Fabliau
Encyclopedia
A fabliau is a comic, often anonymous tale written by jongleurs in northeast France
between ca. 1150 and 1400. They are generally characterized by an excessiveness of sexual and scatological obscenity
. Several of them were reworked by Giovanni Boccaccio
for the Decamerone and by Geoffrey Chaucer
for his Canterbury Tales. Some 150 French fabliaux are extant, the number depending on how narrowly fabliau is defined. According to R. Howard Bloch, fabliaux are the first expression of literary realism
in Europe.
Fabliaux originally come from the Orient
and were brought to the West by returning crusaders
; from fabliaux comes the French drama
.
; Douglas Bush
, longtime professor at Harvard University
, called it "a short story broader than it is long."
The fabliau is remarkable in that it seems to have no direct literary predecessor in the West, but was brought from the East by returning crusaders in the 12th century. The closest literary genre is the fable
as found in Aesop
"and its eastern origins or parallels," but it is less moral and less didactic than the fable. In its lack of explicit moralism it is much closer to the novel
than to the parable
: "the story is the first thing, the moral the second, and the latter is never suffered to interfere with the former."
The earliest known fabliau is the anonymous Richeut
(ca. 1159-1175); one of the earliest known writers of fabliaux is Rutebeuf
, "the prototype of the jongleur of medieval literature."
The genre has been quite influential: passages in longer medieval poems such as Le Roman de Renart as well as tales found in collections like Giovanni Boccaccio
's Decamerone and Geoffrey Chaucer
's Canterbury Tales have their origin in one or several fabliaux.
When the fabliau gradually disappeared, at the beginning of the 16th century, it was replaced by the prose
short story, which was greatly influenced by its predecessor. Famous French writers such as Molière
, Jean de La Fontaine
, and Voltaire
owe much to the tradition of the fabliau.
ed husbands, rapacious clergy
, and foolish peasant
s, as well as beggars, connivers, thieves, and whores. Two groups are often singled out for criticism: the clergy and women. The status of peasants appears to vary, based on the audience for which the fabliau was being written. Poems that were presumably written for the nobility
portray peasants (vilains in French
) as stupid and vile, whereas those written for the lower classes often tell of peasants getting the better of the clergy.
The audience for fabliaux is estimated differently by different critics. Joseph Bedier suggests a bourgeois audience, which sees itself reflected in the urban settings and lower-class types portrayed in fabliaux. On the other hand, Per Nykrog's argues that fabliaux were directed towards a noble audience, and concludes that fabliaux were the impetus for literary refreshment.
, who suggests in the Ars Amatoria
(II.704-5) that the Muse should not enter the room where the lovers are in bed; and Chrétien de Troyes
, who maintains silence on the exact nature of the joy discovered by Lancelot and Guinevere in Le Chevalier de la Charrette (4676-4684). Lais
and fabliaux have much in common; an example of a poem straddling the fence between the two genres is Lecheor
.
Fabliaux derive a lot of their force from puns and other verbal figures; indeed, "fabliaux . . . are obsessed with wordplay." Especially important are paranomasia and catachresis
, tropes which disrupt ordinary signification and displace ordinary meanings--by similarity of sound, for instance, one can have both "con" and "conte" ("cunt" and "tale") in the same word, a common pun in fabliaux.
in general, the octosyllable
rhyme
d couplet
, the most common verse form used in verse chronicle
s, romance
s (the romans), lai
s, and dit
s. They are generally short, a few hundred lines; Douin de L'Avesne's Trudot, at 2984 lines, is exceptionally long.
, Garin, Gautier le Leu
, Rutebeuf
, Enguerrant le Clerc d'Oisi and Douin de L'Avesne.
Some representative tales:
The tale is found practically unchanged in Boccaccio's Decamerone and in Geoffrey Chaucer
's "The Reeve's Tale
."
"), a black comedy
, a merchant returns home after an absence of two years to find his wife with a newborn son. She explains one snowy day she swallowed a snowflake while thinking about her husband which caused her to conceive. Pretending to believe the "miracle", they raise the boy until the age of 15 when the merchant takes him on a business trip to Genoa
. There, he sells the boy into slavery
. On his return, he explains to his wife that the sun burns bright and hot in Italy
; since the boy was begotten by a snowflake, he melted in the heat.
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
between ca. 1150 and 1400. They are generally characterized by an excessiveness of sexual and scatological obscenity
Obscenity
An obscenity is any statement or act which strongly offends the prevalent morality of the time, is a profanity, or is otherwise taboo, indecent, abhorrent, or disgusting, or is especially inauspicious...
