An encyclopedic novel bringing together the knowledge of a 14th century scholar, a reliquary work intended for edification, Renart le Counterfeit is the ultimate epigone that the Middle Ages gave to the Roman de Renart. Its author, an anonymous cleric expelled from the orders for bigamy, rewrites various adventures of the goupil in order to teach his readers the narrow path allowing to use the art of Renart without losing one's soul. As in other late stories, the goupil embodies the evil that is gnawing this century, the model of what a prudent man must avoid, felony, pride, lust and gluttony. But in a more unique way, he sometimes restrains his animal instincts and obeys Reason. He then becomes an example of the prudence and perseverance to follow if one wants to thwart the blows of fate and the assaults of Fortune, a mirror with which to identify, a figure of the author and the novelist. The French BnF manuscript 1630, which preserves the first version of the work, composed between 1320 and 1327, had never before been published in its entirety and was only known through extracts. The present edition seeks to do justice to the talent and merits of this unfairly overlooked Champagne cleric, while striving to identify the multiple texts on which his creation was informed. - [Publisher]

Language: French

HALId: hal-04125724