Reynard the Fox - A New Translation (Hardcover)

Three hundred years before the publication of Machiavelli s The Prince, a now virtually unknown parable became the medieval equivalent of a runaway bestseller. Whereas Machiavelli taught kings how to manipulate their subjects, Reynard the Fox demonstrated how clever subjects could outwit both their kings and enemies alike. Despite its immense popularity at the time, this brains-over-brawn parable largely disappeared, but it reemerges in this rollicking translation by the renowned medieval scholar James Simpson. In these pages the wily Reynard cons the likes of Tybert the Cat, Bruin the Bear, and Isengrim the Wolf, among others, exposing the arrogance, greed, and overweening hypocrisy of the so-called civilized. Cleverly disguised as a tale about the animal kingdom, Simpson s translation of the late-middle-English version restores Reynard as part of a tradition that extends all the way to Orwell s Animal Farm. Highlighted with all new illustrations, Reynard the Fox is the animal fable s version of Homer s Odyssey (Stephen Greenblatt)."