Ysengrimus

Name: Ysengrimus
Brand: Unknown
SKU: 9780674724822
Price: 71.99 NZD
Availability: InStock

Series: Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library

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Summary

Ysengrimus is a twelfth-century Latin beast epic from Belgium, renowned as a comic masterpiece of the Middle Ages. The poem details the brutal persecution of the wolf Ysengrimus by Reynard the fox. Through cartoon-like violence, including flayings and mutilations, the wolf suffers punishments that symbolise the greed and corruption of a hybrid ecclesiastic figure, an abbot-bishop. The narrative cleverly turns the predator into prey, using satirical rhetoric to mock and critique church authority.
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Format: Hardback

$71⁹⁹

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Ysengrimus

$71⁹⁹

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Ideal for readers interested in medieval literature, satire, and the cultural history of Europe, especially those fascinated by allegory and the origins of European folktales.

The twelfth-century Latin beast epic Ysengrimus is one of the great comic masterpieces of the Middle Ages. It recounts the persecution of the wolf Ysengrimus--who represents a hybrid abbot-bishop--by his archenemy Reynard the fox. The narrative's details are carefully crafted to make the wolf's punishment fit the abbot-bishop's crime.

Description

The twelfth-century Latin beast epic Ysengrimus is one of the great comic masterpieces of the Middle Ages. This long poem, composed in what is today Belgium, recounts the relentless persecution of the wolf Ysengrimus by his archenemy Reynard the fox, in the course of which the wolf is beaten to a pulp, flayed (twice), mutilated, and finally eaten alive by sixty-six pigs.

The cartoon-like violence of the narrative is not motivated by a gratuitous delight in cruelty but by a specific satiric aim: the wolf represents the hybrid ecclesiastic who is both abbot and bishop, whose greed is comparable to the wolf's. The details of the narrative are carefully crafted to make the wolf's punishment fit the abbot-bishop's crime, creating a topsy-turvy world in which the predator becomes prey.

In the elaborate rhetorical fantasies that accompany the narrative, the wolf's tortures are represented as honours (for example, his flaying is mockingly represented as an episcopal consecration). This poem gave rise to a whole body of narratives, beginning with the earliest branches of the Romance of Renard and extending into most of the European vernaculars, so influential that the name Renard eventually became the standard word for fox in French.