Following on from our study of the prologue to Renart (Zufferey 2009), we would like to revisit here the delicate question of the genesis of the twenty-six branches constituting the novel of Renart and their tradition through the fifteen or so collections that have come down to us. Can we continue to maintain that the first branches were written from 1170, at the very time when Benoît de Sainte-Maure was writing his Histoire des ducs de Normandie (who would already refer to it through the dam Isengrin of v. 18343), and detect in v. 8 of the prologue (the very conjectural Romanz d’Ivain et de sa beste) an allusion to the novel of the Chevalier au lion on which Chrétien de Troyes worked, according to the most likely hypothesis, between 1177 and 1179? Can we continue to repeat that as early as 1180, the Alsatian Heinrich der Glîchezâre adapted half a dozen of the oldest branches in his Reinhart Fuchs, while Germanists have established, since the second half of the 20th century, that the terminus post quem for this work in Middle High German, which is inspired by the first eight branches, must be fixed at 1192? - [Author]

Language: French