Creighton University

I am at last reading this review many years later.  I thought it would brighten my view of this maddening book.  It did just the opposite.  I believe it agrees with my discomfort with the book.  The reviewer rightly praises Anno’s illustrations.  Of his double approach Johnson writes “The personal, intimate voice crucial to this ventriloquism fails.”  Mr. Fox’s “ramblings provide no specific counterpoint to the classic tales.  Naïve and quibblingly modern by turns, he narrates non sequiturs.”  Touché!

This seems to be much more than a review of Simpson’s Reynard – more of a dive into Reynard’s lasting appeal.  The byline of the review is “What the stories of Reynard tell us about ourselves.”  I note helpful observations like this: “Our notion of a clean-lined narrative did not develop until well after the Renaissance.”  Then there is this from Simpson’s introduction: a great part of the pleasure of the book is its revelation of the stupidity of our fellow-creatures.  Acocella finds Reynard baffling in terms of its moral inconsistency.  “Caxton, or the narrator isn’t [a fox], and his attitude toward Reynard’s sins is strangely inconsistent.”  Fascinating reading!