INTRODUCTION xxl

their adventures were told by the Folk, as the
adventures of persons are told, for the purpose
of raising a laugh. Later on when significant
names were given to the new beast personages
introduced, there was a meaning, and often a
bitter meaning, underlying the laugh. The
Beast Jest had grown into the Beast Satire.
The story of the adventures of Sir Wolf and
Sir Fox, told first merely to raise a guffaw,
became in the hands of the later developers of
the thesis means of casting ridicule on the
institutions of Medieval Society. The hypo-
crisy of the Monk, the greed of the Noble,
the craft of the Lawyer, the conquest of the
world by cunning wickedness—these were the
themes which formed the farrago of the later
branches of the Reynard Cycle. While seem-
ingly only continuing the earlier adventures of
their beast heroes, a change had come over the
spirit of the Cycle: the Beast Epic had become
a World Satire.

The earlier critics of Reynard laid almost
exclusive stress upon this satiric aspect of the
Cycle. The Roman de Renard was regarded
as an outcome of the same literary movement
that produced the second and satiric half of the
Roman de la Rose. Carlyle, in the remarks on