Fifty Years International Reynard Society, “Beast Epic, Fable, Fabliau”

Abstract This article tells the story of how the International Reynard Society came into existence and developed, paying attention to the people involved, the aims of the Society and the ways these were pursued. It also describes the publications of the Society: first the Proceedings of colloquia, then its Yearbook Reinardus . The Society was founded on the basis of genres (beast epic, fable, and fabliau), and genres have clearly influenced the publications of the Society, but their importance has diminished. A constant factor in the publications, however, is the study of the role of one or more animals in a corpus (a text, a genre, an œuvre, images, etc.). The Society researches in various ways the many different roles that animals have played in medieval culture.