Logic and Humour in the Fabliaux: An Essay in Applied Narratology (Gallica)

Gallica Volume 7

Logic and Humour in the Fabliaux An Essay in Applied Narratology Joseph Bédier’s 1893 definition of the fabliaux as ‘funny stories in verse’ is still widely accepted as the best brief and general description for a heterogeneous collection of texts. But the heterogeneity creates difficulties and at the periphery of the canon all three of the criteria included in Bédier’s definition are open to question. The inventory proposed in the current study is based on a new structural definition, a conjointure, akin to that of romance, combining a logical episteme with a rhetorical narreme. The episteme features a contradictory taken from Boolean algebra, and assumes four different forms, depending on whether ambiguity resulting from the contradictory is understood by neither, by both, or by either the sender or the receiver of a message, In the first two instances, a character foreign to the episteme intervenes to resolve confusion in the narreme, or appears as the victim of the sophistical assumption of a contraryto-fact reality; in the latter instances the sender or the receiver of the message in the episteme triumphs in the narreme. The resulting inventory, including and augmenting the texts admitted by Per Nykrog and discarding numerous stories already challenged for authenticity, is theoretically defensible to a degree not previously achieved. Roy Pearcy is an Honorary Research Fellow of the University of London.

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Gallica aims to provide a forum for the best current work in medieval French studies. Literary studies are particularly welcome and preference is given to works written in English, although publication in French is not excluded. Proposals or queries should be sent in the first instance to the editor, or to the publisher, at the addresses given below; all submissions receive prompt and informed consideration. Professor Sarah Kay, Department of French and Italian, Princeton University, 303 East Pyne, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA The Managing Editor, Gallica, Boydell & Brewer Ltd., PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK

Already Published 1. Postcolonial Fictions in the ‘Roman de Perceforest’: Cultural Identities and Hybridities, Sylvia Huot 2. A Discourse for the Holy Grail in Old French Romance, Ben Ramm 3. Fashion in Medieval France, Sarah-Grace Heller 4. Christine de Pizan’s Changing Opinion: A Quest for Certainty in the Midst of Chaos, Douglas Kelly 5. Cultural Performances in Medieval France: Essays in Honor of Nancy Freeman Regalado, eds Eglal Doss-Quinby, Roberta L. Krueger, E. Jane Burns 6. The Medieval Warrior Aristocracy: Gifts, Violence, Performance, and the Sacred, Andrew Cowell

Logic and Humour in the Fabliaux An Essay in Applied Narratology

Roy J. Pearcy

D. S. BREWER

© Roy J. Pearcy 2007 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner The right of Roy J. Pearcy to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

First published 2007 D. S. Brewer, Cambridge

ISBN  978–1–84384–122–7

D. S. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com

A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

This publication is printed on acid-free paper Printed in Great Britain by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn

Contents Acknowledgements

vii

Abbreviations

viii

Introduction

1

1. Origins: Fable to Fabliau Cele qui se fist foutre sur la Fosse de son Mari

11

2. Outline of a Methodology Part 1: The Logical Contradictories

34

3. Outline of a Methodology Part 2: Episteme and Narreme

52

4. Origins: Fabliau to Fable The Paris B.N. fr. 12603 version of Auberee

77

5. The Fabliau Canon

123

6. Fabliau Structures Part 1: Single Narreme Fabliaux

148

7. Fabliau Structures Part 2: Multiple Narreme Fabliaux

176

8. Fabliau Aesthetic

197

Conclusion

210

Varia: Appendices A–F

215

Fabliau Inventory

233

Bibliography

237

For my loving wife Christine who kept the faith

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project has been many years evolving, and it would be impossible to acknowledge individually the contribution of all those who have played a part in its development, and to whom I should like to express my sincere appreciation. To a select few individuals and institutions, however, I owe a special debt of gratitude. I talked to Professor Charles Muscatine about my work with the fabliaux in the 1960s when we were both associated with the University of California system. His kind encouragement was of immense importance to me at that time. He has been a source of inspiration ever since, and it has always been a pleasure to meet up with him when in the course of our academic activities our paths have crossed. I would also like to thank my colleagues in the English Department at the University of Oklahoma, where I moved in 1968. They helped create a congenial collegiate atmosphere in which it was possible to both teach and conduct research in a way that most members of the profession would choose. My thanks are due to Professors Stephen Knight, Ardis Butterfield, and David Trotter, who between them arranged for me to be appointed an Honorary Research Fellow at University College, London, and thus helped keep me active and productive after my retirement from the University of Oklahoma in 1991. Finally I owe special thanks to my friend and colleague Ian Short of Birkbeck College, London, who read the manuscript, encouraged me to seek a publisher for it, and suggested numerous ways in which it might be improved. I first started using the facilities of the British Library during a sabbatical leave in 1966, and I have returned to enjoy that treasure house of knowledge on numerous occasions since then. I would like to thank the Directors of the Institution for allowing me the privilege of profiting from its use. My wife and I bought a flat in Bloomsbury in order to have easy access to the old British Museum Library, and fortunately we were still in easy walking distance of the library after the move to St. Pancras. I was once asked to identify my most valuable single possession, and had no hesitation in naming my British Library ­Reader’s Card. My thanks are also due to La Fondation Camargo in Cassis, France, where I enjoyed two scholarships, and where much of the preliminary work on the present fabliau project was carried out. Lastly I wish to recognise the assistance with various projects, including editorship of the first four volumes of Studies in the Age of Chaucer, for which I have to thank my wife. Her invaluable help provided me the time, and the incentive, without which this and other publication projects would not have reached completion.

ABBREVIATIONS CFMA Classiques Français du Moyen Age ChauR The Chaucer Review EETS Early English Texts Society, o.s. (original series), e.s. (extra series) MR Anatole de Montaiglon and Gaston Raynaud, eds, Recueil général et complet des fabliaux des XIIIe et XIVe siècles, 6 vols (Paris, 1872–90) NRCF Willem Noomen and Nico van den Boogaard, eds, Nouveau Recueil Complet des Fabliaux, 10 vols (Assen, 1983–98) RdR Ernst Martin, ed., Le Roman de Renart, 4 vols (Strasbourg, 1882–87) SATF Société des Anciens Textes Français

Introduction The idea that an intimate connection exists between humour and logic is not original with this study. Even before logic had been formalised as an autonomous discipline, humour often appeared in the pseudo-proof of some theory so extravagantly at odds with common-sense notions as to provoke laughter. Some of the epicheirêmata of the pre-Socratic philosopher Zeno of Elea fit this pattern, such as his argument that, given a start, a tortoise could never be overtaken by Achilles. A taste for humorous paradox pervades the work of the fifth-century sophist Gorgias, and persists into the writings of the thirteenth-century Averroist Siger of Brabant, whose six impossibilia included a logical defence of the proposition that the Trojan War was still in progress. Like the Stoics before them, medieval logicians produced numerous syllogisms involving humorous effrontery. For example the thirteenth-century Summulae Logicales of Peter of Spain includes the sophism: ‘Iste canis est tuus et est pater, ergo est tuus pater’. The Middle Ages inherited from classical antiquity such antinomies as that of the barber of the regiment who shaves all the men, and only the men, who do not shave themselves, and is thus unable either to shave or not to shave. It has been suggested that analysis of this paradox might have been better placed in Punch than in the Principia Mathematica, but its appearance in the latter work testifies to the occurrence of comic issues in the most serious of modern treatises on logic.  Information on the life and thought of this philosopher may be found in Freeman, The Pre-Socratic Philosophers, pp. 153–64. An English translation of the extant fragments of his writings as given in Diels, Fragmente, appears in Freeman, Ancilla, p. 47.  For his writings see Freeman, Ancilla, pp. 127–39. His life and works are discussed briefly by Freeman, The Pre-Socratic Philosophers, pp. 353–67, and in detail by Dupréel, Les Sophistes, pp. 61–113, 397.  Siger von Brabant, ed. Baeumker, p. 10: ‘Proponebatur tertio quod bellum Troianum esset in hoc instanti’ [‘In the third place it was argued that the Trojan War was presently still in progress’].  ‘This is your dog and he is a father; therefore he is your father’. For the work of the Stoics see Mates, Stoic Logic, and Prantl, Geschichte der Logik, vol. 1, pp. 50–58. See also Broadie, Medieval Logic, and Boh, Epistemic Logic. For Peter of Spain’s syllogism see Summulae Logicales, p. 81, and Bocheński, Formal Logic. The part of the Summulae dealing with the properties of terms has been edited, with an English translation, by Mullally, The Summulae Logicales of Peter of Spain.  For the comment on the work of Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell see Koyré, Epiménide le Menteur, p. 21. For the ‘barber of the regiment’ antinomy see Grelling,

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Logical concerns furnish the basis for humorous anecdotes or for comic scenes in longer literary works, a practice which dates back to classical antiquity. The fifth-century Greek playwright Epicharmus of Syracuse made fun of the ­Heracleitean doctrine of flux in a scene preserved by an anonymous commentator on a passage of Plato’s Theaetetus. A debtor repudiates a debt on the grounds that he is now a different person from the one who contracted it, but when, thrashed by the claimant, he sues for damages, his assailant defends himself on the basis that he is now a different person from the one who committed the offence. Sextus Empiricus is the first to record the story of the young man who undertook instruction from the rhetorician Corax on the understanding that he would pay his fee on achieving proficiency in debate. The fee not forthcoming, Corax sued for payment, due, he argued, whether he won or lost, either by dictate of law or by the terms of the agreement respectively. The pupil responded, however, that win or lose he was exempt from payment on the same principle. Aristotle’s works on syllogistic logic, particularly the Analytica priora and the Sophistici elenchi, contain numerous illustrations of humorous logical principles. The philosopher remarks, for example, that the fallacy aequivocatio, when the same word signifies more than one thing, forms the basis of the silliest sort of verbal humour, thereby confirming that his involvement with formal logic has brought to mind the puerile jokes forming part of the storehouse of puns familiar to the populace at large.There is obvious humour in syllogisms of the kind, ‘The logical Paradoxes’, p. 481. The ‘liar paradox’ (‘I am telling a lie’) is discussed at length in Fallaciae by Siger de Courtrai, ed. Wallerand, p. 84. That certain antinomies might serve as the basis for a humorous anecdote is shown by the story of a legacy granting a penny to any poor man telling a true tale, wherein the executors are confounded by the appearance of one whose tale consists of the statement, ‘Ye shall gyve me nere a peny.’ The English version of this tale is in Hazlitt, Shakespeare Jest Books, No. 83, vol. 1, pp. 110–11. The wretchedness of the narrative element points to the story being a close and feeble adaptation of non-narrative logical material.  Sextus Empiricus, vol. 4, pp. 235–36. The same tale, with Protagoras rather than Corax as the leading character, is told by Diogenes Laertius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers. In the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century the story appears in the Alphabetum Narrationem, a collection of some eight hundred exempla which had a wide circulation in England and on the continent. This version of the story would seem to be derived from Diogenes Laertius, since in the fifteenth-century English translation, An Alphabet of Tales, no. 38, the sophist is called Pictagoras. In Hazlitt, Mery Tales, no. 136, the story is told ‘Of Corar the Rhetorician’, which would indicate derivation from Sextus Empiricus. An interesting medieval employment of the pseudo-conditional syllogism occurs in Alexander Neckam’s story of the dying student who admitted to a friend his scepticism about the possibility of an afterlife. The friend, however, argued that life after death was either an illusion or a reality. If illusory, belief would do no harm, but if a reality non-belief would be disastrous. Therefore belief is better than non-belief. The story illustrates the tendency for logical figures to develop into brief narratives, in this instance an exemplum rather than a fabliau. Text of the tale is in the section ‘De septem artibus’ in Neckam, De Naturis Rerum, pp. 283–307, p. 297. In his discourse on the seven liberal arts Neckam is concerned to counter what he sees as the pernicious effect of sophistic on religious orthodoxy, but through his very antipathy he reveals much about the teaching of logic in the schools of his time.

INTRODUCTION



‘Omnis ara est in templo; stabulum porcorum est ara; ergo stabulum porcorum est in templo’ taken from the Summulae Logicales of Peter of Spain. It would be no more challenging to create a narrative context for the pun on āra (‘altar’) and ăra (‘pigsty’) than for the pun on la male honte (‘foul dishonour’) and la male Honte (‘Honte’s bag’) in a popular fabliau. Such juggling with premises to produce humorously incongruous conclusions is a commonplace feature of numerous medieval commentaries on the Analytica priora and the Sophistici elenchi, and of Summulae and Sophismata. The rediscovery of the texts of Aristotle’s Organon was the driving force behind the great intellectual activity of the twelfth-century renaissance, and to the dismay of humanists logic emerged to challenge grammar and rhetoric as the dominant discipline of the trivium. Sophistic, as concerned in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries with the implications of the logical fallacies, occupies a middle ground between the antinomies and other extremely technical logical paradoxes on the one hand, and the logic that permeates mundane social intercourse on the other. The Sophistici elenchi was probably the first text of the ‘new Aristotle’ to receive intensive study and to influence the development of the revolution in logical thought, preceding the other texts of the logica nova, the Topics, and the Prior and Posterior Analytics.10 It was available to the Latin Middle Ages  ‘All altars/sties are in temples; a pigsty is an altar/sty; therefore pigsties are in temples’.  The joke on āra and ăra appears in the medieval Latin comedy Babio, where Fodius (v. 272) makes the deliberately foolish statement, ‘Iuro sacras per ăras’ [‘I swear by the holy pigsties’], and later (v. 280) comments on the pretentious Babio’s failure to perceive the error, ‘Est ăra porcorum, respicit āra deos’ [‘Sties are for pigs, altars are appropriate for gods’]. Humour involving the unwitting misuse or deliberate abuse of syllogistic logic is a major feature of Geta and Babio, for which see the editions by Etienne Guilhou and Henri Laye in Cohen, La Comédie latine. See also Ermini, Il Babio, and Beyer, Schwank und Moral. Guilhou (p. 12) makes the following observation: ‘Il est certain que les plaisanteries syllogistiques qui remplissent une bonne partie de Geta sont pour beaucoup dans son succès; elles nous prouvent d’ailleurs que ce poème s’adressait à un public de clercs très familiers avec cette scholastique qu’on y parodiait sans méchanceté.’ Scholastic logic is less immediately related to fabliaux than to the comédie latine, but the relationship is no less fundamental. Specific connections between the two genres are traced by Faral, ‘Le Fabliau latin’.  References in contemporary works to the phenomenal rise in importance of the teaching of logic at Paris in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries are given by Paetow, The Arts Course, p. 14ff. For numerous complaints, from the middle of the twelfth century onwards, on the corrupting effects of the practice of sophistical dispute, see Grabmann, Die Geschichte der scholastischen Methode, vol. 2, pp. 119, 138, 188, and 510; and Paré, Brunet and Tremblay, La Renaissance du XIIe Siècle, vol. 3. pp. 186–88. Multiple references in letters and other sources condemn the teaching of sophistic in the period. Typical is a complaint in a sermon by Peter of Poitiers quoted by Haskins, ‘The University of Paris’, p. 46n: ‘Est alia quorundam sapientia qui scire complexiones argumentationem, deceptiones sophismatum, secreta celi rimantur … semper discunt et nunquam ad scientiam veritatis proveniunt’ [‘There is another kind of wisdom that seeks to understand the types of proof, the deceitfulness of fallacies, the secrets of heaven … they debate endlessly but never arrive at a knowledge of the truth’]. 10 Minio-Paluello, in the preface to his edition of Adam Balsamiensis Parvipontani, Ars Disserendi.

