Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Early Prose Romances
This old story, said Thomas Carlyle, comes before us with a character such as can belong only to very few - that of being a true world's Book, which, through centuries, was everywhere at home, the spirit of which diffused itself into all languages and all minds. The quaint zesopic figures have painted themselves in innumerable heads; that rough, deep-lying humour has been the laughter of many generations.
Reynard the Fox was German in its origin; Robert the Devil, French. In each tale there was the mediaeval popular sense Of cruel oppression by the strong. In Reinaert, as first written, fraud and cruelty were banished with the Fox out of the Lion's court but the old continuer of the story brought them back, and left them, as they were in the world, or as they seemed to be, triumphant over earthly opposition. In Robert the Devil force of cruelty was exaggerated to the utmost, for the purpose of insist ing on the higher spiritual force that was alone able to triumph over it, and for the purpose of teaching that no sinner, however great, can be beyond the reach of rescue by a true repentance.
The legend of Robert the Devil was developed first in France out of elements that are to be found in the early tales of widely separated peoples. From France the developed story spread into Spain. It scarcely passed into Italy. In Germany it never was acclimatised, though adopted into modern German romance literature. In the Netherlands the romance of RO brecht den Duyvel was forbidden by the Bishop of Antwerp on the 11th of April 1621.
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