Renart le Nouvel, an octosyllabic poem of some eight thousand lines, completed by Jacquemart Giélée in 1289, is one of the first allegorical avatars of the Roman de Renart. At the same time, it is the only work by Renard to have been set in prose, which guaranteed it a certain notoriety even though the Roman de Renart had long since fallen into oblivion. The dérimage is due to an anonymous author and dates from the second half of the fifteenth century. Its main interest consists of some fifty "examples" - the subject of our study - which intersperse the narrative at regular intervals and which are an addition by the prose writer. Before continuing, it will be necessary to explain why we use the word "example" and not the established technical term, its Latin equivalent, exemplum. This is because our "examples" define themselves as such. In the only surviving manuscript, each example is preceded by this term, placed as a title in the middle of the folio; in the printed versions, where the use of space is more rigorous, the appearance of the word in question is the only sign allowing us to see that we are moving from one type of discourse to another. Speaking of examples, we also wish to emphasize that we are dealing with a mixed genre which only partially corresponds to the traditional definition of the exemplum.

Language: French

DOI: 10.1075/rein.4.18suo