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from around 510 A.D. in the translation of Boethius, possibly revised by James of Venice around ad 1120–50, and certainly revised by William of Moerbeke around ad 1260–70.11 No evidence has been found to indicate that the Sophistici elenchi was read between the sixth and twelfth centuries, but early in the twelfth century Peter Abaelard read and quoted from this work, Adam Balsamiensis Parvipontanus used it as the basis for his Ars Disserendi written in 1132, and from that time on the Sophistici elenchi evidently played an increasingly important role in the development of scholastic logical thought. In addition to the revised translations just mentioned, there appeared commentaries on Aristotle’s text, and a number of derived scholastic treatments of his sophistic material. Of these the most closely associated with his treatise were the tracts entitled Fallaciae, which in typical scholastic fashion systematised, subdivided, and profusely illustrated the fallacies listed by Aristotle. Such tracts on fallacies were written as early as the twelfth century,12 and continued to appear as isolated individual logical texts throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.13 A section on fallacies also became a conventional feature of the extremely influential and widely disseminated logical handbooks of the early thirteenth century, the Introductiones in Logicam of William Shyreswood,14 and the Summulae Logicales of Peter of Spain. In the tracts on fallacies of these latter writers it is commonly the practice to illustrate particular fallacies by indicating their potential to generate sophisms, introduced with a standard formula: ‘Secundum praedicta quaeritur de hoc sophismate’ [‘From the preceding statement a question is raised concerning this sophism’]. Such practice probably influenced the growth of another important set of medieval logical texts, given the general title Sophismata, collections of sophisms embodying some hidden fallacy or logical difficulty together with an explanation of their composition and a solution of the problem. They first appear in the twelfth century, and proliferate from the thirteenth century onwards.15 In the periods of classical antiquity and the Middle Ages humorous anecdotes

11 Minio-Paluello, ‘Aristotle’s Topics and Elenchi’. For a discussion of the respective claims of Boethius and James of Venice to authorship of the medieval ‘vulgate’ versions of these works, based on comparison of the vocabularies and methods of the two translators, see the same author’s ‘Iacobus Veneticus Grecus’. For the Boethian text see Boethius, Elenchorum Sophisticum Aristotelis. 12 The existence of three such tracts from the twelfth century, one long, one short, and one fragmentary, is signalled by Grabmann, Sophismataliteratur, p. 12. 13 For example, those by Aquinas, De Fallaciis, and by Siger de Courtrai, ed. Wallerand, pp. 79–90. 14 Edited by Grabmann, Die Introductiones in Logicam; English translation, William of Sherwood’s Introduction to Logic. 15 They were the product of logicians such as Robert Kilwardby, John Buridan, Albert of Saxony and others. There is a list of authors of sophismata in Grabmann, Sophismataliterature, p. 11, and in Siger de Courtrai, ed. Wallerand, pp. 27–33. Some brief extracts from the sophismata of Albert of Saxony are given by Boehner, Medieval Logic, App. 1, pp. 97–101.

INTRODUCTION



or jokes routinely if sporadically functioned as exempla in logical treatises.16 It was a long time, however, before the reverse perspective suggested that the source of humour in anecdote or joke might be explained by reference to logical principles. For that suggestion we have to wait until the nineteenth century and Schopenhauer’s chapter, ‘Zur Theorie des Lächerlichen’ [‘On the theory of the ludicrous’] in his philosophical treatise Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. Having asserted that the ludicrous ‘depends upon the opposition between perceptible and abstract ideas,’ he goes on to claim that this opposition manifests itself in specifically logical terms: It is possible to trace everything ludicrous to a syllogism in the first figure, with an undisputed major and an unexpected minor, which to a certain extent is only sophistically valid, in consequence of which connection the conclusion partakes of the quality of the ludicrous.17 Schopenhauer’s ideas have not noticeably influenced critical commentary on humour. His theory is capable, certainly, of accommodating the ‘sudden glory’ effect stressed by Thomas Hobbes in the most important prior discussion of the topic,18 but its challenging elegance and comprehensiveness have not stimulated any serious efforts to refine or discredit the claims made for it by its author. The zeitgeist favoured a burgeoning interest in Freud, whose psychological theory of humour established a new direction of enquiry, and turned attention away from whatever insights Schopenhauer may have uncovered.19 No defence of the validity of Schopenhauer’s theory will be attempted here. One suspects that a general apprehension of the multiplicity and variety of ways in which humour manifests itself makes those familiar with the theory sceptical that any principle as unequivocal as Schopenhauer’s syllogism could account comprehensively for so ubiquitous and intractable a subject matter. However, when confined to the collection of brief narratives in French verse which flourished in the period between the late twelfth and early fourteenth centuries, narratives conventionally known as fabliaux on the basis of medieval literary terminology, Schopenhauer’s theory proves remarkably fecund. The narrative structure of the great majority of these tales consistently reflects an engagement with syllogistic logic to achieve its humorous effects.20 The interpenetration of logic and humorous anecdote in the later Middle Ages is overtly acknowledged only occasionally in the texts themselves. Henri 16

For a history of the exemplum in the Middle Ages see Welter, Exemplum. Chapter 8, ‘Zur Theorie des Lächerlichen’, in Schopenhauer: Sämtliche Werke, ed. Wolfgang Frhr. von Löhneysen, vol. 2, pp. 121–35 (p. 122). English translation, ‘On the Theory of the Ludicrous’, in Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, vol. 2, pp. 270–84 (p. 271). 18 For the concept ‘sudden glory’ see Chapter 6 of Hobbes, Leviathan, pp. 33–42. 19 Freud, Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewussten. An English version was published under the title Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious. 20 The relationship between fabliau humour and logic has been noted in the past, but not systematically investigated. See, for example, Lacy, ‘The Fabliaux and Comic Logic’. 17

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d’Andeli, whose concern with the relationship between logic and other intellectual disciplines was articulated in La Bataille des Sept Arts,21 was also the author of a fabliau, Aristote et Alixandre, depicting the father of logic as victim of an intrigue embroiling him in a farcical épreuve d’amour. The story was very popular,22 and its audience were probably alert to the implications of Aristotle’s narrative situation in light of his reputation as the philosopher responsible for systematising rational thought.The English poet John Gower certainly made the connection (Confessio Amantis, Bk. VIII, vv. 2705–13): I syh there Aristotle also, Whom that the queene of Grece so Hath bridled, that in thilke time Sche made him such a Silogime, That he foryat al his logique; Ther was non art of his Practique, Thurgh which it mihte ben excluded That he ne was fully concluded To love, and dede his obeissance.23

In a Latin prose exemplum Abaelard, one of Aristotle’s most celebrated medieval disciples, circumvents prohibitions against preaching with a series of sophistic evasions. Forbidden to preach on the land of a French king, Abaelard addresses his followers from up in a tree, and then from a boat moored in the river.24 The sophistry closely parallels that employed by the mistress of a persecuted parish priest in the opening sequence of a fabliau, L’Evesque qui benëi le con25 whose closing sequence closely parallels events in Aristote et Alixandre. Giraldus Cambrensis tells a fabliau-like tale about a student newly returned from the university of Paris whose attempt at a sophistic demonstration of his ability to

21 Henri d’Andeli, La Bataille et le Mariage des VII Arts. The English text in The Battle of the Seven Arts. 22 Text with the title ‘D’Aristote et d’Alixandre’, in Twelve Fabliaux, pp. 70–82; 115– 19. See also Le Lai d’Aristote de Henri d’Andeli, ed. Maurice Delbouille, Bibliothèque de la Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres de l’Université de Liège 123 (Paris, 1951). Aristote et Alixandre is one of the ‘fabliaux classiques’ which have survived in four or more manuscripts as listed by Nykrog in Les Fabliaux, p. 324. Numerous references to Henri d’Andeli’s fabliau in medieval literature and in the pictorial arts are noted in Cesare, ‘Aristotele Cavalcato’. See also Les Dits d’Henri d’Andeli, trans. Alain Corbellari. 23 Gower, ed. Macaulay, vol. 2, pp. 459–60. The logical concerns of Aristote et Alixandre are ennumerated in even greater detail by some of the literary artists who comment on the tale. Jean le Fèvre, for example, quoted by Héron in Henri d’Andeli, Œuvres, p. xlii, cites a range of Aristotelian logical texts in demonstrating how thoroughly the Greek philosopher has been duped. 24 A Latin version of the story is quoted in Jacques de Vitry, Die Exempla, ed. Greven, no. 53, p. 36, and discussed by Frenken, Die Exempla des Jacob von Vitry, no. 51, p. 123. 25 NRCF, 6: 193–205; 344.

INTRODUCTION



turn six eggs into twelve is mocked by parents appalled at how the study of logic has perverted and debased their son’s education.26 More significantly, perhaps, fabliaux sometimes incorporate, as the logical basis of their intrigue, propositions that have been the subject of technical discussion in logical treatises. The fallacy committed by the squire husband in La Dame qui fist trois Tors entor le Moustier [hereafter La Dame qui fist trois Tors],27 when he concludes that his wife’s absence from the house on his unexpected return constitutes proof of her infidelity, is the fallacy ‘consequens’ as described by Siger de Courtrai in his Fallaciae.28 In the fabliau entitled L’Enfant qui fu remis au Soleil29 a wife who has given birth to an illegitimate son during her merchant husband’s two-year absence claims that she conceived from swallowing a snowflake. Quintilian asserts ‘Nam et coisse eam cum viro quae peperit’30 which the Latin rhetorician cites as exemplary of tekmhria, those indubitable proofs about which there is no possibility of dispute, and in light of this the wife’s claim seems susceptible of immediate rejection. But, as John of Salisbury notes in his discussion of the limits of demonstrative logic in the Metalogicon: Many ages took the following principle: ‘If a woman gives birth to a child, she must have had previous sexual intercourse, whether voluntary or involuntary, with someone,’ to be a necessary axiom. But finally, in the fullness of time, it has been shown that it is not such, by the fact that a most pure and incorrupt virgin has given birth to a child.31

26 Giraldus Cambrensis, Gemma Ecclesiastica, Cap. 37, ‘De literaturae defectu ex legum humanarum et logices abusu proveniente’ [‘Of the decline in literary studies stemming from human nature and the abuse of logic’], in Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, vol. 2, pp. 349–50. See Pearcy, ‘Logic and the Folktale’. 27 NRCF, 5: 337–57; 442–44. The standard edition of the works of Rutebeuf is the Œuvres complètes, ed. Faral and Bastin. There is a more recent edition, the Œuvres complètes, ed. Zink. 28 See Fallaciae in Siger de Courtrai, ed. Wallerand, p. 87: ‘Si sit adulter, est comptus et errabundus de nocte, ergo si sit comptus et errabundus de nocte, est adulter.’ The fallacy is ultimately from Aristotle, De Sophisticis Elenchis, in Works, trans. Ross, vol. 1, p. 167b: ‘When rhetoricians wish to show that a man is an adulterer, they take hold of some consequence of an adulterous life, viz. that the man is smartly dressed, or that he is observed to wander about at night. There are, however, many people of whom these things are true, while the charge in question is untrue.’ 29 NRCF, 5: 209–21; 415–17. 30 ‘Any woman who becomes pregnant must have had intercourse with a man.’ Quintilian, ed. and trans. Butler, vol. 2, p. 196. 31 John of Salisbury, ed. Webb. Quotation from the fully annotated English translation by McGarry, Metalogicon, p. 104. In the Metalogicon John of Salisbury surveys the state of logic in the mid-twelfth century. He thought that properly employed sophistic could serve as the handmaid of truth and wisdom, and favoured the exercises in sophistical argumentation, known as disputationes, that were built into the arts curriculum in Paris and the other northern European universities.

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Any connection between John of Salisbury’s abstract discussion of logical principles and the excuses proffered by an adulterous fabliau wife may seem remote, but the connection was certainly in the air in late medieval culture, as demonstrated by the Ludus Coventriae mystery play of The Trial of Joseph and Mary, where sceptical jurists ask the pregnant Virgin Mary whether her condition resulted from swallowing a snowflake.32 These occasional reflections of some intervention between the formal discipline of logic and narrative performance in the humorous literature of the later Middle Ages offer a clue to understanding the nature of the humour propelling the narrative towards its comic dénouement. But the real force of the connection is apprehended only by a detailed analysis of narrative structure in the fabliaux. Such an analysis reveals the preponderance in the generally accepted fabliau corpus of works whose narrative development can be systematically correlated with exchanges between protagonists based on logical inferences. This relationship is evidently significant for understanding the nature of humour in the fabliaux. It is also important as providing the means for an intensive definition of the fabliau genre, and the establishment of an empirically verifiable fabliau canon. Fabliau scholarship has been seriously handicapped by the lack of such a definition. Joseph Bédier’s description of the fabliaux as ‘des contes à rire en vers’33 imposed some selective ordering on the heterogeneous collection of materials gathered from medieval manuscript compilations by Anatole de Montaiglon and Gaston Raynaud in their monumental edition.34 Bédier astutely recognised the primary importance of humour, the one fabliau feature generally acknowledged as definitive by subsequent commentators. He also stressed the fact that fabliaux are narratives, although his use of this criterion to establish his own fabliau inventory was applied with inadequate rigour. He did not sufficiently emphasise that humour and narrative are not casually related but profoundly interdependent. Fabliaux achieve their humorous effects from different sources – from comic 32 Ludus Coventriae, p. 132. The first doctor of law quotes specifically the axiom from Quintilian, ‘þer was nevyr woman ÿitt in such plyght / þat ffrom mankynde hyre kowde excuse.’ The story of the ‘snow child’ is ancient and widespread. Many of the versions reflect a connection with the logical concerns of the schools. The earliest known exemplar, the Modus Liebinc, is a sequence of fifty verses of German origin, and dates from the eleventh century. It was edited by Carl Beck, Mittellateinische Dichtung, p. 43ff. In the Latin comedy De Mercatore, for which see Cohen, Comédie, pp. 270–73 and appendix, pp. 275–78, logical terms are especially prominent. The wide distribution is in part accounted for by the fact that the story was chosen as a subject for student exercises. Geoffroi de Vinsauf includes three radically abbreviated versions in his Poetria Nova (Faral, Arts poétiques). One two-line version has the following form: ‘Vir, quia quem peperit genitum nive femina fingit, / Vendit et a simili liquefactum sole refingit’ [‘Because his wife pretended that the son she had borne was conceived from a snowflake, the husband sold him, and pretended in his turn that the boy had been melted by the sun’]. For the treatment of the story in the Poetria Nova see Faral, Arts poétiques, p. 220. 33 Bédier, Fabliaux, p. 30ff. 34 Recueil Général et Complet des Fabliaux des XIIIe et XIVe Siècles [hereafter MR].

INTRODUCTION



characterisation, from parodic misappropriation of rhetorical devices, from courtly burlesque, from outrageously obscene descriptions of male and female genitalia, from the shock effect of obscene diction itself – but these are all generated as part of the process of specifically fabliau amplification. While they are typical in that they appear in various contexts throughout the fabliau corpus, they are not definitive in the sense that any one device might be missing from the text of any individual fabliau, and all may be absent without threat to the work’s fabliau status. What is definitive is a plot organised to create at least one comic peripety (reversal of fortune) and anagnorisis (discovery), an effect achieved in fabliau narrative by a logical structure based on accidental or carefully engineered false inferences. While Bédier’s comprehensive definition is unexceptionable, his failure to identify the precise nature of fabliau humour vitiates its usefulness as a tool for establishing a definitive fabliau canon. The same may be said for the still more abstract and general definition proposed by Jean Rychner, that fabliaux are stories told as an after-dinner entertainment.35 No minstrel repertoire for such an occasion survives, but if we can assume an audience for thirteenth-century post-prandial amusement not very different in its composition from the group of pilgrims assembled for Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales the indeterminateness of Rychner’s attempt at a definition becomes obvious.The Reeve’s Tale, the Friar’s Tale, and Chaucer’s own Tale of Sir Thopas all fit Rychner’s definition, but only the first of these has any claim to be considered a fabliau. To define the fabliaux on the basis of logical structure is to acknowledge the arbitrariness of restricting the genre to works written in French verse during the period from the late twelfth to the early fourteenth century. Stories wherein the humour depends on manipulation of logical principles to produce reversals of fortune and a recognition of previously unsuspected truths appear as early as the Sanskrit anthology known as the Pañcatantra.36 They recur with great frequency in the Latin literature of the later Middle Ages, and in vernacular prose in French, Italian, and English novella in the Renaissance.37 A number of Old French fabliaux can be traced back to Sanskrit or Latin sources of great antiquity,

35

Rychner, ‘Les Fabliaux’. As happens, for example, with the eleventh story in the first book entitled ‘The IronEating Mice’. A merchant who left a valuable iron balance with a colleague while he went adventuring is told on his return that the balance was eaten by mice. The cheated merchant abducts his colleague’s son, and reports that he was carried off by a hawk. Challenged to explain how a hawk could carry off a grown boy, he replies that such a phenomenon is not surprising in a world where mice eat iron. See Pañcatantra, pp. 66–67. 37 Versions of many Old French fabliaux discussed in subsequent chapters occur in Latin or Old French prose as exempla in sermon collections or in anthologies of anecdotal material suitable for inclusion in the didactic literature of the late Middle Ages. For the purpose of easy identification, Appendix F (pages 231–32) lists some of the relevant anthologies and the fabliaux to be found in them. 36

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and a number serve to provide source material for later prose redactions.38 In that sense the French fabliaux form part of an ancient and ongoing continuum in world literature. Nevertheless there is some justification for regarding the fabliaux as a phenomenon unique to French literary culture in the period from just before the beginning to just after the end of the thirteenth century.39 What distinguishes this period is the amount of original composition by authors who were not only capable, like remanieurs, of adapting tales from the near-East or from classical antiquity, but were also able to compose new texts based on principles of composition derived from an understanding of the fabliau genre as a whole. That is to say that they had, probably for the first time, a grasp of fabliau-narrative morphology and syntax. While individual tales with fabliau features appear over a long period of time in a variety of different languages and cultures, it is only in the Francophone region in the late Middle Ages that the fabliaux registered themselves on the consciousness of literary artists as a distinct genre whose definitive characteristics could be understood and applied to the composition of new works. Instead of the remanieur’s dependence on a single fabliau as his source, the fablëor was able to engage in original composition according to principles derived from knowledge of what came to be recognised as a related body of materials, a literary genre in its own right. The most important of these principles was a narrative organised on the manipulation of logical exchanges between protagonists.

