To Jill Mann

In real life animals never speak. We explain their behaviour by relating it to their instincts or their nature, but there is no linguistic commentary from the animals themselves to guide our interpretation. With people, however, there is a continual interaction between behaviour and speech – between what is done and what is said about it. So it is not surprising that a major theme of beast fable and beast epic – the literary genres in which animals are endowed with the power of speech – is the relation between words and deeds, and in particular the discrepancy between the two. This study will attempt to show how this theme is developed in the Middle Dutch animal epics Van den vos Reynaerde and Reynaerts historie.

First, some general information about both poems by way of introduction. The only thing we know for certain about the author of Van den vos Reynaerde is that his name was Willem. The work was probably written in or around Ghent in the thirteenth century (before 1279). Van den vos Reynaerde is generally considered by modern critics to be one of the most accomplished animal epics of the Middle Ages, but it had only one direct imitator, Reynaerts historie. Even less is known about this poem than about Van den vos Reynaerde. Its author is unknown.