Okay, with a near-millennia in mind, consider that I often call the plot of Lord of the Rings stilted and old-fashioned. Reynard is dated to about the twelfth century: the stories were likely written before the Magna Carta. “ Hey dude, I’m going to see Future Islands tonight, they’re such a good beatles it is totes swag. Maybe if all bands became known as "beatles" that might analogize the massive impact these stories had on an entire culture. ![]() I cannot.I dunno, I guess it’s like a meme-speak shortcut that gets codified into the real language. The most amazing fact is that these stories had such cultural cachet-gripped so many minds so strongly-that the word for “fox” changed. It condemns the royal court whole cloth the only way to get ahead is to play the game better than your adversary, turning the whole institution a nest of vipers that grows ever better a tearing down their fellows. ![]() Reynard doesn’t rise above but wallows in the courtly intrigue, so the morality play isn’t one of being a good person in the face of adversity. The simple answer to why this is a delight to read revolves around the fact that all the other creatures he menaces earn their mistreatment through greed or cruelty or malice there is no redemption here, only corruption. He’s a liar and a cheat and an absolute scourge, but reading about him and his antics is fascinating. I’m not sure, but surely Reynard would be. I chose to verify this fact independently because, although it was presented to me in a footnote-the socially agreed-upon signal that it comes from the author and not the narrator, who may be unreliable-it is exactly the type of thing Reynard the fox would fabricate. A story that isn't the bible one of which you've probably never heard, let alone read: The Reynard literary material was so popular in medieval France that the French word for “fox” changed from “goupil” to “reynard” (the word still used in French for “fox”). A story that was once so popular that it integrated itself into the very essence of language. ![]() Imagine you have the chance to read a story that was such a cultural touchstone nearly everyone who could read had read it.
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