38 Bédier, Fabliaux, pp. 45–250, examines comprehensively all known instances of fabliau derivation from near-Eastern or classical sources as part of his strategy to discredit the ‘théorie orientaliste’ which he attributes to his immediate predecessors. 39 Despite the diachronic bias of his approach, Bédier, Fabliaux, p. 290, arrives by a ­different route at approximately the same conclusion: ‘Une époque est responsable des récits dont elle s’est amusée, même si elle ne les a pas inventés.’ In support of his theory that the emergence of the French fabliaux constituted a distinct cultural event, Bédier argued that their appearance coincided with, and indeed directly resulted from, the growth in the thirteenth century of an urbanised, mercantile, bourgeois society. In reversing the coin, and claiming the fabliaux for an essentially courtly audience, Nykrog drew attention to the coincidence in the arrival, over approximately the same period, of both fabliaux and courtly romance. The ­coincidence which most favours the view of the fabliaux proposed in this study is that remarked by Jessie Crossland, that the period during which the fabliaux flourished also saw the foundation and rise of university centres in such locations as Paris, Provins, Amiens, and Orléans, areas where the fabliaux flourished. ‘Of the literature now under discussion [the fabliaux] the authors are largely indigent, semi-literate, witty ex-students, unfrocked monks and wandering scholars, a product of the university towns who had their headquarters at Paris.’ See Crossland, Medieval French Literature, p. 146.

1

Origins: Fable To Fabliau Cele qui se Fist Foutre sur la Fosse de son Mari Two classic and popular fabliaux, La vieille Truande and Le Chevalier qui fist parler les Cons, begin by positing a relationship between fabliaux and fables: Des fables fait on les fabliaus, Et des notes les sons noviaus, Et des materes les canchons, Et des dras cauces et cauchons.

This prologue appears in almost identical form in all five extant exemplars of La vieille Truande and is presumably authorial. It appears in only one of seven extant exemplars of Le Chevalier qui fist parler les cons, and its presence there probably reflects a scribe’s effort to repair a lacuna in his copy text by appropriating the prologue of a companion piece from the same manuscript. In either case fablëor and scribe appear to have conceived the products of their respective literary activities as fabliaux, and did so in part on the basis of each fabliau’s apprehended evolution from some fable source. The judgement that fabliaux evolved from fables has been widely endorsed by modern critics, but only on the abstract and general principles of fable anteriority  The word ‘classic’ as used here signifies that the work’s status as a fabliau is confirmed by the scholarly tradition represented by two editions, MR and the more recent NRCF and inventories in the critical studies of Bédier and Nykrog. For the text of La vieille Truande see NRCF 4: 313–44; 433–38; for Le Chevalier qui fist parler les Cons, NRCF 3: 45–173; 412–29. ‘Popularity’ is an assumption based on the number of surviving manuscripts, four and seven respectively in the case of these two fabliaux.  ‘From fables fabliaux are made, and from notes new melodies, songs from subject matters, and leggings and stockings from pieces of fabric’. A similar relationship is suggested by the opening lines of Trubert (NRCF 10: 143–262; 360–75), one of several texts classified as ‘intimement apparentés aux fabliaux’ by Nykrog, Fabliaux, pp. 296–97, but accepted into the fabliau canon by the editors of the NRCF: ‘En fabliaus doit fables avoir: / Si a il, ce sachiez de voir! / Por ce est fabliaus apelez / Que de faubles est aünez’ [‘Fabliaux must contain fables: if they are present, then know for a fact that is why they are called fabliaux, that they are composed of fables’]. Prior to the NRCF edition the fabliau had appeared as Trubert: Fabliau du XIIIe Siècle, ed. Raynaud de Lage.  An exemplar of Le Chevalier qui fist parler les Cons precedes La vieille Truande in both MS Paris B.N. fr. 837 and MS Berlin, Deutsche Staatsbibl., Hamilton 257.

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and the recurrence among fabliaux of various formal qualities conventionally present in fable literature. Both genres feature a conflict where one protagonist’s success is achieved at the inevitable expense of another. The gain or loss is unequivocal, either strictly material or physical in the sense of achieving or failing to achieve sensory gratification. The conflict involves an intrigue where deceit plays a prominent part. And, finally, both forms conventionally conclude with an epimythium drawing some brief moral lesson or abstract philosophical comment from the events narrated. Recognition that fable and fabliau are affiliated should promote understanding of their differences and definitive characteristics, but this line of enquiry is hampered by the scant instances where a specific fabliau is derived from a specific fable. Le Preudome qui rescolt son Compere de noier is perhaps indebted to the fable of the ingrate serpent recorded as the fifth exemplum in the Disciplina Clericalis of Petrus Alphonsi, but the analogy is remote. Mediation of fable by beast-epic would relate two fabliaux by Gautier le Leu, Connebert and Le Prestre teint, to fables incorporated into Branches I and Ib respectively of Le Roman de Renart. In all three cases, however, the texts are related by little more than shared motifs, and comparison generates limited insight beyond confirming such banal observations as the substitution in fabliaux of human for animal protagonists, or the promotion of a pseudo-historicity in fabliau treatment of time and place. Not all fables have animal rather than human characters, however, and while the author of La vieille Truande fails to reveal the precise nature of the fables mentioned, the treatment of source materials is engaged directly, and comments added suggesting a source considerably closer in form to the final product than would have been the case with a traditional beast fable: Por çou vos voel dire et conter Un fabelet por deliter, D’une fable que jou oï, Dont au dire mout m’esjoï.  See Nykrog, Fabliaux, pp. 248–52: ‘Essai sur les origines du fabliau’, and independently from the same period introductory statements in two editions of fabliaux: Fabliaux, ed. Johnston and Owen, pp. xiii–xix, and Twelve Fabliaux, ed. Reid, p. x. The issue has been reexamined by Muscatine, The Old French Fabliaux, pp. 19–22. For the suggestion that fabliaux parody fables see Bergerfurth, ‘Des fables fait on les fabliaus’, pp. 61–73. The relationship between fables and fabliaux is also examined by Taylor, ‘Animal Tales as Fabliaux’.  NRCF 8:163–70; 365–66.  See Micha, ‘A Propos d’un Fabliau’. An alternative, non beast-fable source is suggested by Pearcy, ‘A Classical Analogue’.  For the relationship of Connebert to the Brun-Lanfrois episode in Branch I of RdR see Pearcy, ‘Connebert’; for that of Le Prestre teint to an episode in Branch Ib of RdR, see Livingston, ‘The Jongleur Gautier le Leu’, and Le Jongleur Gautier le Leu, p. 255. See also Berriot, ‘Les Fabliaux de Gautier le Leu’. The two fabliaux are in NRCF 7: 215–37; 386–91, and 307–30; 406–09. For RdR see Le Roman de Renart, ed. Martin.



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13

Or le vos ai torné en rime Tout sans batel et tot sans lime.

The author’s source is said to have been oral rather than written (the assertion is repeated at v. 214: ‘si c’on me conta’ [‘as I was told’]), and the version claimed to have been heard recited was in prose. A beast fable possibly lies somewhere in the background of La vieille Truande, but the account of procedures suggests a less radical transformation than would have been expected were the author working with such formally remote materials. Since no identifiable source for La vieille Truande survives, the author’s modifications in moving from fable to fabliau remain a matter of guesswork. His statements nevertheless provide evidence for one important deduction about the relationship between these two genres. The precise significance of line 10 is elusive, but if lime in this context means ‘file’, and if batel, by attraction into the same register, means ‘hammer’, then the line can be interpreted as a variation on the series of metaphors in lines 2–4. All imply that transforming a fable into a fabliau involves some process of fabricating an artefact of comparatively complex structure from incremental or amorphous materials of a comparatively less organized or refined nature. Some further assistance in understanding this process appears in the opening lines of Jean Bodel’s Les deus Chevaus.10 As noted by Nykrog,11 the first thirteen lines of this fabliau, beginning ‘Cil qui trova del morteruel’ echo the opening lines of Chrétien de Troyes’s Cligès, beginning ‘Cil qui fist d’Erec et d’Enide’. Jean Bodel’s familiarity with the work of Chrétien has an important bearing on the following discussion, but of immediate concern is the relationship between fable source and derived fabliau described in the passage of Les deus Chevaus following line thirteen:

 ‘For this reason I want to relate for your enjoyment a brief narrative which I heard in the form of a fable, and which when I heard it gave me much pleasure. I have reworked it in rhyme, without the use of hammer or file’ (vv. 5–10).  The NRCF glossary to vol. 4, s.v. batel, translates here as marteau, although Godefroy, Dictionnaire, vol. 1, p. 599 limits the meaning to the special case of the clapper of a bell. We are probably dealing with a triple pun. The context lends itself perfectly well to lime meaning peine, tourment, a sense well attested in similar contexts, and since the verb bateler may figuratively mean s’agiter, a noun batel could readily be interpreted as synonymous with lime in its sense of mental anguish or distress. Both words, furthermore, have associations with the technical vocabulary of poetic composition. Godefroy, vol. 1, p. 599, translates batel as vers batelé (‘rime batelée: sorte de vers où le premier hémistiche rimait avec la fin du vers précédent’), citing this occurrence in La vieille Truande as his sole authority. He also (s.v. lime, vol. 4, p. 786) cites an expression traitier la lime, which he translates as ‘polir un ouvrage d’esprit, des vers’, quoting in illustration: ‘Tresqu’or ai si traitie la lime/ Que chascun couples a sa rime.’ 10 NRCF 5: 251–65; 425. For a general overview of the work of Jean Bodel, see Foulon, L’Œuvre de Jehan Bodel. For the fabliaux, see Jean Bodel, ed. Nardin. 11 Nykrog, Fabliaux, pp. 82–84. Also Gier, ‘Chrétien de Troyes’.

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Cil qui trova del morteruel ... D’un autre fablel s’entremet, Qu’il ne cuida ja entreprendre. Ne por mestre Jehan reprendre De Boves, qui dist bien et bel, N’entreprent il pas cest fablel, Quar assez sont si dit resnable. Mes qui de fablel fet grant fable N’a pas de trover sens legier.12

Jean de Boves is a mysterious and otherwise unidentified figure, but Jean Bodel appears to be acknowledging him as the author of the source of his story. The last two lines quoted are difficult to interpret because of their ambiguity. Does sens mean ‘path’ or ‘way of understanding things’? Is Jean Bodel commenting, consequently, on the seriousness of what he does, or on the fact that his own light touch protects him from the trap of heavy-handedness not always avoided by his fellow fablëors? Uncertainty on this score makes other elements in the passage ambiguous. The first possibility suggests that the fablel is the ancestral work by Jean de Boves, and the grant fable the tale of Les deus Chevaus about to be recounted. According to the second reading, Les deus Chevaus is the fablel, and all we know about its relationship to its source is that Jean Bodel’s remaniement will stop short of becoming a grant fable.13 Whichever interpretation is put on Bodel’s words, his concern is undoubtedly with the creative process (trover) and with how one artefact is made from another by the imposition of some new form. What he intended to imply about the relations between fabliau and romance by constructing his personal list of fabliau titles to range against the invoked works of Chrétien is uncertain. But the comparison between fabliau and romance created by Jean Bodel’s parody of the preface to Cligès suggests a consciousness on his part that the preface to another work of Chrétien was relevant to his concerns. In the opening paragraph of Erec et Enide, Chrétien makes his well-known but notoriously obscure statement about his practice as a writer of romance, that he ‘tret d’un conte d’avanture/ Une mout

12 ‘He who wrote about the soup … is applying himself to write another fabliau, which he does not think to undertake in criticism of master Jehan of Boves, who wrote well and elegantly, for his works are entirely satisfactory. Whoever spins too long-winded a tale from a fabliau, however, does not have a light touch as a writer.’ 13 In an interesting article which assumes Bodel to be commenting on the seriousness of his enterprise, Jean Charles Payen argued that the passage attests the author’s consciousness of the potential literary and aesthetic merit of fabliaux which have some genuine ideological significance. In the author’s concluding petition to the audience to resolve for themselves the rights of an issue which ecclesiastic authorities have deliberately consigned to limbo, ‘Se noue la complicité de l’auditoire et du poète; l’écriture poétique contribue dès lors à la dénonciation d’un système, et le conte à rire se met au service d’une critique politique et sociale’. See Payen, ‘Le Statut de l’Ecrivain’, p. 53.



FABLE TO FABLIAU

15

bele conjointure’.14 The parallel is not sufficiently close to be conclusive, but a hint that Jean Bodel might have been familiar with Chrétien’s preface to Erec et Enide can be gleaned from the fact that lines 15–18 of that work, ‘Par qu’an puet prover et savoir / Que cil ne fet mie savoir, / Qui sa sciance n’abandone / Tant con Deus la grace l’an done’15 appear to be echoed in the epimythium which Bodel composed for another of his fabliaux, Brunain, la Vache au Prestre.16 It reads, in the diplomatic transcription of the single surviving manuscript: ‘Par example dist cis fabliaus / Que fols est qui ne s’abandone / Cil a le bien cui dieus le done / Non cil qui le muce et enfuet.’17 The conte d’avanture to which Chrétien refers is as mysterious as the fables mentioned by the authors of fabliaux. There is a real possibility that Jean Bodel perceived the relationship between fabliau and fable as similar to that between romance and conte d’avanture, in that both involve some transformation associated with conjointure. What precisely Chrétien may have understood by the word conjointure has been the subject of numerous conjectures, most notably by Douglas Kelly in Sens et Conjointure in the Chevalier de la charette.18 For present purposes, however, the most promising interpretation of conjointure is that offered by Eugene Vance, who assumes the term refers to a relationship between romance narrative and logic.19 The branch of logic invoked by Vance, particularly in his discussion of conjointure in Chrétien’s Yvain, is that dealing with topics, and such questions as ‘what is a man’, as defined and illustrated in Book 4 of Boethius’ De topicis differentiis. His perception that conjointure serves to correlate two distinct 14 Chrétien de Troyes, Erec et Enide: ‘drew from an adventure story a most elegant conjunction’. 15 ‘From which it may be demonstrated and understood that he who fails to make use of his knowledge despite God granting him the grace to do so, does not act wisely’. 16 NRCF 5: 39–48; 384. 17 ‘This fabliau teaches us by example that he is a fool who does not gamble on his chances. He is the one who profits from what God gives him, not the one who conceals and hides away his goods.’ In ‘Notes et éclaircissements’, line 66, p. 384 the editors point out that the line ‘Cil a le bien cui dieus le done’ does not harmonise with the sentiments expressed earlier in the narrative, and fails to provide the expected contrast with the following line, ‘Non cil qui le muce et enfuet’. They suggest that the original reading, corrupted in some less-than-scrupulous redaction, may have been ‘Cil a le bien qui Dieu le donne,’ i.e. the benefits of making a donation to God revert to the giver. That God should be the donor appears to link the manuscript reading with that of Erec et Enide, but in fact Chrétien stipulates that God grants the grace not to fail in making the most of one’s talents, so that the suggested reading for Bodel’s text actually accords better with Chrétien’s sentiments. 18 Kelly, in Sens and Conjointure, devotes a chapter (pp. 86–97) to investigating the significance of the term in Chrétien’s poem. In the course of his enquiries he cites Nitze, ‘Sans et Matière’, and Frappier, Chrétien de Troyes, p. 62. His conclusion, which approximates that of these earlier critics, suggests rather disappointingly that conjointure means only the unifying effect of the process whereby the sens informs the matière. Other interpretations are offered by Vinaver, The Rise of Romance, p. 37, and by Barron, English Medieval Romance, p. 42. 19 Vance, Topic. In a foreword to Vance’s study, Wlad Godzich, p. xvii, remarks that ‘as a discourse logic differs from all other discourses by the fact that it does not intersect with any other discourses and, as a result, it comprehends them all.’

