Of Reynaert the Fox: Text and Facing Translation of the Middle Dutch Beast Epic Van den Vos Reynaerde

by André Bouwman (Editor), Bart Besamusca (Editor), Matthias Hüning (Contributor)

An entertaining reworking of the most popular branch of the Old French tale of Reynard the Fox, the mid-thirteenth century Dutch epic Van den vos Reynaerde is one of the earliest long literary works in the Dutch vernacular. Sly Reynaert and a cast of other comical woodland characters find themselves again and again caught up in escapades that often provide a satirical commentary on human society.

            
This charmingly volume is the first bilingual edition of the tale, featuring facing pages with an English translation by Thea Summerfield, making the undisputed masterpiece of medieval Dutch literature accessible to a wide international audience. Accompanying the critical text and parallel translation are an introduction, interpretative notes, an index of names, a complete glossary, and a short introduction to Middle Dutch.

Genres: Medieval, Poetry, Classics

368 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Alex Róbertsdóttir · Rating 4 out of 5]

I do love me a beast epic, especially one that is preserved in a manuscript. This translation was super fun! Obviously I cannot read the Middle Dutch, but it was cool to have that available to reference and the footnotes made a world of contextual difference. And of course, it was a very fun story, And I am not surprised it has lasted as long as it has.

[Nicky · Rating 5 out of 5]

A friend, Shanra, sent me this! I greatly enjoyed it: I've always vaguely known the story of Reynaert the Fox, but I couldn't tell you where I knew it from or probably even articulately tell you a story about him. I just knew of a trickster fox character.

It's a fun story, and this translation seems good to me, vibrant and easy to read. The edition has a facing translation, and also a reasonably good introduction (I am pondering the implied perspective on feudalism in the poem, now), a glossary, an introduction to Middle Dutch...

[E · Rating 2 out of 5]

- that this is considered a masterpiece of Dutch literature is maybe embarrassing
- no (true) poetry or subtext beyond the literal—the political-polemical or moral-instructive—it's nothing more than plot and fable
- still, fun enough and provides the good skeleton for a better story
- love all the addenda and footnotes
- great: "Take good heed of the following. / The frogs used to be free / and yet they complained / that they had no one with authority over them. / And they got together / and sent up a loud croaking to God / to give them, by his command, / a king who would have power over them. / This begged the old ones and the young ones / with loud croaking, with a loud noise. / God heard the frogs / at a certain time of year / and sent them king stork, / who killed and devoured them / wherever he found them, / both in the water and in the field. / Where he could get them in his power, / he was always merciless towards them. / Then they complained; it was too late. / It was too late, I'll tell you why: / they who used to be free / will irreversibly / be subjected to him for ever more / and live eternally in fear of king stork."
- horrifying: note: "To tame and train a newly caught falcon it would have its eyes 'seeled': 'Seeling consisted of putting one neat stitch through the lower eyelids with a linen thread and tying the ends over the head (or [...] stitching through the upper lids and tying under the beak'). This was commonly done before transportation by the merchants, so as to keep the birds calm."

[Kate Heartfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful, easy-to-use translation.

[Nick Masaeli · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leuk verhaal en heel memorabel

[Alicia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Now, to really be able to appreciate this I would have had to read the Old Dutch text and look up the bits I didn't understand. Problem with that being the amount of time it would have taken when I had to read this within a certain amount of time. So I read the English translation facing the Old Dutch including all the notes, so I did get the gist of some of the Old Dutch meanings, but obviously in English the text misses a lot, the rhymes for instance, but also certain ways of saying things that are not particularly translatable.
For study purposes this way of doing things was fine. I just didn't get the full enjoyment of the narrative.
I do think it is a very interesting text and I look forward to looking into it in more detail in the future.
I thought it was quite funny at times and I enjoyed the build up of the story and the characters. It was very interesting to look at the text from a medieval point of view, as that is the time it was written, and what we discussed in the lecture on it today what the function was in those times as having animals as the main characters, which led to interesting discussion points.
Only interesting if you like medieval literature/poetry and probably best in a Dutch translation rather than this English one I bought.