fabliau

Home > ... > Literature and the Arts > Language, Linguistics, and Literary Terms > Literature: General > ...

Essential
reading

Compare
side-by-side

The Concise Oxford Companion ...

The Oxford Dictionary of ...

The Columbia Encyclopedia, ...

fabliau

fabliau plural fabliaux , short comic, often bawdy tale in verse that deals realistically and satirically with middle-class or lower-class characters. Fabliaux were often directed against marriage and against members of the clergy. The form was extremely popular in France during the Middle Ages. Excellent examples of fabliaux can be found in pre-Christian Oriental literature, in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and in Boccaccio's Decameron.

Create a link to this page

Copy and paste this link tag into your Web page or blog:

<a href="http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/.aspx#1E1-fabliau" title="Facts and informations about fabliau">fabliau</a>

Give this article a thumbs-up on StumbleUpon

Cite this article
Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography.

MLA
Chicago
APA

"fabliau." The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2008. Encyclopedia.com. 9 Jul. 2009 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

"fabliau." The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2008. Encyclopedia.com. (July 9, 2009). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-fabliau.html

"fabliau." The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2008. Retrieved July 09, 2009 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-fabliau.html

Learn more about citation styles

fabliau

The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable | 2006 | | Â© The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable 2006, originally published by Oxford University Press 2006. (Hide copyright information) Copyright

fabliau a metrical tale, typically a bawdily humorous one, of a type found chiefly in early French poetry.

Create a link to this page

Copy and paste this link tag into your Web page or blog:

<a href="http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/.aspx#1O214-fabliau" title="Facts and informations about fabliau">fabliau</a>

Cite this article
Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography.

MLA
Chicago
APA

ELIZABETH KNOWLES. "fabliau." The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. Oxford University Press. 2006. Encyclopedia.com. 9 Jul. 2009 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

ELIZABETH KNOWLES. "fabliau." The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. Oxford University Press. 2006. Encyclopedia.com. (July 9, 2009). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O214-fabliau.html

ELIZABETH KNOWLES. "fabliau." The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. Oxford University Press. 2006. Retrieved July 09, 2009 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O214-fabliau.html

Learn more about citation styles

fabliau

The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature | 2003 | | Â© The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature 2003, originally published by Oxford University Press 2003. (Hide copyright information) Copyright

fabliau, a short tale in verse, almost invariably in octosyllabic couplets, dealing for the most part from a comic point of view with incidents of ordinary life. The fabliau was an important element in French poetry in the 12th–13th cents, and was imitated by Chaucer.

Create a link to this page

Copy and paste this link tag into your Web page or blog:

<a href="http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/.aspx#1O54-fabliau" title="Facts and informations about fabliau">fabliau</a>

Cite this article
Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography.

MLA
Chicago
APA

MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "fabliau." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Encyclopedia.com. 9 Jul. 2009 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "fabliau." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Encyclopedia.com. (July 9, 2009). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O54-fabliau.html

MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "fabliau." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Retrieved July 09, 2009 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O54-fabliau.html

Learn more about citation styles

Related entries from encyclopedias, dictionaries and thesauruses

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology entry for fabliau

Rate these entries|See all related entries

Free newspaper and magazine articles

	The Wife of Bath's Shipman's tale and the invention of Chaucerian fabliaux. Magazine article from: The Modern Language Review; 4/1/2004
	Chaucer's Miller's Tale and Reeve's Tale, Boccaccio's Decameron, and the French fabliaux.(Critical Essay) Magazine article from: Italica; 9/22/2004
	Fabliau plotting against romance in Chaucer's 'The Knight's Tale.' (Geoffrey Chaucer) Magazine article from: Style; 9/22/1997