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discourses, however, may be equally applicable to the fabliaux if concern with syllogistic reasoning replaces that involving topoi. The distinction remarked by Vance would be operative in both instances: ‘One science of discourse [rhetoric] is centrifugal, playful, relativistic, opportunistic, and subversive; the other [logic] is centripetal, serious, totalizing, constant, and recuperative.’20 To test the validity of this perception of the relationship between fable and fabliau requires the availability of one or more fabliaux demonstrably derived from fables formally close enough to their progeny to facilitate drawing some fine but significant distinctions between them. Unfortunately, very few beast fables are even superficially related to fabliaux, and none satisfy the criteria for the kind of comparison proposed. The situation is only slightly ameliorated when attention is shifted to fables with human rather than animal protagonists. One notable exception, however, will provide a point of departure, and set the procedures for a more general investigation.The fable in question is the well-known The Matron of Ephesus, which is generally acknowledged to have influenced the development of Cele qui se fist foutre sur la Fosse de son Mari [hereafter Cele qui se fist foutre].21 Whether the classical fable constitutes a source for the fabliau as that relationship is conventionally understood will emerge in the course of the following discussion. The Matron of Ephesus is initially recorded in two diverse sources in the first century A.D. One version, the Satyricon of Petronius,22 provides a fictional context for the narration, and consequently tells us several interesting facts about the circumstances under which such a story might have been presented in his own period. In the Satyricon the fable is told by the compulsive versifier Eumolpus who, according to the central narrator Encolpius, wished ‘to hurl many taunts at the fickleness of women; how easily they fell in love, how quickly they forgot even their children, how no woman was so chaste that she could not be led away into utter madness by a passion for a stranger.’ He tells his ‘Milesian Tale’ on board ship during a voyage in which, together with their companion Giton, Eumolpus and Encolpius are apparently (the text is fragmentary at this point) in flight after committing some felony. Also on board is a lady called Tryphaena romantically attached to Giton. At the conclusion of the story she blushes and hides her face against Giton’s neck. The sailors laugh, but the one authority figure, their captain Lichas, is alone in failing to respond with simple amusement. He is outraged, clearly feels that for so heinous an offence the female protagonist has been dealt with too leniently, and declares that the governor of the province where the events of The Matron of Ephesus took place should in justice have inflicted on the widow the cruel retribution from which her actions saved her soldier lover. Although anti-feminist in sentiment, therefore, the story 20

Vance, Topic, p. 22. Text in NRCF 3: 375–403; 466–71. The fabliau survives in six manuscripts.The relative merits of versions A and B, the latter chosen as the base text for the NRCF critical edition, have been disputed by Lacy, Reading Fabliaux. 22 Text in Petronius, pp. 268–77. 21



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does not excoriate women so severely as to make it unsuitable for narration to a mixed audience, and it causes the female listener only mild embarrassment. A very large temporal and cultural gap separates pagan classical antiquity from the Christian Middle Ages, certainly, but barring clear evidence to the contrary it is legitimate to assume that the circumstances for narrating such a tale and the reception accorded it would not be dissimilar in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries to those imagined by Petronius. Sometime in the same first century A.D. the story entered the main stream of fable literature by inclusion among the works of the Latin fabulist Phaedrus,23 where it appears with the title ‘Quanta sit inconstantia et libido mulierum’,24 reflecting much the same anti-feminist sentiments as those expressed by Encolpius. From Phaedrus the story passed to the medieval-Latin fable collection known as the Romulus, generally with the title ‘The Widow and the Soldier’. It is from this tradition that the story was known to the Middle Ages before recovery and dissemination of the Phaedrean text at the end of the sixteenth century.25 The Romulus survives in two redactions, one prose and one verse. The most important of the latter group, and the source of the French vernacular versions of immediate concern for this study, is the twelfth-century Fabulae in elegiac verse attributed to Galterus Anglicus, Walter the Englishman. It includes the story of The Matron of Ephesus as Fable 65: ‘De Viro et Uxore’ [‘Of a man and his wife’]. A version of the story appears among the Fables of Marie de France, derived from an English translation of a lost Anglo-Norman Romulus.26 The story also appears in the medieval French version of The Seven Sages of Rome, entitled Vidua and told by the philosopher Jessé in defence of the prince calumniated by his Machievellian step-mother.27 It is the bitterest treatment of the story, and shows some interesting features. Of the several French redactions in octosyllabic couplets available, the fable version of The Matron of Ephesus is represented from the collection known as the Isopet I – Avionnet. It dates from approximately the same period as the fabliaux, and is formally indistinguishable from them except for its appearance within a fable anthology. The compilation as a whole contains roughly the same fables in approximately the same order as in the Fabulae of Galterus Anglicus. The fable D’un homme et de sa femme gives a consistently faithful rendering of the Latin text of De Viro et Uxore, so its credentials as a fable are well established. The text will be analysed in some 23 The Matron of Ephesus has been preserved in the copy made by the fifteenth-century humanist Perotti from a no-longer extant manuscript. For the Latin text with an English translation see ‘Perotti’s Appendix’ in Babrius and Phaedrus, pp. 392–95. 24 ‘So great may be the fickleness and the lust of women’. 25 The history of the transmission of fable texts in Latin is given in Hervieux, Fabulistes. 26 See ‘De la femme ki fist pendre sun mari’, fable no. 25 in Marie de France, Fables, pp. 92–94. All quotations from fables by Marie not adopted as fabliaux are from this edition. For the complete works see Œuvres Complètes, ed. Otaka. 27 Text in Speer, Sept Sages. The tale Vidua told by the sage Jessé appears in K , vv. 3687–3910 (pp. 203–08), and in the fragmentary C redaction, vv. 851–1126 (pp. 259–266).

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detail, and passages from it quoted for purposes of comparison with the more familiar versions from Marie de France and Le Roman des Sept Sages.28 To facilitate comparison with Cele qui se fist foutre, D’un homme et de sa femme will be analysed according to the system of actantial analysis expounded by A.-J. Greimas.29 The Greimasian approach creates a narrative syntax based in its elementary form on grammatical syntax, with ‘actants’ which can be equated with the subject (sujet), object (objet), and indirect object (destinataire) of normal English sentence structure. Subject and direct object are linked along an axis of ‘desire’ understood as a reflection of transitive verbal activity linking subject and object in grammatical syntax. The destinataire actant is the receiver on an axis of ‘communication’ requiring a sender (destinateur) whose role has no specific equivalent in grammatical syntax but might be filled by either the subject- or the object-actant in the narrative syntax. Action across the axis of communication involves, as the terms destinateur and destinataire imply, some manner of communicative exchange, which may be material, or may take the form of a message, and frequently involves both in some mutually defining interrelationship. Finally, the subject-actant is placed at the centre of a third axis, that of ‘power’, which has both negative (opposant) and positive (adjuvant) poles defined in relationship to the activity of the subject along the axis of desire. Characters ancillary to those of subject, object, and destinataire find their places in association with the actants adjuvant and opposant. The full scheme, in diagrammatic form, appears in the actantial model shown in Figure 1.1. The characters in the narrative constitute the semantic manifestations of actants, but it is not necessary for all actants to be manifest in any single narrative.

Adjuvant

→  Sujet   ←    Opposant

[axis of power]

  [axis  ↓  of desire]

Destinateur  → Objet

←   Destinataire [axis of communication]

     Figure 1.1 Greimasian actantial analysis 28 Text from Recueil Général des Isopets, vol. 2, pp. 333–6. D’un Homme et de sa Femme is one of a group of four fables drawn from Walter’s Fabulae but missing from the base manuscripts of Bastin’s edition. Of the five Isopets she published, only the Isopet I – Avionnet contains a complete version of The Matron of Ephesus. In the Isopet de Lyon only the first eight lines of Fable 49, De la Dame et dou Chevalier, survive (Bastin, vol. 2, p. 167): ‘Une dame de haut paraige / Avoit prise per mariaige / Uns chevaliers, mout la tient chiere; / Cele l’amoit d’amour entiere. / La compaignie est dessevree / D’au dous, per bone destinee; / Quar la mort que nul ne esparne / Au chevalier a tolu l’arme’ [‘A lady of noble birth was married to a knight whom she greatly cherished and to whom she was entirely devoted. Their relationship was disrupted by fate, for death, which spares no one, snatched away the knight’s soul’]. 29 See Greimas, Sémantique structurale, and Du Sens. The first of these two works has been translated into English as Structural Semantics.



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Actants themselves, whether represented by characters within the narrative or not, constitute the social and moral forces propelling the narrative action, the web of cultural and psychological influences which motivate the characters’ behaviour, and in the full resolution of their interrelationships define the narrative’s ultimate significance. How exactly the model is applied to the analysis of individual narratives is not strictly mandated, and may reflect different assumptions and different procedures, but since this study aims to deal with multiple fable and fabliaux texts, the principles of elegance and comprehensiveness can be invoked as controlling factors, and hopefully as the study progresses the validity of what might initially appear to be tentative manoeuvres will be confirmed. The Greimasian schema is particularly suited to the analysis of fabliau plots because, on the axis of power, configurations of the adjuvant and opposant actants can be expressed as logical contradictories, e.g. ‘all A is B’ [(x implies A) implies (x implies B)] as opposed to ‘some A is not B’ [there exists some x such that (x implies A) but not (x implies B)], and so forth. In the fable D’un homme et de sa femme from the Isopet I-Avionnet the subjectactant is represented by the widow, mentioned in the title of every version either alone or in conjunction with her ex-husband or lover. The main action in the story, which defines the subject-actant and the significance of the axis of desire, is the widow’s decision to disinter the body of her late husband and hand it over to the negligent sentinel to be substituted for the corpse of the crucified or hanged felon removed by relatives anxious to accord it a decent burial. The object-actant, represented here by the deceased husband, carries the weight of significance attaching to an authority figure, the respect, the reverence, due to him as the hierarchical head of a domestic microcosm in which the wife is expected to be a subservient and submissive participant. Henryson’s fable ‘The Lion and the Mouse’ makes this point clearly, since the lion peremptorily rejects the excuse by the mouse that she ran over him in her play because she thought him dead. Such a circumstance should in no way compromise the respect due to him in his role as king of the beasts.30 So it is with the object-actant in D’un homme et de sa femme. The respect due to ‘the prent off [his] … persown’, as Henryson expresses it, the aura of distinction attaching to him, should be unaffected not only by the fact of his death but also by his nature as an individual and the way he conducted his life. In the version Vidua, from Le Roman des Sept Sages, the wife playfully snatches from her husband’s hand a stick he is whittling into an arrow for a crossbow. As a result he pricks his thumb so that it bleeds, lapses into some kind of morbid psychosis, and dies before the following morning. In the initial pangs of remorse the wife holds herself responsible for his death, but the author of the 30 The lion’s view is expressed in the nineteenth stanza of Henryson’s fable: ‘Thy fals excuse’, the Lyoun said agane, / ‘Sall not availl ane myte I underta; / I put the cace, I had bene deid or slane, / And syne my skyn bene stoppit full off stra, / Thocht thow had found my figure lyand swa, / Because it bare the prent off my persown, / Thow suld ffor ffeir on kneis have fallin doun’. ‘The Lion and the Mouse’ is taken from Henryson, Morall Fabillis, p. 52.

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fable notes wryly that ‘Cil n’avait pas coeur de lion!’ [‘He did not have a lion’s heart!’]. Nevertheless, the wife’s willingness to treat her husband’s remains as a disposable asset constitutes an unacceptable challenge to authority which contravenes the dictates of a patriarchal society. The behaviour mandated for the widow according to the social requirements of the medieval period are precisely indicated in the French versions of the fable. Evidently there is no expectation that she should follow the dictates of suttee. Her expressed intention to remain at the site of her husband’s interment until succumbing to exposure or starvation is strenuously opposed by surviving family members in versions from Le Roman des Sept Sages and the Isopet I-Avionnet: Et quant ly preudons deffina, Sa femme tel dueil en mena, C’onques ne se voult deporter, Ne nuls ne l’en puet conforter Ne faire cesser de son plaint; Mais sus la tumbe mout se plaint Senz repos nul ne senz sejour, Que ne s’en part ne nuit ne jour. Pour priere ne pour menace Ne se mouvoit de celle place, Et dit qu’elle ne se mouvra Jamais d’illeuc, ains y morra.31

Nor, if she survives, will she be expected to live a life of chaste widowhood. Her relatives assure her in Le Roman des Sept Sages (K, vv. 3722–4) that she will be richly and nobly remarried. These sentiments (K, vv. 3793–800) are reiterated by the knight seeking refuge in her company from the onerous duty of guarding the corpses of the hanged robbers. Society does expect from the widow a measured expression of grief at her bereavement such as we find in the conventional ritual of the déploration, respect for the memory of her late husband as a representative of the authority to which her absolute and unquestioning obedience is due, and a willingness to transfer that obedience to the male members of her surviving family who now assume responsibility for settling her future. These expectations are rudely violated by the widow’s decision to hand over to the gallows-warden her exhumed husband’s corpse as a means of extricating him from his difficulties, and to negotiate for herself a sexual liaison with the beneficiary of her resourcefulness. The male figure for whose benefit she devises her outrageously irreverent plan is the semantic manifestation of the ‘receiver’ (destinataire) actant, the recipient 31 ‘When her husband died the wife was so sorrowful that she resolutely refused to be dissuaded from her grief and no one was able to comfort her or put a stop to her mourning. Instead she hung tearfully over his tomb and remained there night and day without rest or respite. For neither pleading nor threat would she abandon that spot, but declared that she would never leave, but rather die there’ (vv. 7–18).



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in this instance of the material exchange of the husband’s corpse. It comes to him courtesy of the widow as destinateur, and as part of the same arrangement he receives the gift of the widow’s sexual favours. There is also an implied message that the wife is an independent being, capable of pursuing her own best interests without regard for any principles of social decorum and propriety. Since the complex nature of this exchange would benefit from some further clarification, it would be profitable at this juncture to confirm the proposed distribution of actants by citing from the Sermones Vulgares of Jacques de Vitry an analogous fable which closely parallels D’un homme et de sa femme in a number of its features.32 The story, in Crane’s translation, is as follows: One day [a wicked woman] … told her lover that she was more fond of him than of her husband. The lover demanded, as a proof of this, that she should bring him her husband’s best tooth. Upon her return to her home she began to weep and feign sadness. When her husband asked her what the matter was she said she did not dare to tell him. Finally she yielded to his entreaties, and told him she could not endure his foul breath. He was surprised and grieved, and said, ‘Why did you not tell me; is there any remedy for it?’ She replied that the only remedy was to have drawn the tooth from which the odour proceeded. He followed her advice, and had drawn the good and sound tooth which she pointed out, and which she took at once and carried to her lover.

The husband in this fable manifests the same actant as the husband’s corpse in D’un homme et de sa femme, but the story from the Sermones Vulgares is of greatest help in clarifying action along the axis of communication, particularly the message from the wife to her lover which the material exchange articulates. The lover described by Jacques de Vitry specifically requests proof that the wife holds her husband sufficiently in contempt and so much subject to her manipulation that they can proceed with their relationship regardless of any possible intervention on his part. The extraction of the husband’s tooth appears to be of special significance in conveying this message, and helps to connect the fable from Jacques de Vitry with the story of The Matron of Ephesus, particularly in its later manifestations. In some late fourteenth-century versions of Galterus Anglicus’s De Viro et Uxore the soldier objects to substituting the husband’s corpse for the felon’s out of fear that the ruse will be detected. The teeth of the stolen corpse are broken or missing, while those of the husband are better preserved. Unperturbed, the wife takes a stone and breaks the teeth in her late husband’s skull, so that the criminal’s body may be better counterfeited: 32 The English translation of the text of this fable is from Jacques de Vitry, ed. Crane, p. 238. The Latin text is on pp. 104–5. The same story, but considerably elaborated, occurs in the twelfth-century Latin comoedia entitled Lidia, ed. Lackenbacher in Cohen, Comédie, pp. 226–46.

