SOURCE: “The Use of Fables in Reinaerts Historie,” in Third International Beast Epic, Fable, and Fabliau Colloquium, edited by Jan Goossens and Timothy Sodmann, Böhlau Verlag, 1981, pp. 461-83.

In the following essay, Wacker defends the use of the fables found in Reinaerts historie, explaining how and why they effectively illustrate the author's message.

Reinaerts historie is one of the most influential Middle Dutch stories. In the Netherlands it was printed and reprinted until the second half of the nineteenth century. And indirectly it has been the source of William Caxton's The History of Reynard the Fox (1481) and of the Lübeck edition of Reinke de vos (1498). And thus, for more than four centuries, the principal version of the Reinaert story as it circulated in Northern Europe has been a more or less adapted version of Reinaerts historie. But in the histories of Dutch literature, Reinaerts historie has...