Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/677

 ROMAN DU RENART.] plays. The fabliau proper, according to the definition of its latest editor, is &quot; the recital, generally comic, of a real or possible incident occurring in ordinary human life.&quot; The comedy, it may be added, is usually of a satiric kind, and occupies itself with every class and rank of men, from the king to the villain. There is no limit to the variety of these lively verse-tales, which are invariably written in eight- syllabled couplets. Now the subject is the misadventure of two Englishmen, whose ignorance of the French language makes them ask for some donkey instead of some lamb ; now it is the fortunes of an exceedingly foolish knight, who lias an amiable ancHngenious mother-in-law; now the de served sufferings of an avaricious or ill-behaved priest ; now the bringing of an ungrateful son to a better mind by the wisdom of babes and sucklings. Not a few of the Canter bury Tales are taken directly from fabliaux ; indeed, Chaucer, with the possible exception of Prior, is our nearest approach to a fabliau-writer. At the other end of Europe the prose novels of Boccaccio and other Italian tale-tellers are largely based upon fabliaux. But their influence in their own country was the greatest. They were the first expression of the spirit which has since animated the most national and popular developments of French literature. Simple and unpretending as they are in form, the fabliaux announce not merely the Gent Nouvellcs Nouvelles and the ffeptameron, L Avocat Patelin, and Pantayruel, but also L Avare and the Roman Comiqiie, Gil Bias, and Candide. They indeed do more than merely prophesy the spirit of these great performances, they directly lead to them. The prose-tale and the farce are the direct outcomes of the fabliau, and the prose-tale and the farce once given, tha novel and the comedy inevitably follow. The special period of fabliau composition appears to have been the 12th and 13th centuries. It signifies on the one side the growth of a lighter and more sportive spirit than had yet prevailed, on another the rise in importance of other and lower orders of men than the priest and the noble, on yet another the consciousness on the part of these lower orders of the defects of the two privileged classes, and of the shortcomings of the system of polity under which these privileged classes enjoyed their privileges. There is, however, in the fabliau proper not so very much of direct satire, this being indeed excluded by the definition given above, and by the thoroughly artistic spirit in which that definition is observed, The fabliaux are so numerous and so various that it is difficult to select any as specially repre sentative. We may, however, mention, both as good ex amples and as interesting from their subsequent history, Le Vair Palfroi, treated in English by Leigh Hunt and by Peacock; Le Vilain Mire, the original of Le Medecin malyre lid ; Le Roi d Anyleterre ct le Jongleur d JEli; La Houce Partie; Le Sot Chevalier, an indecorous but ex tremely amusing story ; and Les Deux Bordeors Ribaus, a piece of great literary interest, as containing allusions to the chansons de gestes and romances most in vogue. Roman du Renart. If the fabliaux are not remarkable for direct satire, that element is supplied in more than compen sating quantity by an extraordinary composition which is closely related to them. Le Roman da Renart, or History of Reynard the Fox is a poem, or rather series of poems, which, from the end of the 12th to the middle of the 14th century, served the citizen poets of northern France, not merely as an outlet for literary expression, but also as a vehicle of satirical comment, now on the general vices and weaknesses of humanity, now on the usual corruptions in church and state, now on the various historical events which occupied public attention from time to time. The enormous popu larity of the subject is shown by the long vogue which it had, and by the empire which it exercised over generations of writers who differed from each other widely in style and G41 temper. Nothing can be farther from the allegorical erudi tion, the political diatribes, and the sermonizing moralities of the authors of Renart le Contre-fait than the sly naivete&quot; of the writers of the earlier branches. Yet these and a long and unknown series of intermediate bards the fox-king pressed into his service, and it is scarcely too much to say that, during the two centuries of his reign, there was hardly a thought in the popular mind which, as it rose to the sur face, did not find expression in an addition to the huge cycle of Renart. We shall not deal with the controversies which have been raised as to the origin of the poem and its central idea. The latter may have been a travestie of real persons and actual events, or it may (and much more probably) have been an expression of thoughts and experiences which recur in every generation. France, the Netherlands, and Germany have contended for the honour of producing llenart ; French, Flemish, German, and Latin for the honour of first describing him. It is sufficient to say that the spirit of the work seems to be more that of the border land between France and Flanders than of any other dis trict, and that, wherever the idea may have originally arisen, it was incomparably more fruitful in France than in any other country. The French poems which we possess on the subject amount in all to nearly 100,000 lines, independently of mere variations, but including the two different versions of Renart le Contre-fait. This vast total is divided into four different poems. The most ancient and remarkable is that edited by M6on under the title of Roman du Renart, and containing, with some additions made by M. Chabaillc, 37 branches and about 32,000 lines. It must not, how ever, be supposed that this total forms a continuous poem like the jEneid or Paradise Lost. On the contrary, the separate branches are the work of different authors, hardly any of whom are known, and, but for their community of subject and to some extent of treatment, might be regarded as separate poems. The history of llenart, his victories over Isengrim, Bruin, and his other unfortunate rivals, his family affection, his outwittings of King Noble the Lion, and all the rest, are too well known to need fresh descrip tion here. It is perhaps in the subsequent poems, which are far less known and much less amusing, that the hold which the idea of Renart had obtained on the mind of northern France, and the ingenious uses to which it was put, are best shown. The first of these is Le Couronnement Renart, a poem of between 3000 and 4000 lines, attributed, on no grounds whatever, to the poetess Marie dc France, and describing how the hero by his ingenuity got himself crowned king. This poem already shows signs of direct moral application and generalizing. These are still more apparent in Renart le Nouvel, a composition of some 8000 lines, written in the year 1288 by the Fleming Jacquemart Gi^lee. Here the- personification of which, in noticing the Roman de la Rose, we shall soon have to give extended mention, becomes evident. Instead of or at least beside the lively personal Eenart who used to steal sausages, set Isengrim fishing with his tail, or make use of Chanti cleer s comb for a purpose for which it was certainly never intended, we have Reiiardie, an abstraction of guile and hypocrisy, triumphantly prevailing over other and better qualities. Lastly, as the Roman de la. Rose of William of Lorris is paralleled by Renart le Nouvel, so its continuation by Jean de Meung is paralleled by the great miscellany of Renart le Contre-fait, which, even in its two existing versions (Mdnage seems to have known a third), extends to fully 50,000 lines. Here we have, besides floods of miscellaneous erudition and discourse, political argument of the most direct and important kind. The wrongs of tho lower orders are bitterly urged. They are almost openly incited to revolt, and it is scarcely too much to say, as M. IX. 81