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Inquit tunc miles: Nil feci; dentibus ille, Quem male servavi, deficiebat enim. Ne timeas, inquit mulier, lapidemque revolvens, Dentes huic misero fregit in ore viro. 33

In Le Roman des Sept Sages mutilation is carried to even greater extremes. The wife hauls her husband’s corpse onto the gallows, thrusts a sword through his side to duplicate an injury sustained by the hanged robber, and breaks two of his teeth when the soldier tells her the felon’s appearance was similarly blighted. When, at the completion of this enterprise, the widow claims the reward of the knight’s love, however, he reveals himself outraged at her conduct, rejects her plea, and condemns her behaviour as typical of the heartless treachery of her sex: ‘Voire?’ dist il, ‘orde putain! De Damediu ki fist Evain soit cil honnis, ki que il soit, ki en malvaise femme croit. tost avés chelui oublié ki pour vous fu ier enterré! je jugeroie par raison que l’en vous arsist en charbon.’34

Such a conclusion follows logically from the prior exchanges between the knight and the widow in this version. She is throughout the active participant, taking the initiative in pledging to solve the knight’s problem with the lost corpse if he promises to love and marry her in return. Rather than acting to seduce her, his initial approach when he seeks refuge from the winter chill of his vigil is expressly modest (K, vv. 3777–8):’Ja par moi n’orrois vilenie / Ne parole de lecherie’.35 In D’un homme et de sa femme (vv. 25–31) the knight also approaches the tomb initially only to warm himself at the widow’s fire and to request a drink to 33 Then the soldier said: ‘I won’t do it; because he whom I served so badly was missing some teeth.’ ‘Fear not,’ said the wife, having picked up a stone, and she broke the teeth in the mouth of her wretched husband’. Hervieux, Fabulistes, p. 340n. Satirical intent in La Femme qui fist pendre son Mari is clear in a thirty-line addition to Marie’s brief fable which appears in MS Arsenal 3142 [printed as an appendix in Marie de France, Die Fabeln, p. 331]. The knight expresses some fear at touching the corpse, but the wife immediately disinters it. When the knight will not assist her in dragging the body to the gibbet and stringing it up, the wife willingly does these tasks for him. Finally, when the knight says the substitution will be noticed because the hanged thief had a gaping wound in his forehead from two arrows, the wife tells the knight to counterfeit the wound with his sword, and does the deed herself when he proves too squeamish. 34 Speer, Sept Sages, pp. 208 (K) and 266 (C). ‘ “Really?” he said, “you dirty trollop! May he, whoever he is, suffer the curse of God the creator of Eve if he puts his trust in a wicked woman. You have quickly forgotten the man who for you was buried yesterday! It is my considered judgement that you should be burned to a cinder” ’ (K, vv. 3901–8). 35 ‘You will never hear anything vulgar from me, nor any suggestive speech’.



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slake his thirst. He is, however, much taken with her beauty, and on his second visit talks to her in so romantic a vein that she begins to fall in love with him. His guardianship of the thief ’s corpse becomes increasingly negligent, and on his third visit, during which their relationship progresses to embraces and kisses, the body is stolen. The widow has therefore already renounced any fidelity to the memory of her late husband before the crisis with her new-found attachment to the gallows-warden pushes her into the stratagem which constitutes the main action of the story. The clever device to extricate them from what is thereafter a shared threat stems entirely from her ingenuity. Her role as subject-actant is not compromised by her prior romantic liaison with the knight. In Marie de France’s fable De la femme ki fist pendre sun mari, however, certain changes to the standard model hint at some modification of the narrative syntax appropriate to other versions of the story. In Marie’s treatment the gallows-warden himself, a known relative of the hanged felon, puts his life in jeopardy by cutting down the body and burying it. Such a change weakens the core of the story, obviously, since it undermines the need to appropriate the corpse of the widow’s late husband to escape the consequences of an unforeseen misadventure. When the knight approaches the widow, he is already aware of the difficulties besetting him. His approach to her is overtly sexual: ‘Cuintement ad a li parlé: / Dit li que ele se cunfortast / Mut sereit lez, se ele l’amast’.36 In seeking her advice with the problem of the body which he has himself stolen, he seems to have arrived at a possible solution to his difficulties. He perhaps approaches the widow with the intention of manoeuvering her into supposing that the idea of substituting her husband’s corpse for that of the hanged robber is her own. In assigning a more active role to the knight, Marie raises the possibility of a different actantial model in which a male seducer fills the subject-actant category, and the wife’s role as destinateur is coloured by an element of coercion. Such a modification is perhaps to be expected from the female author of the Lais, and Marie’s epimythium uncharacteristically avoids the overt anti-feminist sentiments of other versions: Par iceste signefiance Peot hum entendre queil creance Deivent aveir li morz es vifs; Tant est li mund faus e jolifs.37

Such a shift in emphasis distances De la femme ki fist pendre sun mari from the more conventionally fable versions of the story. They are represented by the full actantial model shown in Figure 1.2. 36 ‘He spoke to her coyly, and told her she should take comfort, for he would be very happy if she would grant him her love’ (vv. 20–22). 37 Spiegel, Fables, no. 25, pp. 92–94: ‘From the meaning conveyed here one can understand what trust the dead should have in the living. Thus is the world false and frivolous’ (vv. 37–40).

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Feminine ‘nature’ Rebellion against authority; Christian inconstantia; resentment of control; patriarchal libido; the senses desire to act independently in society pursuit of personal gratification Adjuvant → Destinateur → Widow



Sujet Widow

←

Opposant

↓ Objet ← Destinataire Husband Soldier

Reverence due to authority; exercise of hierarchical control [even from the grave]      Figure 1.2  Full actantial model

The destinataire-actant semanticized by the soldier/knight is a pallid figure in this schema, without any consistent ideological investment. He may play a prominent part in the action, but his actantial significance is uncertain, and varies from version to version. In Marie de France he reflects values close to those attributed to the widow, and, as already noted, shows signs of usurping her role. In the version from Le Roman des Sept Sages, by contrast, his ultimate rejection of the widow’s love, and the contemptuous outburst provoked by her conduct, indicate that he shares some of the values attributed to the husband. The comparative vacuity of the destinataire / lover’s role is commonplace, and a generically distinctive feature in fables of the kind associated with fabliau origins. How precisely Cele qui se fist foutre relates to this actantial model is not immediately apparent, although some significant parallels exist between the two stories. Both begin with the death of a married man and the apparently inconsolable grief of his widow, who is reported to have loved him faithfully but whose sorrow is presented as perhaps more a matter of external show than genuine emotional distress. The fable records the relationship of husband and wife in the following unflattering terms: ‘Une preudons et sa femme estoient / Qui par samblant mout s’entramoient’.38 The wife’s excessive reaction to her bereavement is recorded in detail in the fabliau: Sovant s’est chaitive clamee; De grant duel demener se poine. Mout i enploie bien sa poine; Ses poinz detort et ront ses dras, Et si se pasme a chascun pas. 38

5–6).

‘There were once a huband and wife who appeared to love one another deeply’ (vv.



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Et qant ce vint a l’anterrer, Lors oïssiez fame crier Et dementer et grant duel faire, Que nus ne lo porroit retraire.39

As in the fable, the widow’s family urge her to return home with them, but she too is adamant that she will never leave the site of her husband’s burial. Both stories conclude with the women forgetting their grief when they form amorous attachments to strangers who happen on the scene to exploit the widow’s circumstances for their own advantage. Between these narrative boundaries, however, events follow totally different patterns. Instead of an encounter with the feckless guardian of a purloined cadaver, the widow’s mourning is interrupted by the chance arrival of a knight and his squire, whose attention is caught by the vehemence of her lamentations. The knight expresses pity for her evident suffering, but his concern is dismissed by the squire, who wagers that he can promptly seduce the lady despite her apparent despair. The knight is outraged by the squire’s disreputably irreverent and callous attitude, but accepts the wager, agrees to his conditions, and withdraws to hide behind a tree. The squire responds to the lady’s complaint that she is beyond the comfort of God or man by declaring that his own sorrows outweigh hers tenfold. Asked to explain, he elaborates with a brashly improvised parody of courtly doctrine: ‘Je avoie tot mis mon cuer En une fame, que j’amoie Plus mout assez que ne devoie, Qui mout estoit cortoise et sage: Ocisse l’ai par mon ostrage.’ ‘Commant fait? Ceele, arriere!’ ‘En fotant, doce amie chiere.’40

Hearing that he has fucked his beloved to death, the lady asks him to treat her in the same way only worse, since she wishes only to be freed from the sorrows which beset her! The squire obliges, and the knight, who has seen all that has happened, almost collapses with laughter. 39 The editor of the NRCF edition (‘Notes et éclaircissements’, pp. 467–8) points out that vv. 19–20 closely parallel vv. 1159–60 in Chrétien de Troyes Yvain describing the grief of Laudine, another readily comforted widow. See the edition by Mario Roques. A further echo, of Yvain v. 1175 (‘Ne nus ne le porroit descrive’ [‘And no one could describe it’]), appears at v. 24. ‘She frequently exclaimed at her wretchedness, and was careful and at pains to express her great sorrow. She wrung her hands, and tore her clothes, and fainted at every step she took. And when it came to the burial, then you might have heard a woman screaming, and weeping, and making a terrible fuss, such that no one could restrain her’ (vv. 16–24). 40 ‘ “I gave my heart completely to a lady that I loved, more perhaps than I should have, for she was most courteous and wise. I killed her with my gross behaviour.” “How could that have happened? You can’t be serious!” “I did it fucking, my dear sweet friend” ’ (vv. 82–88).

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The events of Cele qui se fist foutre cannot be accommodated to the actantial model for the fable D’un homme et de sa femme shown in Figure 1.2. The cast has been augmented with the knight, who has no actantial role to play in the latter schema. The widow’s role has been displaced by that of the squire, who is now the prime candidate to represent the subject-actant in the refashioned version of events. The wager provides the structuring principle for Cele qui se fist foutre, and furnishes a framework capable of assimilating the knight as an actant. It gives rise to an actantial model of the type represented in Figure 1.3. Adjuvant → Sujet   ← Squire

Opposant

  ↓

Destinateur → Knight

Objet   ← Destinataire Knight Squire

    Figure 1.3 Actantial model for wager

In this schema the squire desires to win the bet, and he does so at the expense of the knight. We expect some material exchange along the axis of communication, but no forfeit for loss of the wager is specified in this story. The only exchange is an acknowledgement by the knight in the form of laughter (v. 101: ‘De rire se pasme a bien poi’ [‘He almost collapsed laughing’]) that the squire has been successful in carrying out his avowed intentions. There is still no obvious place in this scheme for the actantial model in Figure 1.2, which must be accommodated if the idea that the fabliau derives from the fable is to be substantiated. In order to incorporate it, the nature of the wager must be examined in greater detail. Its terms are expressed unequivocally by the squire when he solicits the knight’s participation: Je gajeré se vos volez, Mais que de ci ne vos movez, Que ja a mout petit de plait, Si dolante comme se fait, La foutrai.41

How exactly the squire expects to realize his ambitions is not stated. Doing so would obviously compromise the wager. The knight is left to speculate on the squire’s options, and to estimate their chances of success. The actantial model for The Matron of Ephesus intervenes at this point, since he would need to take into account the possibility that the widow will emulate the behaviour of her late 41 ‘I will bet you, if you wish, as long as you don’t move from this spot, that shortly, with very little argument, and regardless of how unhappy she appears, I will fuck her’ (vv. 53–57).



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classical predecessor and willingly surrender herself to any amorous advances made by the squire. The general contours of the narrative, and details of the widow’s circumstances, behaviour and temperament, suggest that the author of the medieval French fabliau knew The Matron of Ephesus. As a competent literary artist trained in contemporary schools of rhetoric, and familiar with the major literary products of his time, it would be surprising had he remained ignorant of the most celebrated fable around.42 The actants in The Matron of Ephesus re-appear virtually unchanged in D’un homme et de sa femme. They reflect attitudes towards the social and psychological relationships between the sexes which are infused through late classical and medieval culture, and which the corpus of fable literature exists in part to articulate and disseminate. When agreeing to participate in the wager, the knight must have reckoned on popular assumptions about the inconstancy and expedient lubricity of the female sex favouring success of the squire’s venture. Nevertheless, he is sceptical of its chances. The circumstances, after all, are exceedingly unconducive to the sort 42 As with the great majority of fabliaux, Cele qui se fist foutre is anonymous. With the exception of a few self-consciously literary contributors to the fabliau corpus – Jean Bodel, Rutebeuf, Gautier le Leu for example – little is known about the authors’ backgrounds. Critics generally agree, however, that among their ranks were many clerks who had had some exposure to instruction in the curriculum of the medieval schools, particularly the subjects of the trivium, grammar, rhetoric, and logic. Bédier, Fabliaux, p. 390, takes it as certain that a large number of fabliaux were composed by clercs errants, by ‘ces déclassés, vieux étudiants, moines manqués, défroqués, qui composent la “famille de Golias”, vagi scholares, clerici vagantes, goliards, goliardois, pauvres clercs’. On the basis of their familiarity with the devices of medieval rhetoric Nykrog, Fabliaux, p. 103, concluded that ‘tous les auteurs des fabliaux avaient passé par les écoles’. His analysis of fabliau plots with erotic themes indicated that ‘les clercs écoliers … inconditionnellement partagent le rôle d’amant heureux avec les chevaliers’, Fabliaux, p. 136, a view anticipated by Guerlin de Guer, who noted that ‘les clercs sont bien les figures les plus sympathiques de notre galerie’. See Guer, ‘Le Comique et l’Humour’. Many fabliau texts identify their authors as clerks. A full account of the lives of itinerant minstrels and other entertainers is given by Waddell, Wandering Scholars, pp. 133–58; 175–210. According to contemporary chroniclers, the medieval schools certainly seem to have provided a background atmosphere by no means inimical to the manners and morals of the fabliaux. Jacques de Vitry may exaggerate the depravity he recounts, but supporting evidence suggests that his description has a largely factual basis. The following passage is translated from a quote by Rashdall, Universities of Europe, vol. 2, p. 690. The whole section on ‘Student Life in the Middle Ages’ (pp. 593–716) gives a fascinatingly detailed account: ‘Everywhere throughout the houses and streets of the city prostitutes publicly, by actions bordering on violence, dragged off to their dens students who were passing by. Any who when entering class had the temerity to resist were immediately labelled sodomites by the shouting mob who pursued them. Indeed a foul and abominable sinfulness, like an incurable leprosy or a poison without antidote, so far possessed the city that they held in high honour those who could publicly support one or more concubines. In one and the same house there would be a schoolroom on the top floor and a brothel below. In the upper section masters would be teaching, and in the lower prostitutes would be squabbling among themselves like lions.’ Roger Bacon’s commentary on the same subject confirms Jacques de Vitry’s version of the circumstances, but without his specificity. See Bacon, ed. Brewer, vol. 1, p. 412.

