Odette Larrieu

Originally published in France in 1925, this children's retelling of Le Roman de Renard was translated into English in 1928, and published in New York City. It chronicles the wily fox's many misadventures, as he tricks the other animals, and is sometimes tricked in turn. As with other Reynard tellings, our vulpine hero's antics land him in trouble at the court of the lion king, but here too he manages to trick his way out. In the final episode, the fox is left for dead by Rover the dog, but all is not as it seems. For the narrator tells us, "He recovered, as he had recovered many times before, and went back to his career of wickedness as cheerfully as ever. If you look well and very quietly, some morning when you are alone in the woods, you will very likely see him, going about his business as usual..."

I enjoyed Odette Larrieu's The Story of Reynard the Fox a great deal, finding her prose humorous and quite entertaining. It is only the second Reynard telling I have read, after Rachel Anderson's Renard the Fox, that is based upon the French tradition, rather than the Dutch or German, which are far more common in English language translations and adaptations. The story here is far more episodic, rather than sequential in narrative as it is in the Dutch and German-inspired versions, and some of the incidents do not seem to appear at all in the those country's tellings. Another key difference, it would seem, between the French Reynard tradition, and those of other European ones, is that in Le Roman de Renard the fox is sometimes the one who is beaten, such as in the episode where Tybert the cat makes off with the sausage, eating it gloatingly in Reynard's face. This definitely isn't an incident I have seen (except for the aforementioned Anderson) in any of the books reviewed for my research into three centuries of Reynard retellings for children in the Anglophone world - the topic of my masters dissertation. All in all, a pleasing little volume, one I would recommend to all Reynard lovers, particularly those looking for a children's retelling of Le Roman de Renard.… (meer)