Abstract
This dissertation presents the results of a comparative study of concepts of honour and loyalty in medieval German and Dutch animal epics. It concerns analyses of three Germanic fox stories: Reinhart Fuchs, Van den vos Reynaerde, and Reynaerts historie. They are examined here from a systematic comparative perspective for the
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first time. The emphasis is on the categories 'honour' and 'loyalty', which play a central role in the relationship between a king and his servants in the Middle Ages. The courtly categories 'honour' and 'loyalty' have previously been studied through other texts, but not yet through Germanic animal epics. This dissertation shows that the Germanic animal epic is a sustained and fierce critique of courtly ideals and thus provides new insights into courtly culture. This thesis consists of four chapters. The first chapter describes the research question and objective. It gives an overview of the state of research within German and Dutch Medieval Studies. It also explains the thesis's theoretical and methodological framework. Finally, it explains the text corpus and the study's structure. The second chapter provides an overview of Western European animal epics. The focus here is on the distribution of Old French narrative material in the German-speaking lands. The German and Dutch traditions and the stories Reinhart Fuchs, Van den vos Reynaerde and Reynaerts historie are examined in more detail. The chapter ends with a comparison of the three stories, identifying important differences and similarities in the story of the meeting of the court. In all three cases, the king seems to be able to retain his honour at the beginning of the court, but at the end there is always a loss of honour. The manner in which honour is retained and honour lost is different in all three stories. This observation forms the starting point for the further analysis. The third chapter focuses on analyses of concepts of honour and loyalty in Reinhart Fuchs, Van den vos Reynaerde, and the second half of Reynaerts historie. The three analyses have a systematic structure to allow for comparison between the individual sections. The focus is on the following topics: the story of the court day; the king as main character; the fox as main character; the feudal relationship between the king and fox; and, finally, the end of the court day. Semantic analyses discuss the usage of the words honour and loyalty. Each analysis ends with an intermediate review that summarises the main findings. The fourth chapter describes the results of this study. The chapter ends with a concluding review.
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