. Several of them were reworked by Giovanni Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian author and poet, a friend, student, and correspondent of Petrarch, an important Renaissance humanist and the author of a number of notable works including the Decameron, On Famous Women, and his poetry in the Italian vernacular...
for the Decamerone and by Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...
for his Canterbury Tales. Some 150 French fabliaux are extant, the number depending on how narrowly fabliau is defined. According to R. Howard Bloch, fabliaux are the first expression of literary realism
Literary realism
Literary realism most often refers to the trend, beginning with certain works of nineteenth-century French literature and extending to late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century authors in various countries, towards depictions of contemporary life and society "as they were." In the spirit of...
in Europe.
Fabliaux originally come from the Orient
Orient
The Orient means "the East." It is a traditional designation for anything that belongs to the Eastern world or the Far East, in relation to Europe. In English it is a metonym that means various parts of Asia.- Derivation :...
and were brought to the West by returning crusaders
Crusades
The Crusades were a series of religious wars, blessed by the Pope and the Catholic Church with the main goal of restoring Christian access to the holy places in and near Jerusalem...
; from fabliaux comes the French drama
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...
.
History and definition of the genre
The fabliau is defined as a short narrative in (usually octosyllabic) verse, between 300 and 400 lines long, its content often comic or satiric. In France, it flourished in the 12th and 13th centuries; in England, it was popular in the 14th century. Fabliau is often compared to the later short storyShort story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
; Douglas Bush
Douglas Bush
Douglas Bush was a literary critic and literary historian. He taught for most of his life at Harvard University, where his students included many of the most prominent scholars, writers, and academics of several generations, including Walter Jackson Bate, Neil Rudenstine, Paul Auster and Rabbi...
, longtime professor at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, called it "a short story broader than it is long."
The fabliau is remarkable in that it seems to have no direct literary predecessor in the West, but was brought from the East by returning crusaders in the 12th century. The closest literary genre is the fable
Fable
A fable is a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, mythical creatures, plants, inanimate objects or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized , and that illustrates a moral lesson , which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim.A fable differs from...
as found in Aesop
Aesop
Aesop was a Greek writer credited with a number of popular fables. Older spellings of his name have included Esop and Isope. Although his existence remains uncertain and no writings by him survive, numerous tales credited to him were gathered across the centuries and in many languages in a...
"and its eastern origins or parallels," but it is less moral and less didactic than the fable. In its lack of explicit moralism it is much closer to the novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
than to the parable
Parable
A parable is a succinct story, in prose or verse, which illustrates one or more instructive principles, or lessons, or a normative principle. It differs from a fable in that fables use animals, plants, inanimate objects, and forces of nature as characters, while parables generally feature human...
: "the story is the first thing, the moral the second, and the latter is never suffered to interfere with the former."
The earliest known fabliau is the anonymous Richeut
Richeut
Richeut is the earliest known fabliau, dating from 1159.Although Richeut shares many of the same characteristics as other fabliaux, it has several unique features: 1. It mentions the outcome of a sexual encounter. 2. It breaks the taboo of incest. 3. It is unusually long, containing 1019...
(ca. 1159-1175); one of the earliest known writers of fabliaux is Rutebeuf
Rutebeuf
Rutebeuf , a trouvère, was born in the first half of the 13th century, possibly in Champagne ; he was evidently of humble birth, and he was a Parisian by education and residence. His name is nowhere mentioned by his contemporaries...
, "the prototype of the jongleur of medieval literature."
The genre has been quite influential: passages in longer medieval poems such as Le Roman de Renart as well as tales found in collections like Giovanni Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian author and poet, a friend, student, and correspondent of Petrarch, an important Renaissance humanist and the author of a number of notable works including the Decameron, On Famous Women, and his poetry in the Italian vernacular...
's Decamerone and Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...
's Canterbury Tales have their origin in one or several fabliaux.
When the fabliau gradually disappeared, at the beginning of the 16th century, it was replaced by the prose
Prose
Prose is the most typical form of written language, applying ordinary grammatical structure and natural flow of speech rather than rhythmic structure...
short story, which was greatly influenced by its predecessor. Famous French writers such as Molière
Molière
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature...
, Jean de La Fontaine
Jean de La Fontaine
Jean de La Fontaine was the most famous French fabulist and one of the most widely read French poets of the 17th century. He is known above all for his Fables, which provided a model for subsequent fabulists across Europe and numerous alternative versions in France, and in French regional...
, and Voltaire
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire , was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state...
owe much to the tradition of the fabliau.
Cast of characters, audience
Typical fabliaux contain a vast array of characters, including cuckoldCuckold
Cuckold is a historically derogatory term for a man who has an unfaithful wife. The word, which has been in recorded use since the 13th century, derives from the cuckoo bird, some varieties of which lay their eggs in other birds' nests...
ed husbands, rapacious clergy
Clergy
Clergy is the generic term used to describe the formal religious leadership within a given religion. A clergyman, churchman or cleric is a member of the clergy, especially one who is a priest, preacher, pastor, or other religious professional....
