Renaud de Beaujeu is the name of a medieval French author of Arthurian romance. He is known for only one major work, Le Bel Inconnu, the Fair Unknown, a poem of 6266 lines in Old French that was composed in the late-twelfth or early-thirteenth century. Renaud left us his name at the end of this poem: 'Renals de Biauju, or, as usually written, Renaud de Beaujeu', In modern French he is known as Renaut de Beaujeu. Le Bel Inconnu survives in only one manuscript: Chantilly, Bibliothèque du Château, 472 (626).

William Henry Schofield

William Henry Schofield

William Henry Schofield was an American academic, founder of the Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature. He was professor of comparative literature at Harvard University, and president of the American-Scandinavian Foundation ....

, a Harvard scholar, wrote of Renaud de Beaujeu in 1895: 'He is only known to us otherwise as the author of a song, one stanza of which is preserved in Le Roman de la Rose ou de Guillaume de Dole

Guillaume de Dole

Guillaume de Dole is an Old French narrative romance by Jean Renart. Composed in the early thirteenth century, the poem is 5656 lines long and is especially notable for the large number of chansons it contains, and for its active female protagonist...

. As Gaston Paris says, this citation shows, however, that he was a knight and that his song was well known before the year 1200.'