A brief sketch of the origin and development of the Medieval Beast Epic in order to indicate the place of the Cambridge ‘Reinaert’ Fragments (the ‘Culemann Fragments’) among the Epics on Reynard the Fox.

The genuine Beast Epic—as distinguished from short stories, fables with a didactic purpose, and the early short allegorical ‘Physiologus’ or ‘Bestiary’ stories—is not found in classical literature, but was the product of the Middle Ages, from the middle of the tenth to the end of the fifteenth centuries. The oldest versions were in Latin, written by monks who were evidently acquainted with popular traditions concerning the nature and doings of animals, and also well versed in classical Latin literature. The home of the early Beast Epic is Belgium, Lorraine and the North of France.

Apart from a number of minor poems, the first production of any length and unity is the Ecbasis Captivi, written about 940 in hexameters by a monk of German descent in the monastery St. Aper at Toul in Lorraine. The hero of the satirical poem is a calf which runs away from its stable but afterwards returns to it, i.e. a monk who leaves and subsequently returns to his monastery. The fox—still nameless—appears in part of the poem as an old enemy of the wolf, but he is not yet the hero.