir Tybert the cat – a professor at Louvain, Sir Isengrim the wolf – a thoroughly nasty piece of work, and of course the dashing, witty and silver-tongued anti-hero himself, Sir Reynard. Reynard the Fox is pure political satire in which animals are made to represent the ruling classes in all their arrogance, foibles and underhand dealings. Caxton’s work was itself a translation, into the English of the time, of a thirteenth century Dutch poem Van den vos Reinaerde. ![]() Her novel, described in the blurb as an ‘innovative translation’, uses for its material a prose work by William Caxton from around 1480. Anne Louise Avery’s book, Reynard the Fox, published in 2020, is one such embellishment, told in the literary fiction genre. The chief source is the Fables of Aesop which contain several fox stories, and these have been added to and embellished throughout Europe in the centuries ever since. ![]() Stories of the cunning fox, his escapades and his victims, have their origin in ancient Greece.
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