A Middle English Poem in the Reynard Tradition

This coauthored essay brings to light a previously unstudied and unedited fragment of a thirteenth-century fox poem in the Reynard tradition, written in English and preserved in a guard book in the library of Corpus Christi College, Oxford (MS 491). We provide a diplomatic transcription of the text as preserved, a lightly edited text, and a gloss. We then situate this fragment of a poem—with its fox physician diagnosing a feverish lion—within what can be known of the Reynard tradition in England and in Continental literatures.