At the beginning of his vast Renardian compilation, the author of Renart le Contrefait declares that on Regnart we can gloss, / think, study, muse / more than on anything that exists. Having reached the end of the work, the reader cannot but subscribe to this opinion, since the adventures of the fox effectively provide the cleric of Troyes with the opportunity—or the pretext—to make comments and to approach the most diverse subjects, from the creation of the world to the torture of Pierre Rémy, passing by the eating habits of Charlemagne, the circumference of the earth, the trial of the Templars and the amorous misadventures of Virgil, among others. Around the known episodes of the old Roman de Renart, moral and satirical reflections, allegorical, comic and historical stories, theological and scientific expositions follow one another and combine. This great diversity of subject is matched only by the number of sources that the author exploits and the variety of earlier texts that he integrates into his work... Renart le Contrefait has yet been little studied until now and if the renewed interest in this text that we have seen in recent years has made it possible to make notable progress, the resources offered by the work are still far from being exhausted.It is from this observation that the project of which this volume is the result was born. The contributions it brings together mainly come from the scientific meeting held in Brussels in the spring of 2011. Designed as an invitation to rediscover this work, which is both disconcerting and fascinating, the conference gave rise to various investigations which, if they certainly do not exhaust its richness, provide new literary, linguistic, codicological and philological insights and allow us to better appreciate the intellectual complexity of the creation of the cleric of Troyes and the interest to continue its study. - [Abstract]

Language: French

978-2-9600769-6-7