Fabliau

A fabliau (also Fablel ) is presented in satirical purposes a medieval French farce narrative in verse, of minstrels ( juggler ).

The usually anonymous pieces came into fashion in the northeastern France of the 13th century. Fabliaux had very often a lewd act and presented horned husbands, greedy clergy and stupid country people flaunt. The representation of the rural population, however, seems to depend on the target group for which the fabliau was written. Probably the nobility fed thought pieces showed the country people ( vilains ) stupid and mean, while pieces that were written for the lower classes often reported as it prevails against the clergy.

Longer medieval poems, like the story of Reynard the Fox (Le Roman de Renart ) and the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer have their origin in one or more Fabliaux. Depending on how closely you seize the term, 150 of these pieces have survived. At the beginning of the 16th century, its importance began to wane. They have been replaced by short prose narratives. Their influence on French literature, especially on Molière, Jean de La Fontaine and Voltaire acts but after today.

Examples

• " L' enfant de neige" ( The Snow Child) is a story of remarkable black humor. A merchant returns home after a two year absence and finds his wife with a newborn son before. She tells him to have choked on a snowy day a snowflake, while she thought of her husband, and to have become pregnant by this. Both pretend to believe in the miracle and educate the boys up to the age of 15 years. Then the father takes him on a trading voyage to Genoa, where he sold him into slavery. On questioning, his wife, he tells her that the Italian sun had burned bright and hot prostrate and begotten of a snowflake son had melted in the heat.
• " La vielle gui graissa la patte de chevalier " ( The old woman who anointed the knight 's hand )
• " Estula "
• " Le Pauvre Clerc " ( The poor employees)
• " La Couverture partagée " ( The split hide )
• " Le Pretre qui les mangea mûres " ( The priest who ate mulberries )
• " Le Chevalier qui les cons parler fit " ( The Knight, who let speak the pussies )
• " Rustebeuf " (* before 1250, † around 1285 ), a French poet François Villon and precursor wrote, among other fabliaux.

Expenditure

• Robert Hellman: Fabliaux. Ribald Tales from the Old French. Greenwood Press, Westport, Con. 1976, ISBN 0-8371-7414-7 (English translation of 21 Fabliaux; Nachdr d ed New York 1965).
• Ingrid Strasser (eds. ): From love and blows. Old French stories. 16 Fabliaux ( fabulae mediævales; Vol. 4). Böhlau Verlag, Cologne 1984, ISBN 3-205-06520-4 (translated by the editor ).
• Elisabeth Blum ( ed.): Fabliaux. Erotic stories from the Middle Ages. Wieser Verlag, Klagenfurt 2004, ISBN 3-85129-482-3 (translated by the editor ).