SOURCE: “Tristan and Renart: Two Tricksters,” in L'Esprit Créateur, Vol. XVI, No. 1, Spring, 1976, pp. 30-38.

In the following essay, Regalado compares the Renart stories with the tale of Tristan and Iseut, contending that both stemmed from similar narratives of ambiguous tricksters.

Seignor, oï avez maint conte que maint conteor vos raconte, coment Paris ravi Elainne, les max qu'el en ot et la paine: de Tristant, dont La Chievre fist … 

(Roman de Renart, Br. III, vv. 1-5¹)

With these words, Pierre de Saint-Cloud, author of the earliest French branch of the Roman de Renart, set his story of the war between Renart and Ysengrin the wolf in the line of stories about celebrated adulterers: Paris and Helen, Tristan and Iseut. The contemporary stories of Renart and Tristan are indeed alike in many ways²; both revolve around a primordial sexual transgression involving Renart or Tristan and the wife of...