Analogues of a Fabliau

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Recommended: the general prologue to the canterbury tales analysis

Analogues of a Fabliau

Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales in many different genres and from a variety of sources. He took ideas from other authors and made them his own through adding and changing details, which in turn could cause the meaning of the story to change. The adaptations could alter the tone of the story; it could be made more sarcastic, humorous or serious. He also wrote in many different genres.

One genre that Chaucer worked with is the fabliau. A fabliau is a short story that is usually written in verse about low or middle class people. It is more obscene than other stories, primarily through sexual situations. It is presented to be comical against marriage. The sexual obscenity became more vulgar as it was written down, because only then was there more of a separation between courtly and vulgar actions. (Muscatine 568-570) Benson describes the fabliau as, “a brief comic tale in verse, usually scurrilous and often scatological or obscene. The style is simple, vigorous, and straight-forward...” (7) One critic, Charles Muscatine, believes that the old French fabliau lacked much plot structure. (Vaszily, 523-542) However, one element like this is insufficient to classify in a genre. There are other short stories that are kept short and concise that are not fabliaux. Also, another trait of fabliaux is that the humor is “attached to the structure itself” rather than in “the way in which the story is told.” (Vaszily)

One common plot for a fabliau is a love triangle. The triangle is often formed with an old husband, a young wife and another young man. As Vaszily points out, though, Chaucer has other tales that are not fabliaux, which have this plot. Muscatine refers to the content of fa...

... middle of paper ...

...rk, 1971.

Bodel, Jean. “Gombert and the Two Clerks.” 1190-1194: Pp. 89-99

Anonymous. “The Miller and the Two Clerks.” Thirteenth Century.

Blanch, Robert J and Wasserman, Julian N. “The Advocate: Law, fabliaux, and the

journey to modernism.” Literature/Film Quarterly. Salsbury, 2001: 303-315.

Dunn, E Catherine. “The spirit of the fourteenth century.” Modern Age. Wilmington,

Summer 2001: 268-271.

Muscatine, Charles. “Medieval Literature, Style and Culture: Essays by Charles

Muscatine.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology. Urbana, Oct 2001: 568-570.

The Geoffrey Chaucer Home Page. URL: http://icg.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer Copyright

President and Fellows of Harvard College. Last Modified: Jan 20, 2002.

Vaszily, Scott. “Fabliau plotting against romance in Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale.” Style.

Dekalb, Fall 1997: 523-542.

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