The Reinaert Fragments are a collection of seven pages of a Middle Dutch poem attributed to the fifteenth-century Flemish writer Hinrek van Alckmer, and printed in Antwerp in about 1487. This book, originally published in 1927, contains photographic reproductions of the pages, alongside clear transcriptions of the text and three beautiful woodcut illustrations. Karl Breul's detailed introduction sketches the history and development of the story of Reynard the Fox, from its origins in oral tradition and the medieval beast epic to Goethe's famous 'Reinecke Fuchs', indicating the place of the Reinaert poem amongst the various verse and prose versions. The book also includes a corrected version of the van Alckmer fragments, and examines their relationship with the Reinaert II and Reinke texts. The book will be useful to those studying Middle Dutch and Middle Low German literature or printing history, and others interested in the Reynard story. - [Publisher]

The purpose of the present book is to make the unique ‘Culemann Fragments’ (preserved for more than half a century among the treasures of our University Library) accessible to students of Old Netherlandish and Old German literature by an exact photographic reproduction of the seven precious leaves. A brief account of the rise and development of the Medieval Beast Epic has been added in order to indicate the place they hold among the various verse and prose versions of the Reinaert story. The juxta- position of the Netherlandish and the Lubeck texts makes it evident that Hinrek van Alckmer’s ‘Reinaert’ is the immediate source of the famous Low German ‘Reinke de Vos’ from which nearly all subsequent versions are either translated or adapted. - [Author, 1927]

Language: English

Locators: ISBN: 978-0-511-70764-3; DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511707643