, and foolish peasant
Peasant
A peasant is an agricultural worker who generally tend to be poor and homeless-Etymology:The word is derived from 15th century French païsant meaning one from the pays, or countryside, ultimately from the Latin pagus, or outlying administrative district.- Position in society :Peasants typically...
s, as well as beggars, connivers, thieves, and whores. Two groups are often singled out for criticism: the clergy and women. The status of peasants appears to vary, based on the audience for which the fabliau was being written. Poems that were presumably written for the nobility
Nobility
Nobility is a social class which possesses more acknowledged privileges or eminence than members of most other classes in a society, membership therein typically being hereditary. The privileges associated with nobility may constitute substantial advantages over or relative to non-nobles, or may be...
portray peasants (vilains in French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
) as stupid and vile, whereas those written for the lower classes often tell of peasants getting the better of the clergy.
The audience for fabliaux is estimated differently by different critics. Joseph Bedier suggests a bourgeois audience, which sees itself reflected in the urban settings and lower-class types portrayed in fabliaux. On the other hand, Per Nykrog's argues that fabliaux were directed towards a noble audience, and concludes that fabliaux were the impetus for literary refreshment.
Subject matter
The subject matter is often sexual: fabliau is concerned with the elements of love left out by poets who wrote in the more elevated genres such as OvidOvid
Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
, who suggests in the Ars Amatoria
Ars Amatoria
The Ars amatoria is an instructional love elegy in three books by the Roman poet Ovid, penned around 2 CE. It claims to provide teaching in three areas of general preoccupation: how and where to find women in Rome, how to seduce them, and how to prevent others from stealing them.-Background:After...
(II.704-5) that the Muse should not enter the room where the lovers are in bed; and Chrétien de Troyes
Chrétien de Troyes
Chrétien de Troyes was a French poet and trouvère who flourished in the late 12th century. Perhaps he named himself Christian of Troyes in contrast to the illustrious Rashi, also of Troyes...
, who maintains silence on the exact nature of the joy discovered by Lancelot and Guinevere in Le Chevalier de la Charrette (4676-4684). Lais
Lais
Lais may refer to one of the following:*Lais of Corinth, a courtesan*Lais of Hyccara, a courtesan*Laïs, a musical group*Plural for Lai, a poetic form*Breton lais*The Lais of Marie de France*Lais River in Arjeplog Municipality, Sweden....
and fabliaux have much in common; an example of a poem straddling the fence between the two genres is Lecheor
Lecheor
Lecheor is a short, bawdy Breton lai that tells the story a group of noble women who decide to write a lai about female genitalia.-Composition and manuscripts:...
.
Fabliaux derive a lot of their force from puns and other verbal figures; indeed, "fabliaux . . . are obsessed with wordplay." Especially important are paranomasia and catachresis
Catachresis
Catachresis is "misapplication of a word, especially in a mixed metaphor" according to the Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory...
, tropes which disrupt ordinary signification and displace ordinary meanings--by similarity of sound, for instance, one can have both "con" and "conte" ("cunt" and "tale") in the same word, a common pun in fabliaux.
Form
The standard form of the fabliau is that of Medieval French literatureMedieval French literature
Medieval French literature is, for the purpose of this article, literature written in Oïl languages during the period from the eleventh century to the end of the fifteenth century....
in general, the octosyllable
Octosyllable
The octosyllable or octosyllabic verse is a line of verse with eight syllables. It is equivalent to tetrameter verse in iambs or trochees in languages with a stress accent. It is often used in French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese poetry...
rhyme
Rhyme
A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds in two or more words and is most often used in poetry and songs. The word "rhyme" may also refer to a short poem, such as a rhyming couplet or other brief rhyming poem such as nursery rhymes.-Etymology:...
d couplet
Couplet
A couplet is a pair of lines of meter in poetry. It usually consists of two lines that rhyme and have the same meter.While traditionally couplets rhyme, not all do. A poem may use white space to mark out couplets if they do not rhyme. Couplets with a meter of iambic pentameter are called heroic...
, the most common verse form used in verse chronicle
Chronicle
Generally a chronicle is a historical account of facts and events ranged in chronological order, as in a time line. Typically, equal weight is given for historically important events and local events, the purpose being the recording of events that occurred, seen from the perspective of the...
s, romance
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...
s (the romans), 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...
s, and dit
DIT
DIT is a three letter abbreviation that can mean:*Defining Issues Test - a quantitative test of moral reasoning by James Rest*Dehradun Institute of Technology, Dehradun - a premier engineering college of India*Delhi Institute of Technology...
s. They are generally short, a few hundred lines; Douin de L'Avesne's Trudot, at 2984 lines, is exceptionally long.
