For the circumstantial evidence for the 1495 edition, see Kenneth Varty,
Reynard, Renart, Reinaert and Other Foxes in Medieval England(Amsterdam,
1999 ), 98 – 99.
William Caxton, trans.,The History of Reynard the Fox, ed. N. F. Blake, EETS
263 (Oxford, 1970 ), 13.
The fate of the royal summons varies through the Renart tradition. Caxton,
following Gherard Leeu’s proseReinaert, does not mention a document: see
W. Gs. Hellinga,Van den Vos Reynaerde: 1 Teksten(Zwolle, 1952 ), 33. In the
French texts, Noble’sfirst two messengers, both ill-fated, clearly do not carry it.
It is Grimbert the badger, sent next, who insists that the royal seal is needed, and
who eventually reads the king’s brief and performative letter:“s’il veoit vostre
seel...Lors sai je bien que il vendroit, / Ja nule essoigne nel tendroit”(ix, 927 ,
929 – 30 ;“once he sees your seal, I know he’ll come without a single excuse”).
The document promises Renart“honte et martire, / et grant anui et grant
contraire”[“shame and torture, great suffering and harsh reprisals”] should he
fail to show (ix, 988 – 89 ). I cite the edition of Gabriel Bianciotto, ed.,Le Roman
de Renart(Paris, 2005 ), based on a gamma family manuscript.
I am indebted here to Luke Sunderland,“Le Cycle de Renart: From theEnfances
to theJugementin a CyclicalRoman de RenartManuscript,”French Studies 62
( 2008 ), 1 – 12 ( 11 ).
For the last book-length comparative treatment, see Gregory Kratzmann,Anglo-
Scottish Literary Relations 1430 – 1550 (Cambridge, 1980 ).
6 .Onauctoritas, see A. J. Minnis,Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary
Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages, 2 nd edn (Philadelphia, 1988 ), 10 – 12 .On
authority and the more general use of“legitimate language”see Pierre Bourdieu,
Language and Symbolic Power, ed. and intro. John B. Thompson, trans. Gino
Raymond and Matthew Adamson (Cambridge, MA, 1991 ), 57 – 61.
These versions present themselves as masculine; for a different focus, see
Jennifer Summit, Lost Property: The Woman Writer and English Literary
History, 1380 – 1589 (Chicago, 2000 ). On the unsettling effects of the tropes of
love-poetry, see Nicolette Zeeman,“The Verse of Courtly Love in the Framing
Narrative of the Confessio Amantis,”Medium Aevum 60 ( 1991 ), 222 – 40.
