Saints in the Roman de Renart

The Roman de Renart is a cycle of 12th and 13th century vernacular tales in octosyllabic verse centering on the interactions between a sly, conniving fox and his acquaintances. Each of three major manuscript “families” of the Roman de Renart constitutes a compilation of between 26 and 31 episodes with about 30,000 verses. In each family over 60 different saints are invoked, identified based on examination of their life, legends, and geographic placement. The import and semiotics of the frequent invocation of saints has been neglected throughout the centuries. It deserves study because calling upon a particular saint can encapsulate a rich deposit of narrative, geographic, and symbolic information that the numerous, mostly anonymous, authors manipulated to humorous, ironic, or subversive effect. This dissertation considers the role of saints in high medieval French culture and demonstrates the reasons for the choice of particular saints in selected episodes of the Roman de Renart.