Nowadays among scholars the opinion is generally accepted that medieval literary texts can be read as witnesses for the social conditions in which they were written. This then should also be the case for the Beast Epic, but trying to read texts from this corpus in this way raises difficulties. Firstly, for most Beast Epics we only know approximately where and when they came into being, therefore we do not know for whom they were originally intended. Secondly, the Beast Epic mirrors its social context only indirectly. The protagonists are not humans, but animals who behave like humans. I shall try to demonstrate that it is nevertheless possible to analyse the Beast Epic as testimony of certain mental attitudes and qualities, but that this must be done in an indirect way: by analysing the intertextual relationships of the chosen texts first, and by using the results of that analysis as arguments in a sketch of the social context afterwards. As examples I shall use some branches of the Roman de Renart and the Middle Dutch Beast Epics Van den Vos Reynaerde and Reynaerts Historie. - [Author]

Language: English

ISBN: 1-57181-737-9