The Fabliaux
Medieval literature includes a great variety of comic tales, in both prose and verse, and in a variety of more or less distinct genres. For students of Chaucer, the most important comic genre is the fabliau (fabliau is the singular, fabliaux the plural). Chaucer's Miller's tale, Reeve's Tale, Shipman's Tale, Summoner's tale, and the fragmentary Cook's Tale are all fabliaux, and other tales -- such as the Merchant's Tale -- show traces of the genre:
"A fabliau is a brief comic tale in verse, usually scurrilous and often scatological or obscene. The style is simple, vigorous, and straightforward; the time is the present, and the settings real, familiar places; the characters are ordinary ...
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and -heroines. (The Riverside Chaucer, p. 7.)
was, until Chaucer's time, a genre of French literature, in which it flourished in the thirteenth century. One of the minor problems about Chaucer's fabliaux is why he turned to a genre that had, in effect, been dead for a hundred years. Comic tales were very popular in Chaucer's time, but the more sophisticated were almost always in prose (as in the case of Boccaccio's Decameron). Chaucer had no models in English, and despite the vivid contemporary tone of Chaucer's fabliaux, they are in some ways his most Gallic works.
Perhaps Chaucer was attracted to this genre by its most striking characteristic, its irreverence. This is a common feature of all forms of comedy, but it is a major and almost invariable element in :
"The cuckoldings, beatings, and elaborate practical jokes that are the main concern of the fabliaux are distributed in accord with a code of "fabliau justice," which does not always coincide with conventional ...
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The Fabliaux. (2006, February 18). Retrieved November 28, 2024, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-Fabliaux/41430
"The Fabliaux." Essayworld.com. Essayworld.com, 18 Feb. 2006. Web. 28 Nov. 2024. <http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-Fabliaux/41430>
"The Fabliaux." Essayworld.com. February 18, 2006. Accessed November 28, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-Fabliaux/41430.
"The Fabliaux." Essayworld.com. February 18, 2006. Accessed November 28, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-Fabliaux/41430.
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