Jean Renart, also known as Jean Renaut, was a Norman

Normans

The Normans were the people who gave their name to Normandy, a region in northern France. They were descended from Norse Viking conquerors of the territory and the native population of Frankish and Gallo-Roman stock...

 trouvère

Trouvère

Trouvère , sometimes spelled trouveur , is the Northern French form of the word trobador . It refers to poet-composers who were roughly contemporary with and influenced by the troubadours but who composed their works in the northern dialects of France...

 or troubadour from the end of the 12th century and the first half of the 13th century to whom three works are ascribed. Nothing else is known of him or his life. He is praised for his realism and his psychological insight.

Firmly attributed to him are two metrical romances

Romance (genre)

As a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romance is a style of heroic prose and verse narrative that was popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures, often of a knight errant portrayed as...

, L'Escoufle ("The kite") and Guillaume de Dole, and a lai

Lai

A lai is a lyrical, narrative poem written in octosyllabic couplets that often deals with tales of adventure and romance.Lais were mainly composed in France and Germany, during the 13th and 14th centuries. A Provençal term for a similar kind of poem is descort.The English term lay is a...

, Lai de l’Ombre.

L'Escoufle

Vigneras proposed in 1933 that the dates for Jean Renaut would have to be moved up: while other scholars dated his activities to 1195 and 1215, he dated L'Escoufle after 1245.

Guillaume de Dole

Guillaume de Dole, "generally regarded as his chef d'oeuvre," is a longer narrative poem, notable for its incorporation of a large number of shorter lyric poems, including a number of chansons de toile

Chanson de toile

The Chanson de toile was a genre of narrative Old French lyric poetry devised by the trouvères which flourished in the late twelfth and early thirteenth century. Some fifteen of them remain; five were written by Audefroi le Bastart, the others are anonymous...

. The date of composition is usually placed early in the thirteenth century.