Facts and information from other sites

Related articles from newspapers, magazines, and more

	The Wife of Bath's Shipman's tale and the invention of Chaucerian fabliaux. Magazine article from: The Modern Language Review; 4/1/2004; ; 700+ words ; ...obviously, on the creation of the genre of the fabliau by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century...Chaucerian reception: the genre of Chaucerian 'fabliaux' and the persistent myth that Chaucer...originally written for the Wife of Bath. The fabliau, the subject of the first part of this... Read more
	Chaucer's Miller's Tale and Reeve's Tale, Boccaccio's Decameron, and the French fabliaux.(Critical Essay) Magazine article from: Italica; 9/22/2004; ; 700+ words ; ...comic tales to thirteenth-century French fabliaux has been closely studied by scholars...the English poet's tales and the French fabliaux. Many of the French antecedents are judged...article focuses on the first two English fabliaux told in Fragment I of the Canterbury... Read more
	Fabliau plotting against romance in Chaucer's 'The Knight's Tale.' (Geoffrey Chaucer) Magazine article from: Style; 9/22/1997; ; 700+ words ; ...converse relationship, the significance of fabliau elements in Chaucer's writing in other genres...Criseyde could be constructed from just two fabliaux (Chaucer 140), asserts that [r]omance and fabliau must . . . have contributed to details of... Read more
	Philosophical sleaze? The 'strok of thought' in the Miller's Tale and Chaucerian fabliau.(Critical essay) Magazine article from: The Modern Language Review; 7/1/2007; ; 700+ words ; ...his philosophical interests in writing fabliaux? Critics often deny them serious implication...science vainly seeks to forecast. Chaucer's fabliaux give readers the sensation of embracing...that contrary to general opinion, the fabliau narratives in The Canterbury Tales on... Read more
	Eighteen Anglo-Norman Fabliaux. Magazine article from: The Modern Language Review; 4/1/2002; ; 700 words ; Eighteen Anglo-Norman Fabliaux. Ed. by IAN SHORT and ROY PEARCY...into four categories. There are three fabliaux preserved in unique Anglo-Norman copies...commonly known as La gageure). Four more fabliaux are offered in their distinctive Anglo-Norm... Read more
	Culinary comedy in medieval French literature.(Brief Article)(Book Review) Magazine article from: Reference & Research Book News; 2/1/2007; 130 words ; ...and food from the more studied socio-historical perspective, she examines culinary comedy in medieval French genres including romances, epics, fables, and fabliaux (short black humor verse narratives). ([c]20072005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR) Read more
	Philosophical Chaucer: Love, Sex, and Agency in the 'Canterbury Tales'.(Book review) Magazine article from: The Modern Language Review; 4/1/2007; ; 607 words ; ...102) and even more so with a Miller preoccupied in his tale with the 'problem of ethical normativity' (p. 49). To describe a fabliau as the Miller's 'project' in which he develops his 'naturalistic theory' (p. 46) is to burden that brilliant (if obscene) tale... Read more
	Narrative Indeterminacy in the Fiction of Annie Proulx.(Critical essay) Magazine article from: Northwest Review; 1/1/2008; ; 700+ words ; ...irrecoverable, whether in literature or in life. The story of Edwin Drood , the course of Mamilius' winter's tale, the climax Beutle's fabliau about the prospectors and the love boards--all these, and countless other instances, resemble the vanished poetry of Etruria... Read more
	Genealogies of identity; interdisciplinary readings on sex and sexuality.(book)(Brief Article)(Book Review) Magazine article from: Reference & Research Book News; 2/1/2006; 129 words ; ...1990s, catastrophic sexuality in Howard Baker's theater of transgression, genital representation as defining sexual identity and sexual liberation in some Old French Fabliaux and Lais. There is no index. ([c]20062005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR) Read more
	Trickster and Prankster: Roguery in French and German Literature of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Magazine article from: The Modern Language Review; 4/1/2002; ; 700+ words ; ...women) and 3 (priests) draw heavily on fabliaux and Schwanke. To these are added (in...a knowledge of the traditions of the fabliaux and comic plays intended for performance...Perhaps some of Brian Levy's work on the fabliaux (in, for example, Reinardus, 2 (1989... Read more