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of casual sexual encounter the squire is apparently contemplating. The wife has been histrionic in exhibiting her despair at the loss of her husband, carrying the display so far as to risk alienating her sympathetic and solicitous family and friends. Having refused to accompany them home, she has been left grieving at the grave site, distraught and apparently inconsolable. Voluntarily to bestow her sexual favours on a stranger at this juncture would be an act of unimaginably brash hypocrisy, and the knight is clearly of the opinion that it is unlikely to happen. There is, however, a second possibility, that, in supposing himself capable of seducing the distressed widow, the squire is ready to exert some measure of coercion to achieve his ends. In that case the narrative would require a quite different actantial model, since the squire would assume the role of subject-actant, linked to the object-actant widow along an axis of specifically sexual desire. The exchange along the axis of communication, the granting of the widow’s sexual favours, remains the same as in the actantial model shown in Figure 1.2, but reversal of the subject- and object-actants reflects the fact that coercion accounts for the granting of the gift, and other changes in the nature of the actants indicate that the total complex of conflicting attitudes has undergone transformation. Any such coercive measures would obviously fall far short of out-and-out rape. The squire would doubtless be physically capable of enforcing his will on a reluctant widow, but, unless that possibility is excluded, the knight would have no grounds for doubting the squire’s ability to execute his plan. In any event such conduct would violate thirteenth-century standards of behaviour which the knight himself would be sworn to uphold, and which his presence guarantees will be respected. Sexual gratification; Fin amor Adjuvant → Sujet Squire

←

Opposant

  ↓

← Destinataire Destinateur → Objet Wife Wife Squire Fidelity to idea of marriage; Respect for the conventions of society

     Figure 1.4 Actantial model for seduction

Other than through the use of physical force, there are no evident means available to the squire for bringing pressure to bear on the widow to accede to his desires. Furthermore, as with the circumstances affecting the widow’s decisions,



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it seems unlikely that in a scenario featuring a lover’s approach to an abandoned, distraught widow at her husband’s tomb, mourning his recent death, any degree of coercion would be considered tolerable. It is this realisation which prompts the knight to accuse his squire (vv. 59–62) of an unchristian attitude and heretical deviance when first alerted to his plans. Ruling out any degree of coercion must also influence his view of the wager. He knows the squire is committed to seducing the widow, and probably suspects, on the basis of the popular lore propagated by fable literature, that despite appearances the widow would not be averse to the idea of a sexual encounter. He doubts that his squire will accomplish his purpose, however, because he supposes that the circumstances surrounding the encounter will bring any sexual negotiation to an impasse. The widow, by her prior behaviour, has compromised the granting of her sexual favours unless she is in some manner coerced into doing so. The squire is operating in sacred space and under the watchful eye of his social superior, circumstances which render any seduction unthinkable unless occurring with the female participant’s willing consent. The knight sees the problem as irresolvable, and is consequently willing to bet against its success. He has reckoned, however, without the ingenuity of his squire, who has the perfect solution to the problem with which he has teased the knight’s imagination. ‘Not A unless B, and not B unless A’ implies ‘neither A nor B’ as long as the conjunct AB is void, which the knight assumes to be the case. The alternative, after all, requires the woman in a sexual relationship to be both coerced by force and to participate freely, a proposition with all the appearance of a logical impossibility. But where logic fails, sophistry may prevail, and the squire devises a sophistical solution to the problem. If he is to win the wager, he needs to discover some form of coercion, short of rape, which will release the widow to follow her natural inclinations. When he confronts her with the outrageous claim that he has been responsible for his beloved’s death because of his sexual appetite and vitality, he presents her with the opportunity to request that he despatch her in the same fashion. The gap separating coercion from voluntary acquiescence is suddenly, almost magically bridged. Put another way, the disparate narrative formulae represented by Figures 1.2 and 1.4 become reconciled. Does the wife follow the pattern set by the Matron of Ephesus and sacrifice the respect and devotion due to a recently deceased husband on the altar of momentary sexual gratification? That she allows herself to be seduced by the squire demonstrates only too vividly that such is the case. Is the wife the victim of male coercion and dominance exploiting her vulnerability? She no doubt could construct an argument to that effect, since wishing only to die, and having the choice of only one executioner, she has to accept whatever means of exiting this life are presented to her. The wife does not expect to die in the sense suggested by the squire’s proposition, and we are clearly dealing here with a kind of chop-logic, but that should not detract from our appreciation of the intricacy of the logical pattern underlying the posing of the problem and its solution. The fabliau title is scribal,

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and probably not intended to be announced prior to an oral performance of the work, but its presence in no way compromises the ‘sudden glory’ effect in the development of the comic narrative.43 Despite the artifice of the situation, furthermore, the widow’s circumstances contain the seeds of a shift, from fable to fabliau, in medieval responses to the issue of female psychology, away from an attitude characterised by the view that ‘women will be women’, and towards a Freudian ‘what do women want’ recognition of something enigmatic in the female psyche. Aside from the sophistical posturing which allows the plot to evolve with near-mechanical inevitability, the widow emerges as a woman who wants to bestow her sexual favours freely, but can do so only if coerced, and who wants to be coerced into sexual submission, but not at the expense of feeling that her own freedom to act has been compromised. The complexity of the plot articulates the analogous social and psychological complexities which underlie many fabliau intrigues, although the element of caricature inseparable from the circumstances of Cele qui se fist foutre, a story featuring a brazen lecher and hypocritically chaste widow, occludes the psychological realism. A subtle reconciliation of passive and aggressive sexual ­proclivities nevertheless offers, from however bizarre a perspective, the unusual glimpse of a landscape seldom depicted in medieval literature. Three narrative patterns have so far been assigned actantial models, those appearing with the designations of Figures 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4. Despite the superficial similarity between them, they are clearly not of the same type. The models in 1.2 and 1.4 sufficiently account for the narratives which they exemplify, that of the wife who deceives her husband, or violates the respect due to his memory, in order to surrender herself to the attentions of a casually discovered suitor, and that of the adventurer who coerces a naïve or reluctant female victim into acceding to his sexual overtures. The version of The Matron of Ephesus from Isopet I-Avionnet provides an instance of the former pattern, Marie’s La Femme ki fist pendre son mari of the latter. The two actantial models show only minor divergencies. The story of The Matron of Ephesus, as fully invested in Figure 1.2, is adequately accounted for by the model in terms of the characters and events depicted, and may be designated a narreme.44 With Figure 1.3 such is not the case. The fundamental events of Cele qui se fist foutre, particularly the critical exchanges between the squire and the widow, are not represented, and the widow herself, who is the major protagonist in the narrative, is missing from among the actants. Introduction of logical concerns, identified earlier with one of the terms in a specifically fabliau conjointure, adds to the actantial paradigm another structural dimension which needs to be acknowledged in formulating an abstract model for the tale. 43 For an examination of the contribution of fabliau prologues and epilogues to the creative process and the authors’ attitudes towards genre see Ocaña, ‘A Morphological Study’. See also Baumgartner, ‘Titre et Nom d’Auteur’. 44 The concept narreme is to be understood as the complete Greimasian actantial model as shown in Fig. 2 above. I first encountered the term in Dorfman, Narreme.



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The logical crux itself, seen as a clash between two irreconcilably opposed alternatives, has already been analysed according to the knight’s view of the probable outcome of the squire’s resolve. The situation can also be depicted as an exchange between the squire and the wife, in which the squire cheats through his outlandishly fraudulent claim that he has killed his mistress with excessive sexual demands, and the widow cheats by pretending to believe the truth of what he is claiming. This exchange is subordinate to that shown in Figure 1.3 as the narreme for Cele qui se fist foutre, but it is an essential element in the fabliau’s structure, which must consequently be recognised as twofold. These structural issues are fully examined in the following two chapters. Here it will suffice to indicate that the narreme depicting the knight’s discomfiture at the exposure of his false assumptions subsumes an episteme which creates the circumstances for that exposure. Since the squire and the widow collaborate in circumventing the prohibitions which the knight has assumed will prevent the squire realising his declared intentions, the model for the narreme appropriate to Cele qui se fist foutre needs to be slightly modified as in Figure 1.5 to account for the otherwise unrecognised participation of the widow, and the fact of her complicity in the squire’s triumph over his convention-bound superior. Adjuvant → Sujet ←    Widow/Squire

Opposant

  ↓

Destinateur → Knight

Objet ← Destinataire Knight Squire

     Figure 1.5 Augmented actantial model for wager

The episteme representing the exchange between squire and widow could be invested with the values shown in Figures 1.2 and 1.4, but these values can also, and more appropriately, be assigned to the narreme shown in Figure 1.5, since the squire and the widow between them represent a complex of attitudes opposed to those well-documented in the description and behaviour of the knight. Investment of the episteme can then be restricted to the logical issues governing the exchanges between just two actants, those semanticised in the persons of squire and widow. Conjointure in the fabliaux is a matter of assimilating to the rhetorical concerns of the narreme the logical concerns of the episteme in a composite structure definitive of fabliaux generally. In the following chapters and throughout the rest of the study the term episteme will be used to describe sub-narremic elements of critical importance in understanding and describing fabliau structure. There is significant evidence to suggest that the author of Cele qui se fist foutre knew The Matron of Ephesus in one of its forms, and included details of its narrative texture in the introductory section of his own work. There is another

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sense, however, in which The Matron of Ephesus influenced the development of Cele qui se fist foutre. It constitutes a ‘source’ for the French fabliau, and the latter text incorporates into its actantial structure versions of the actantial model for the earlier tale. That model is capable of generating numerous examples of the type, each with its own distinctive surface texture and narrative development. At the generic level the story from Jacques de Vitry of the lady who extracted her husband’s good tooth, and any other stories conforming to the same actantial pattern, could also be regarded as sources for Cele qui se fist foutre. To the extent that Cele qui se fist foutre is a typical fabliau, therefore, comparison between it and The Matron of Ephesus has implications for a comparison of fabliaux and fables. Any observations made at this juncture are necessarily very tentative, but some initial observations are possible, particularly if restricted to matters which will be justified with a much wider range of reference in future chapters. The first point to register is that the full semantic investment of the actants in the actantial model for The Matron of Ephesus – opposition between the spirituality of Christian patriarchal society and the physicality of female nature, conflict between husband and wife over matters of sexual fidelity and economic frugality, and so forth – is appropriated wholesale into the fabliau with very little discernible change. It is augmented with a different model which suggests that the threat to the values held sacred by the husband comes not only from the infidelity which follows naturally from a desire for sexual freedom and independence of action on the part of wives, but also, and more dauntingly, from aggressive sexual adventuring on the part of those encouraged to pursue adulterous affairs by dissemination of a doctrine of fin amor. The complex of attitudes regarding sexual mores, marriage and relationships between the sexes which evolved from classical antiquity to the later Middle Ages informs the action in Cele qui se fist foutre as much as it does in The Matron of Ephesus or D’un homme et de sa femme. But they have been displaced from the foreground of concerns in the fabliau by a new interest in the logical implications of the wager between the knight and his squire, and the ingenious sophistry of the squire’s solution to the problem he has to overcome in order to seduce the widow and win his wager with the knight. Cele qui se fist foutre reveals itself as a complex structure combining the narrative of the squire’s seduction of the widow with the narrative of the squire’s triumph over his adversary the knight. The two narratives evolve independently, but are united by the stratagem which the squire devises to achieve his purpose, and which he calculates will be sufficiently beyond the reach of the knight’s imagination that he will be enticed into betting against its success. Remarks by the author of La vieille Truande and others examined at the beginning of this chapter appeared to imply that fabliaux derived from fables and incorporated many of the same materials, but did so in a more complex narrative context which refined the content by subjecting it to interpretation within a dialectic framework of conflicting attitudes and beliefs. Such a view is borne out



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by what has been revealed about the relationship between The Matron of Ephesus and Cele qui se fist foutre. The fact that the superimposed structure has a logical base is immensely important, not only for the light it sheds on the nature of the humour in this fabliau, but as establishing a direction to be followed in the wider investigation of the fabliau corpus to be undertaken in the following chapters. One observation to be made in concluding this section of the argument is that the particular conjointure of logic in the episteme and rhetoric in the narreme imparts a distinctive quality of ‘wit’ to fabliaux. This quality is instrumental in distinguishing fabliau aesthetic both from the moral philosophising of the wisdom-literature tradition of the fable, and from the exuberant physicality of farce. Both of these elements are, of course, present to a greater or lesser degree throughout the fabliau corpus. Moral indignation at female usurpation of the authoritarian role in marriage taints the wit of some later fabliaux, and farcical physicality plays a prominent part in numerous fabliaux described as episodic in a later chapter. One factor which distinguishes Chaucer’s fabliautales from the mainstream of his thirteenth-century French-fabliaux antecedents is the increased role assigned to physically farcical episodes such as those occurring at the conclusion of the Miller’s Tale and the Reeve’s Tale. Fabliau ‘wit’ depends for its success on the integrity in the fabliau narrative of the intellectual element imparted by logic, and the interaction of character and circumstance which generates the events constituting the plot. Any disturbance of the interdependency and fine balance of these features threatens to undermine the aesthetic appeal of ‘wit’, but in the best examples of the genre this balance is most carefully preserved.

2

Outline of a Methodology Part 1: The Logical Contradictories The attempt in the previous chapter to ascertain some of the differences between fabliaux and fables, and to arrive subsequently at a better understanding of the distinctive features of each, was an essentially extensive procedure, taking its point of departure in the texts themselves, and hoping by analysis to identify some features applicable to all members of the respective genres. The investigation in this and subsequent chapters will aim to arrive at an intensive definition by creating a theoretical inventory of definitive structural devices that in some variation or combination are an essential ingredient in all examples of the genre. An appropriate beginning for a structural analysis is to compile an inventory of the logical exchanges which involve some shift in truth-values, and which therefore constitute a definitive feature of all fabliaux. Most of these exchanges can be assimilated to one of the fallacies treated by Aristotle in the Sophistici elenchi and by the authors of commentaries on that work from late classical antiquity onwards. The Middle Ages knew Aristotle’s treatise through the translation of Boethius. In addition, the period from the twelfth to the fourteenth century produced numerous handbooks and treatises on logic which included a treatment of the fallacies, and followed more or less faithfully the Aristotelian scheme of analysis. The most important of these were the Summulae logicales of Peter of Spain, the Introductiones in logicam of William of Shyreswood, the De Fallaciis ad quosdam nobiles artistas of Thomas Aquinas, and the Fallaciae of Siger of Courtrai. There are, demonstrably, multiple points of contact between fabliaux and contemporary logical treatises. Although little is known about the majority of fablëors, it seems likely, on the basis of their literary knowledge and rhetorical skills, that their number included some unbeneficed clergy with experience as students of the trivium, who would have acquired familiarity with the elements of sophistic logic. It may even be the case, particularly with those fallacies that have an essentially verbal component, that the humorous anecdote takes its core exchange directly from some paralogism in a logical treatise. But such instances would be rare, and it would be wrong to assume that in the majority of cases the relationship between fabliaux and medieval sophistic approached that degree of intimacy. Interest in logic, and for a special segment of literati in sophistic, was in the air in the thirteenth century, and this certainly influenced the development of humorous narrative in the period. But between the paralogisms of the logical

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tracts and logical exchanges in the fabliaux there is certainly no one-to-one relationship. Given this circumstance, and the fact that Aristotelian logic as modified by the scholastics is an excessively complex and generally unsatisfactory tool by which to systematise the occurrence of logical concerns in the fabliaux, a different system will be preferred here. However, for the sake of preserving some sense of historical context, connections between fabliaux and medieval logical treatises will be acknowledged when supported by clear evidence. The ideas of truth and falsehood treated in the previous chapter using the signs (A) and ~(A) could be conveyed using the notations (x ⊃ A) and ~(x ⊃ A), where (~) is the sign of negation, (⊃) the sign of implication, (x) the symbol for an individual variant, and (A) the symbol for a class variant. The notation (x ⊃ A) / ~(x ⊃ A) can therefore be interpreted to mean that the individual (x) either is, or is not, a member of the class (A). This notation is derived from Boolean algebra conceived as a calculus of classes, a system which provides an ideally elegant and comprehensive method for dealing with all the comparatively simple logical concerns engaged in fabliau narratives. Further to those listed above, the only concepts required for a full implementation of the Boolean system are those designated (1) and (0). The first concept, conventionally designated the universal class, symbolises the class of all classes within a universe of discourse, and the second, conventionally designated the nul class, the class of all classes which are void of individual members. The issues of co-extensivity and of the relationship of classes within a universe of discourse underlie all instances of humorous development of logic in the fabliaux. The basic Boolean concepts are illustrated in Marie de France’s La Contrarieuse in a dispute over the method employed to harvest a meadow. The wife’s contention that it was cut with shears can be represented as (x ⊃ A), where (x) represents the individual field in question, and (A) represents the class of fields which have been cut with shears. The husband’s insistence that the field was cut with a scythe will similarly take the form (x ⊃ B). In this context (A+B=1) means that the sum of the classes (A) and (B) constitutes the universe of discourse. As far as this fabliau is concerned the only methods of harvesting a meadow are to cut it either with shears or with a scythe. (AxB=0) means that the product of these two classes is the nul class. As far as this fabliau is concerned, the classes (A) and (B) are totally distinct, and the meadow could not have been cut both with shears and with a scythe. It follows therefore that (x ⊃ A) ⊃ ~(x ⊃ B) and (x ⊃ B) ⊃ ~(x ⊃ A). Hence the dispute between the married couple is irresolvable, and  For the uses to which I have put concepts derived from Boolean algebra I am indebted primarily to two publications, Lewis and Langford, Symbolic Logic, and Langer, An Introduction to Symbolic Logic.  Text in Eighteen Anglo-Norman Fabliaux, p. 8. The contrasting gestures that conclude this fabliau launch an investigation of the role of gesture in the genre by Lorcin, ‘Jeux de Mains’. The article lists numerous sporadic occurrences of gestures in the fabliaux, but reaches few general conclusions other than that gesture and speech usually complement one another, and that in the type of gesture class conventions are rigorously observed.