Authors and tales
Famous writers of fabliau include Jean BodelJean Bodel
Jean Bodel, who lived in the late twelfth century, was an Old French poet who wrote a number of chansons de geste as well as many fabliaux. He lived in Arras....
, Garin, Gautier le Leu
Gautier le Leu
Gautier le Leu , sometimes referred to as Gautier le Long, was a French minstrel who wrote in the middle of the 13th century. He is one of the most important authors of fabliaux, six of which are attributed to him and also wrote two dits, a poem of proverbs, and a longer narrative poem...
, Rutebeuf
Rutebeuf
Rutebeuf , a trouvère, was born in the first half of the 13th century, possibly in Champagne ; he was evidently of humble birth, and he was a Parisian by education and residence. His name is nowhere mentioned by his contemporaries...
, Enguerrant le Clerc d'Oisi and Douin de L'Avesne.
Some representative tales:
Gombert et les deus clers
A well-known storyline is found in "Gombert et les deus clers" ("Gombert and the two clerks"). Two traveling clerks (students) take up lodging with a villain, and share the bedroom with Gombert, his beautiful wife, and their two children—one teenage girl, and one baby. One of the clerks climbs into bed with the teenage daughter and, promising her his ring, has his way with her; the other, while Gombert is "ala pissier" ("gone pissing," 85), moves the crib with the baby so that Gombert, on his return, lies down in the bed occupied by the clerks—one of whom is in bed with his daughter, while the other is now having sex with Gombert's wife, who thinks it's Gombert come to pleasure her. When the first clerk returns to his bed where he thinks his friend still is, he tells Gombert all about his adventure: "je vien de fotre / mes que ce fu la fille a l'oste" ("I've just been fucking, and if it wasn't the host's daughter," 152-53). Gombert attacks the first clerk, but ends up being beaten up by both.The tale is found practically unchanged in Boccaccio's Decamerone and in Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...
's "The Reeve's Tale
The Reeve's Tale
"The Reeve's Tale" is the third story told in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. The reeve, named Oswald in the text, is the manager of a large estate who reaped incredible profits for his master and himself. He is described in the Tales as skinny and bad-tempered. The Reeve had once been...
."
L'enfant de neige
In "L'enfant de neige" ("The snow babyThe Snow-child
The Snow-child is a widespread European folktale, found in many medieval tellings.It is Aarne-Thompson type 1362.-Synopsis:A merchant returns home after an absence of two years to find his wife with a newborn son. She explains one snowy day she swallowed a snowflake while thinking about her...
"), a black comedy
Black comedy
A black comedy, or dark comedy, is a comic work that employs black humor or gallows humor. The definition of black humor is problematic; it has been argued that it corresponds to the earlier concept of gallows humor; and that, as humor has been defined since Freud as a comedic act that anesthetizes...
, a merchant returns home after an absence of two years to find his wife with a newborn son. She explains one snowy day she swallowed a snowflake while thinking about her husband which caused her to conceive. Pretending to believe the "miracle", they raise the boy until the age of 15 when the merchant takes him on a business trip to Genoa
Genoa
Genoa |Ligurian]] Zena ; Latin and, archaically, English Genua) is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria....
. There, he sells the boy into slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
. On his return, he explains to his wife that the sun burns bright and hot in Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
; since the boy was begotten by a snowflake, he melted in the heat.
Other examples
Other popular fabliaux include:- "La vielle qui graissa la patte de chevalier" ("The old woman who paid the knight for favors.")
- "Berangier au long Cul" ("Berenger of the long arse")
- "Le Pauvre Clerc" ("The poor clerk")
- "Le Couverture partagée" ("The shared covering")
- "Le Pretre qui mangea les mûres" ("The priest who ate mulberries")
- "La crotte" ("The turd")
- "Le Chevalier qui fit les cons parler" ("The Knight who made cunts speak")
- (Dit de) La vieille Truande
See also
- Anglo-Norman literatureAnglo-Norman literatureAnglo-Norman literature is literature composed in the Anglo-Norman language developed during the period 1066–1204 when the Duchy of Normandy and England were united in the Anglo-Norman realm.-Introduction:...
- Medieval literatureMedieval literatureMedieval literature is a broad subject, encompassing essentially all written works available in Europe and beyond during the Middle Ages . The literature of this time was composed of religious writings as well as secular works...
- Aarne–Thompson classification system
- Motif-Index of Folk-Literature
Further reading
- Bloch, R. Howard. (1986). The Scandal of the Fabliaux. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
- Lacy, Norris J. (1998). Reading Fabliaux. Birmingham: Summa Publications, Inc. (four fabliaux in English translation)