A fabliau is a medieval comic tale, often featuring trickery and sexual themes, originating from France and noted for its bawdy humor and critique of societal norms.
A fabliau is a medieval comic tale, typically anonymous and originating from northeastern France, characterized by its bawdy humor, sexual content, and focus on trickery. These tales often satirize the church and nobility and have influenced later works such as Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales."
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| Back | A medieval comic tale The plot is usually about trickery and sex and a disreputable character fabliau (plural fabliaux) is a comic, often anonymous tale written by jongleurs in northeast France between c. 1150 and 1400. They are generally characterized by sexual and scatological obscenity, and by a set of contrary attitudes—contrary to the church and to the nobility. Several of them were reworked by Giovanni Boccaccio for the Decameron 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. Fabliau |
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