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will comprise a series of assertions and counter-assertions without possibility of resolution. Disputes of this kind do not involve any shift in the system of truth-values, and do not constitute the core exchange in the narrative. They simply serve the purpose of establishing the characters of the protagonists, so that the audience understand the wife’s stubborn belligerency, and the husband’s frustration. In La Contrarieuse a logically significant exchange takes place only when the husband cuts out his wife’s tongue, and although thereby deprived of the power of speech she maintains her argument by gesturing with her fingers that the field was cut with shears. The usefulness of the Boolean system for our purposes, however, is that it also functions effectively to represent the core exchanges involving deduction and issues of logical validity and invalidity which define all fabliaux. In the Sophistici elenchi and in the logical tracts derived from it the fallacies are classified under thirteen major groups, six fallaciae in dictione and seven fallaciae extra dictionem. The translation of Boethius was distinguished by the author’s careful adaptation of the illustrative material to fit the Latin context wherever possible. His concern to provide explanatory examples of the fallacies discussed is reflected in the rich illustrative material of the later medieval texts, which incorporate more and more examples with each new version, so that by the fourteenth century in Siger of Courtrai’s Fallaciae examples account for a major portion of the work. The scholastic habit of detailed schematisation gave rise to some new sub-groupings, and to some extensive subdivisions of the fallacies, but without altering their number or disturbing the basic two-fold Aristotelian division. Not all of the thirteen fallacies discussed by Aristotle lend themselves to treatment in humorous anecdote. ‘Popular’ fallacies, however, are often illustrated in several, sometimes in a very large number of tales, and multiple contexts are devised for their inclusion. The most important of the fallaciae in dictione, aequivocatio, was traditionally divided into three species according to whether a word or expression literally signified more than one thing on its own, signified one thing literally and one or more things metaphorically, or finally signified one thing on its own but could signify different things in different linguistic contexts. All three species are illustrated among the fabliaux. A fallacy of the first species underlies the core exchange in La Male Honte. The story survives in two distinct versions, represented by textes critiques I and II in NRCF. The following account is from version I. A peasant undertakes to carry to an English king the bag (male) of his deceased friend Honte in payment of duties incurred by his death. On arrival at the royal court the peasant addresses the king with the phrase, ‘La male Honte vos aport’ [‘I am bringing you Honte’s bag’] which the king interprets to mean ‘I condemn your behaviour as a foul dishonour.’ The king is naturally outraged, and orders the offender to be thrown out of court, but when the peasant persists in accosting him with the same phrase 

NRCF 5: 83–134; 392–402.

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he becomes so angry that he wants his tormentor apprehended and hanged. At this point, however, a courtier suspects that some misunderstanding is responsible for the discord. He intervenes in the dispute, and at his prompting the peasant has an opportunity to explain exactly the purpose of his mission, and the intended significance of his ambiguous statement: Dont li conte cil et devise Com la male Honte ot emprise, Et com Honte, son bon compere, Li pria par l’ame sa mere Que aprés sa mort li aportat.

Having uncovered the equivocation causing problems, the courtier facilitates the expected material exchange of the death duties payable by Honte. The expression ‘la male Honte’ literally signifies more than one thing on its own. The narrative turns on the exchanges between the peasant, who supposes that ‘la male Honte’ bears the unique significance ‘Honte’s bag,’ and the English king, who supposes that it bears the unique significance ‘foul dishonour’. The second species of aequivocatio, whereby a word or expression signifies one thing literally and one or more things metaphorically, also appears among the fabliaux, in two very different types of tale. In La Vieille qui oint la Palme au Chevalier an old woman whose cow has been impounded for some breach of the grazing ordinances is advised by a helpful neighbour to ‘grease the palm’ of the manorial lord as a means of extricating herself from the problems that beset her. The neighbour clearly assumes an exclusively metaphorical significance for the expression, and intends to suggest that the old woman should bribe the local lord of the manor to effect release of her cow. The woman to whom the advice is offered, however, naively understands it only in the literal sense not intended by her counsellor, and much to his astonishment smears lard on the knight’s hand. He, of course, realises that the old woman is the victim of some misunderstanding, and thereafter plays a role identical to that of the courtier in La Male

 ‘Then he told him and explained how he had come to possess Honte’s bag, and how Honte, his good friend, had begged him on his mother’s soul, that he should bring the bag along after his death’ (vv. 134–38).  NRCF 6: 289–99; 360–62. The closest parallel to the amphibology in the fabliau appears in Aquinas, De Fallaciis, where it appears in illustration of the third species of amphibologia rather than the second species, as in Peter of Spain or William of Shyreswood: Litus aratur, principaliter significat litoris scissuram, transumptive vero operis amissionem; et formatur sic paralogismus: Quandocumque litus aratur, tunc terra scinditur, sed quando indocilis docetur litus aratur; ergo quando indocilis docetur, terra scinditur. [‘To plough the shore means literally to turn over the ground, metaphorically to waste one’s labours; and thus is formed a paralogism: whenever one ploughs the shore one turns over the ground, but when one teaches those incapable of learning one ploughs the shore; therefore when one teaches those incapable of learning, one turns over the ground.’]

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Honte, clearing up the confusion and facilitating a material exchange, in this case restoration to the old woman of her impounded cow. Contrast between literal and metaphorical significances is also at the basis of a very different set of narratives illustrated by Cele qui se fist foutre. Clearly when the squire approaches the grieving widow with his own tale of woe, he does not expect that she will believe his account of having killed his mistress with his excessive sexual demands. The stark contrast between the pseudo-courtly introduction and the brutally carnal ‘en fotant’ alerts the widow to the fact that she is being invited to participate in a charade that offers her and the squire an opportunity to gratify their desires without overtly violating the social and moral conventions barring their way. Similarly, when the widow suggests that she would like the squire to kill her by the same means, he must assume that her real intention is to invite him to engage with her in an act of sexual intercourse rather than to release her from her suffering. As with La Vieille qui oint la Palme au Chevalier we are dealing here with a distinction between literal and metaphorical significances, but instead of both parties being ignorant of the distinction, they are aware of its existence and perfectly willing to exploit it for their own ends. Two equally sophisticated characters are conscious of the sophistry that they are practising, and both pretend to assume the validity of a metaphorical significance in flagrant violation of what an objective observer would regard as the valid, literal implication of their actions. The same distinction between literal and metaphorical significances occurs in La Damoisele qui ne pooit oïr parler de foutre. This story too survives in two distinct versions, textes critiques I and II in NRCF. The following commentary is based on version II. A widowed farmer’s daughter suffers an attack of the vapours on hearing any kind of obscene language. Given the generally foul-mouthed nature of farm labourers, her disability makes it impossible for her father to hire any help, until one day a young man presents himself whose claimed aversion to all rude speech is so extreme that not only is he hired at the daughter’s insistence, but also permitted to share her bed. During the night he tactually explores her body, and to his questions as to what he is touching she provides a series of romantically fanciful responses involving a meadow, a fountain, and a guard to warn against intruders. When the process is reversed, the young man describes his attributes as a horse and two marshals. By a sophistical manipulation of these images a sexual union is achieved without invoking any kind of verbal indelicacy. In La Damoisele qui ne pooit oïr parler de foutre the contrast between the sophistically contrived metaphorical significance and its literal equivalent is even more striking than in Cele qui se fist foutre. The metaphorical climax achieved by the bedmates is presented in the following terms: 

NRCF 4: 57–89; 374–79. The girl’s invocation of a meadow with a fountain and a guardian protector pointedly recalls the situation in Chrétien de Troyes’ Yvain, as noted by Busby, ‘Courtly Literature and the Fabliaux’. There are also reminiscences in this fabliau of another romance of Chrétien, the Perceval, as noted in Pearcy, ‘Intertextuality’. 

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‘Dame, mes polains muert de soi: Mout en a aüe grant poine!’ ‘Va, si l’aboivre a ma fontaine,’ Fait cele, ‘mar avras peor!’

The literal significance of their activity, by contrast, is expressed in brutally concrete terms by the author: ‘A tant li met el con lo vit’. The third species of aequivocatio, whereby a word or expression signified one thing on its own, but could signify different things in different linguistic contexts, is also quite commonplace among the fabliaux. It appears in Les deus Anglois et l’Anel,10 where the ambiguity is created by an Englishman’s difficulties with French pronunciation. Wishing to purchase a joint of lamb (agneau) for a sick friend, he asks for what the francophone butcher understands to be donkey (anel), and is accordingly sold a joint of freshly-slaughtered donkey meat. The confusion is resolved when the sick friend, questioning the toughness of the meat and the size of the bones, breaks out of the deceptive linguistic context and declares that his companion has been sold ‘Hee-haw’ rather than ‘Baa-baa’. In two other instances the potential ambiguity is activated under a special set of narrative circumstances. In Le Clerc qui fu repus derriere l’Escrin11 an unfaithful wife is entertaining a clerical lover when a second suitor unexpectedly arrives at her door. She hides the clerk behind a screen, and admits the second lover, but no sooner has she done so than her husband arrives home. The second lover is then concealed, and the wife occupies herself with her husband’s need to be fed. When she urges him to be quick to finish eating, he misinterprets her nervousness as a sign that she fears he is jeopardising their finances, and pointing to his food locker declares, ‘Chieus la trestout paiera’.12 While the husband supposes that his remark, qualified by a gestural signal, is unambiguous, the hidden clerk, whose reactions are governed exclusively by what he has heard, mistakenly believes that the peasant is referring to him. He thereupon reveals himself to declare that the second suitor, also hidden, should be forced to bear some of the costs that he presumes he is being ordered to meet.13 In Le sot Chevalier14 the expression creating problems stems from a motherin-law’s advice to a knight totally ignorant of female anatomy to help him achieve the consummation of his marriage: ‘Amis, le plus cort em batés, / Qant vos au

 ‘ “Lady, my horse is dying of thirst. Much has he suffered on account of his need!” “On you go, then, and water him at my fountain,” she said, “and do not be afraid!” ’ (vv. 194–97).  ‘Thereupon he stuck his prick in her vagina’ (v. 204). 10 NRCF 8: 171–81, 367–68. 11 NRCF 10: 57–69, 348–49. 12 ‘That one over there will pay for everything’. 13 A similar inadvertent misapprehension in Le Chevalier à la Corbeille (NRCF 9: 263– 78, 314), results in a duenna unexpectedly, and to her great consternation, being snatched up in a basket. 14 NRCF 5: 313–35; 435–41.

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lonc vos combatés’.15 The knight is unfortunately so impressed with this formula that he repeats it aloud in the hearing of the messenger of a group of knights caught that night in a storm and seeking refuge at the foolish knight’s castle. Supposing that the phrase expressed the knight’s intentions towards his guests, the potential boarders are initially reluctant to avail themselves of the accommodation on offer: ‘Segnor,’ fait il, ‘jo ai trovet Lasus un erite provet: Il dist qu’il nos herbergera Et apriés nos laidengera, Car il foutera le plus lonc Et si batra le cort selonc.’16

Driven by the exigency of their circumstances, however, they reluctantly opt to enter, the tallest, Walon de Dinant, stooping down to make himself appear shorter, and the shortest, Pierre le Hongre, walking on tiptoe. All seven of the fabliaux cited in illustration of aequivocatio, and numerous others that conform to the same pattern, are represented in the Boolean algebra by a single formula that opposes (A+B=1) and (AxB=0), i.e. the individual variant (x) belongs either to class (A) or to class (B) but not both, to (A+B=1) and ~(AxB=0), i.e. the individual variant (x) belongs either to class (A) or to class (B) or to both. In all the instances except Cele qui se fist foutre and La Damoisele qui ne pooit oïr parler de foutre confusion results from the protagonists’ assumption that a word or phrase means either one thing or another, either ‘Honte’s bag’ or ‘foul dishonour’, and their failure to recognise that it is an ambiguous expression which could carry both significances. True understanding rests with the courtier in La Male Honte, with the knight in La Vieille qui oint la Palme au Chevalier, with the foolish knight’s mother-in-law in Le sot Chevalier, and with the other authority figures who intervene to clear up the misconceptions. Exceptionally in the case of the two fabliaux cited earlier, perception that fornication and mercy killing, or fornication and horse watering, are essentially separate classes rests with the knight and the farmer, while the protagonists to the core exchange create the illusion that the difference between them is blurred and bridgeable. Since fallacies based on the opposition between (A+B=1) and (AxB=0) or (A+B=1) and ~(AxB=0) are invariable, the opposition can be reduced to a simplified formula, either ~(AA) or (AA). The distinction between La Male Honte and Cele qui se fist foutre will consist in the fact that in the former protagonists in the core exchange will fallaciously assume ~(AA), while in the latter protagonists in 15 ‘Friend, hammer the shorter of the two while you are busy fucking the longer one’ (vv. 93–94). 16 ‘ “Gentlemen,” he said, “I have come across a proven sodomite here. He says that he will lodge us, but afterwards he will treat us shamefully, because he will fuck the tallest of us, and by the same token beat up the shortest” ’ (vv. 137–42).

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the core exchange will sophistically assume (AA). The exchanges may therefore be represented respectively as: S: ~[AA] (x ⊃ A) ↔ O: ~[AA] (x ⊃ B) and S: [AA] (x ⊃ AB) ↔ O: [AA] (x ⊃ AB) Of the remaining fallaciis in dictione – compositio, divisio, fallacia figurae dictionis, and two modes of accentus – only the latter make any appearance among the fabliaux. Fallacies of the first mode depend on differences in vowel quantity that have phonemic significance. They are commonplace in Latin, and produce such paralogisms as that involving two meanings for the word ara as quoted in the Introduction or, although somewhat obliquely, from the Introductiones in Logicam: ‘Quicquid debet pendere debet suspendi; iustus debet pendere; ergo iustus debet suspendi’.17 Difference in vowel quantity not being phonemic in French, this mode of accentus is not illustrated among the fabliaux, but its presence may perhaps be detected in Le Prestre qui ot Mere a Force.18 As in the last syllogism quoted, the joke depends on confusion over the possibility of a hanging, in this instance attributed to an old woman who has accused her son of neglect before an ecclesiastical court: L’evesque dit qu’el ne s’esloigne, Car tantost com ses fiz vendra, Sache bien qu’i le soupendra Et toudra tot son benefice. La vieille, qui fu fole et nice, Quant oï parler de soupendre, Crient que l’en face son fiz pendre.19

Any difficulty in crediting the possibility of confusion between the Latin pendere and suspendere, or the French pendre and souspendre, may be mitigated by recognising that in classical Latin the forms pend%re (to suspend from office) and pend«re (to hang criminals) are distinguished only by different vowel quantities. The paralogism quoted from William of Shyreswood was introduced by Boethius, reappears in the treatises of Peter of Spain and Thomas Aquinas, and was evidently well known.20 It may have originated in some humorous confu17 ‘Whoever needs to be suspended may need to be hanged; the just may need to be suspended; therefore the just may need to be hanged’. 18 NRCF 5: 49–69; 385–89. 19 ‘The bishop said she should not leave, because as soon as her son arrived she could rest assured that he would suspend him and divest him completely of his benefice. The old woman, who was naïve and stupid, thought when she heard talk of suspension that her son was under threat of being hanged’ (vv. 76–82). 20 When translating his Greek copy text, Boethius occasionally omits Greek examples and substitutes for them different examples from Latin. It is in replacement for a Greek pun that the Latin pun on pend%re and pend«re is introduced. See Minio-Paluello, ‘Aristotle’s Topics and Elenchi’, p. 110.

