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Essay Archive - The Fabliaux
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 s....
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