El Espejo y la polea en Le Puits : reflexividad y amoralidad del Roman de Renart

Abstract

Le Puits, a famous branch of the Roman de Renart (Martin, IV; Strubel Va) that recounts the adventures of Renart and Isengrin in the well of a Cistercian abbey, has prompted heated critical debate regarding two issues that have often obscured the literary merits of the work: identifying the sources used by the author, and establishing the chronology of the extant versions. The aim of this article is to show the high degree of literary craft evinced by one of the versions that have come down to us. This involves firstly surveying the vast network of intertextual relations that connect this tale with the literature of its time, and secondly analysing the reflexive nature of the text, a text which, under the mask of fiction and through a sophisticated compositional architecture, delights in revealing the writing strategies that govern the matiere renardienne.