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sion in classical Latin, preserved in the logical handbooks because its humorous implications made it attractive, even at the expense of some loss of verisimilitude. The pattern for the logical exchange will be the same as that for La Male Honte. Fallacies of the second mode of accentus result from errors in juncture. William of Shyreswood in the Introductiones in logicam illustrates the fallacy with the following paralogism: ‘Quid fit invite fit contra voluntatem; uva fit in vite; ergo uva fit contra voluntatem’.21 The fallacy appears in the fabliau Estula22 where the initial comic scene depends on confusion between Estula, the name of a dog, and ‘Es tu la?’ the enquiry ‘Are you there?’ The episodes cited in both Le Prestre qui ot Mere a Force and Estula conform to the pattern ~(AA), but serve to initiate a further series of farcical events – the old lady names a stranger priest as her son, the farmer’s son supposes his dog has acquired the power of speech and sends for the local priest to exorcise his demon – rather than ushering in an authority figure to point out the validity of the contrary assumption (AA). When dealing with signs inherent in the language itself, it is possible to establish clear connections even with different species of the same fallacy. So precise indeed is the relationship in certain instances that the comic narrative may have been inspired by some sophism in the logical handbooks. For such fallacies to become operative within the context of the fabliau narrative, the speech segment containing the ambiguity must be articulated, and that utterance can be isolated from the text and subjected to precise linguistic analysis. Fallaciae extra dictionem are far more abundantly illustrated in the fabliaux, but their situation is quite different. While there may be no dubiety about the fact that some logical ambiguity has given rise to some false inference, a condition already stipulated as the sine qua non of fabliau structure, the exact nature of the fallacy committed within the Aristotelian system may need to be extrapolated from the surface texture of the narrative. The problem of precise definition is further complicated by the fact that the two fallaciae extra dictionem of most frequent occurrence in the fabliaux, those known by the designations accidens and consequens, are ill-defined and generally confused with one another, both in Aristotle and in the works of his medieval disciples. Thomas Aquinas maintains that classification of the fallacy depends solely on the formation of the premises, and uses an example from William of Shyreswood to make his point: ‘Si aliquod est mel, est rubeum. Sed fel est rubeum: igitur fel est mel … [In this fallacy] putatur consequentia converti quae non convertitur: unde est fallacia consequentiae. Si autem sumantur propositiones categoriae in eisdem terminis, est fallacia accidentis, sicut: Mel est rubeum, et fel est rubeum. Igitur mel est fel’.23 21 ‘Whatever is unwitting is contrary to will; a sheep may be alive / unwitting; therefore a sheep exists contrary to will’. 22 NRCF 4: 345–61; 439–42. 23 ‘If something is honey, it is golden red. But gall is golden red; therefore gall is honey. In this fallacy the consequence is assumed convertible when it is not: therefore it is the conse-

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There is general agreement among thirteenth-century logicians that the fallacy consequens results from the mistaken notion that a consequence can be converted when such is not the case. Peter of Spain illustrates the fallacy with an example drawn from Aristotle: ‘Si pluit, terra est madida; ergo si terra est madida, pluit’.24 Unfortunately Aristotelian logic is essentially a term logic (accidens) rather than a logic of propositions (consequens), and while an interest in consequences emerging in Boethius gradually develops during the fourteenth century into complete treatises on this logical relationship, the attempts to accommodate the consequens fallacy to the other fallaciae extra dictionem by thirteenth-century logicians lead to considerable confusion. Exploitation of the consequens fallacy is the favoured device of dupers throughout the fabliau corpus, and as their numbers are myriad, so are occurrences of the fallacy ubiquitous. It appears primarily in one of two contexts, either when a duper figure wishes to create a false assumption that will permit procedure to some intended piece of roguery, or when a duper figure stands accused of some indiscretion and wishes to create a manufactured objection to the accuser’s argument that will serve to extricate the accused party from any unfavourable repercussions. An example of the first of these situations occurs in one version of La Damoisele qui ne pooit oïr parler de foutre. The young man wants to convince his potential employer of his exquisite squeamishness. He responds to the farmer’s use of the word foutre with the following histrionic outburst: Daviez prist sa boche a terdre, Et puis crache autresi et moche Com s’il aüst mangiee moche. Au vilain dist: ‘Ostez, biaus sire! Si vilain mot ne devez dire! Taisiez, por Deu l’esperitable, Que ce est li moz au deiable: N’en parlez mais la o je soie! Por cent livres je ne voldroie Veoir home qui en parlast Ne qui lecherie nomast, Que grant dolor au cuer me prant!’25 quens fallacy. If however the propositions describing accidental qualities are presented in identical terms, then the fallacy is that of accidens, thus: Honey is golden red, and gall is golden red. Therefore honey is gall.’ 24 ‘If it rains, the ground gets wet; therefore if the ground is wet, it is raining.’ 25 ‘David started to wipe his mouth, and then similarly to spit and snort, just as though he had swallowed a fly. To the peasant he said, “Enough, good sir! You must not use so vulgar a word! Be quiet, for holy God’s sake, for that is the devil’s word. Never use it again in my presence! Not for a hundred pounds would I witness a man speak such a word, nor talk openly about lechery, since it gives me a terrible pain in my heart!”‘ In translating Old French currencies I have taken advantage of the fact that the system’s base-twelve and base-twenty divi-

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The farmer is expected to commit the fallacy of supposing that someone behaving in this way would necessarily be averse to the use of bad language, a conclusion that ignores the possibility that the performance may be a charade. The duper’s ploy exploits the Boolean contradiction between (AxB=1) and ~(AxB=1). For purposes of formulaic representation the opposition can be expressed in the simplest terms as the opposition between (AB) and ~(AB), and the logical formula will follow the pattern: S: ~[AB] (x ⊃ A) ↔ O: [AB] [(x ⊃ A) ⊃ (x ⊃ B)] The frequent appearances of disguises in the fabliaux fit this same pattern. In La Saineresse,26 for example, a lecher turns up wearing female clothes and claiming to be a blood-letter summoned to provide a man’s wife a service. He is admitted by the husband and allowed to sequester himself with the wife for purposes only remotely connected with medical benefits. The husband has committed the fallacy of supposing that someone wearing female clothes and carrying the tools of her trade is a female blood-letter. Similarly husbands who appear disguised in clerical garb to keep an adulterous assignation or to hear a deathbed confession assume that their wives will reason falsely that anyone wearing a costume appropriate to his calling is necessarily the expected cleric. A similar inducement to commit some false inference occurs in situations where the duper stands accused, tacitly or explicitly, of some misdemeanour, and invokes the fallacy as a means of casting doubt on the validity of the accuser’s reasoning in levelling the accusation. A good example is provided by L’Oue au Chapelain.27 A priest has prepared a roast goose as a feast for himself and his mistress, and has employed his clerk to make a garlic sauce to accompany the meal, but with no intention of inviting this functionary to partake of the refreshments. Before the priest and his mistress have a chance to begin their meal, however, they are interrupted by the arrival of someone at the door. The priest locks his mistress out of sight in the pantry, and despatches his clerk to the church with the goose, a pie, and a jug of wine to conceal them from the unwelcome visitor. He is simply the bearer of a letter from a fellow priest, and is soon dismissed. In the meantime, however, the clerk has eaten the food and drunk the wine with which he was entrusted, and has to face the priest’s demand for the return of goods he can no longer produce. The priest has no direct evidence of the clerk’s guilt, and his suspicions are based on reasoning which arrives at the truth but through an invalid argument, that if the clerk cannot produce the food and drink committed to his care he has consumed them. The invalidity of the argument provides the clerk with his opportunity to outwit the priest, because with an invalid argument of his own he sions correspond to those until recently characteristic of English currency. Denier is therefore rendered as ‘penny’, sou as ‘shilling’, and livre as ‘pound’. 26 NRCF 4: 303–12; 431–32. 27 NRCF 8: 141–49; 363–64.

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is able to expose the fallacy in the priest’s logic. Anticipating the priest’s natural assumption of his guilt, the clerk smears the lips of the crucifix (specifically, the figure on the cross) in the church with goose grease, places a drumstick in its right hand, and claims that through some evil agency the crucifix has eaten the goose, the pie, and the garlic sauce, and drunk the pitcher of wine. His major defence is the lie that he is faithfully reporting what has transpired, but as with most such lies in the fabliaux, it is humorously effective because supported by a carefully orchestrated logical fallacy. The priest is solicited to succumb to the false argument that if the lips of the crucifix are greasy, and it is holding a telltale drumstick, the crucifix, and not the clerk, has eaten the goose. As is common in situations of this kind, the clerk’s lie gains some credibility from the superstitious nature of the age, and the general willingness to entertain such evidence of miraculous intervention in human affairs as is recorded in miracles de la vierge, but it is the ingenious fabrication of misleading evidence which provides the definitive infusion of wit into the story. Evasions of culpability of the kind illustrated in L’Oue au Chapelain appear most frequently in the fabliaux when adulterous wives have to confront the wellfounded suspicions of husbands who, while not the direct witnesses of infidelity, suppose themselves in possession of credible evidence that it has taken place. Such is the situation in Rutebeuf ’s fabliau La Dame qui fist trois Tors entor le Moustier [Hereafter La Dame qui fist trois Tors]. A husband returns unexpectedly at an hour when his wife should have been in the house, only to discover that she is missing. On her return he accuses her of leaving the house to spend time with a lover, which is indeed what has happened. However, as in L’Oue au Chapelain, his accusation rests on an invalid logical deduction, that if his wife was unaccountably absent from the house at a time when she should have been at home she was guilty of adultery. The wife cannot, like the clerk in L’Oue au Chapelain, manufacture evidence to support her claim that some innocent activity was responsible for her absence, but evidently the ritual that she claims to have been practising was sufficiently well known for her husband not to dismiss it out of hand as an ad hoc fabrication. What makes the appearance of the consequens fallacy in La Dame qui fist trois Tors particularly significant is, as already noted, that Rutebeuf ’s story incorporates precisely the circumstance that was used to illustrate the fallacy in the logical handbooks. As Siger de Courtrai points out,28 and as the wife in La Dame qui fist trois Tors is quick to claim, there are numerous innocent reasons why someone might be wandering abroad at night, and the circumstance cannot validly be interpreted to imply adultery. While the consequens fallacy features conspicuously in the arsenal of logical 28 ‘Fallaciae’, in Siger de Courtrai, ed. Wallerand, p. 87. Siger goes on to suggest that the fallacy is exposed when it is recognised that absence from the house at night may be attributed to some ‘causa honestatis et necessitatis’ [‘honest and necessary cause’]. The fallacy, as noted in the Introduction, is ultimately from Aristotle.

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devices to which duper figures in the fabliaux frequently have recourse, it may also appear in circumstances where both parties to a logical exchange act in ignorance of its presence. This happens in a subordinate episode in Le sot Chevalier, and seems to confirm the reality of what was in fact a misunderstanding by the knights seeking shelter at the foolish knight’s residence. In applying the formula that he should fuck the longest and batter the shortest the host finally succeeds in achieving sexual union with his wife, but with the result that, consumed with thirst, she despatches him to fetch her a drink of wine. Walon de Dinant, the tallest of the visiting knights, is lying asleep near the fire with his clothing disarranged in such a way that his bare backside is exposed. The foolish knight, looking for a wine skin in the same location, thinks he has found it, and attempts to broach it with a red-hot spit he has heated in the fire. Hit in the posterior with this instrument, Walon supposes himself the victim of the sexual assault that his misunderstanding of the foolish knight’s formula had led him to fear. The host clearly has made the false deduction that a round, dark, hairy object located near the fire would necessarily be the wine skin. A similarly misunderstood material sign forms the basis of one of the fabliaux found among the fables of Marie de France, and entitled Le riche Humme e sa Fille. The exchange in this instance takes place between a sick father and his physician, but the sign is ambiguated because the daughter charged with delivering the blood sample to the doctor wastes it, and in order to conceal her negligence, substitutes a sample of her own blood for that of the patient. As a result the doctor pronounces the father pregnant. He has mistakenly assumed that the blood sample delivered by the patient’s daughter originated with her father. It is gratifying to discover that a narrative not previously recognised as a fabliau fits so precisely the pattern illustrated by the episode from Le sot Chevalier, and that this conformity helps to establish the roles of the dramatis personae. The father and physician equate with Walon and the host, while the daughter, although the most prominent figure in the story, has no part in the core exchange but intervenes, like the mother-in-law in Le sot Chevalier, to explain her role in the mix up and to resolve the resultant confusions.29 All seven of the foregoing fabliaux or fabliau-episodes exploit the contradiction between falsely assuming that the classes (A) and (B) are identical, and truly assuming they are not, an opposition at the root of the consequens fallacy. The logical basis behind the fallacy’s operation in individual fabliaux is fairly complex. For the episode from Le sot Chevalier, for example, the logical progression would follow the pattern that Walon’s backside (x) belongs to the class of 29 Text in Eighteen Anglo-Norman Fabliaux, p. 9. It is curious that Marie refers throughout to the lost sample as blood (sang), although everything points to the fact that the liquid intended for analysis was urine. Such an assumption makes sense of the fact that the sample was transported to the physician in a fragile container. The container once broken, and its contents spilled, the daughter could readily replace such a sample without the assistance of a blood-letter, and hand it over to the physician in expectation that it would be accepted as the original without question.

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backsides (A), and the class of backsides belongs to the class of things that are round, dark, and hairy (B). A wine skin (y) belongs to the class of wine skins (C), and the class of wine skins belongs to the class of things that are round, dark, and hairy (B). The consequens fallacy enters at this juncture with the foolish knight’s assumption that things round, dark, and hairy are wine skins. Ergo since Walon’s backside exhibits these qualities, Walon’s backside is a wine skin. The same formula applies to the one remaining fallaciae extra dictionem to make an appearance in the fabliaux, that known to the Middle Ages by the designation secundum quid et simpliciter. Peter of Spain illustrates it with the false argument: ‘divitiae non sunt bonae non recte viventi, ergo divitiae non sunt bonae.’30 Among the fabliaux the fallacy appears in Jean Bodel’s Le Vilain de Farbu.31 The peasant of the title is much impressed when his young son identifies a piece of iron (assumed by his father to be ‘boine trouveüre’) as newly lifted from a smith’s forge, and placed in the path as a vicious prank to burn the unwary. At the father’s request he explains his procedure: ‘A çou que desus escopi Et il tantost frist et bouli, K’il n’a sous ciel fer, s’on le moulle, Pour qu’il soit bien caus, qu’il ne boulle: Lors sel puet on ensi savoir.’ ‘Or m’as tu apris un savoir,’

Fait li vilains, ‘que je mout pris!’32 The peasant’s enthusiasm somewhat outdistances his common sense, however, since he later spits in his soup, assumes it is not hot, and scalds himself. His flawed reasoning has failed to take account of a necessary qualification. The expression secundum quid, ‘if hot iron, then something that bubbles when spat on’, is not the same as the expression simpliciter, ‘if hot, then something that bubbles when spat on.’ As his son Robin points out: ‘Caus fers n’est mie mortereus!’33 A similar exchange takes place in Les quatre Sohais saint Martin.34 A peasant granted four wishes foolishly allows his wife to exercise the first choice, and she responds by wishing that he should grow a penis on every available part of his body. He in turn, outraged by her stupidity and wanting revenge, wishes that she should be as covered with vaginas as he is with penises. At this stage the only 30 ‘The gods are not virtuous if they fail to live virtuously; therefore the gods are not virtuous.’ 31 NRCF 6: 111–23; 330–31. 32 ‘ “Because I spat on it, and it straightway fizzled and bubbled, for there isn’t a piece of iron under the sun that, if it is really hot, won’t bubble if one wets it, so that is a sure way of telling.” “Now you have taught me something worth knowing,” said the peasant, “something I greatly value” ’ (vv. 41–47). 33 ‘Hot iron is not soup! (v. 128). 34 NRCF 4; 189–216; 403–11.

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logical exchange in the fabliau takes place when the wife makes her husband a fateful proposition: ‘Soaidiez que plus viz n’aiez / Ne je cons, et si lo laissiez.’35 This is the proposition simpliciter. It leads of course to the loss by both partners of their natural sex organs, and requires the peasant to use his fourth and last wish simply to restore the status quo. What in fact was required was a request secundum quid, that the peasant and his wife should be purged of all extraneous sexual appurtenances, but not of those originally furnished them by nature. Two relatively casual remarks by William of Shyreswood are extremely pertinent for an understanding of what is happening in the fabliaux as regards fallaciae extra dictionem. One states that in inferences involving the consequens fallacy ‘not both consequences are actually expressed; instead the acceptable one is supplied in thought’ (‘ultraque consequentia non exprimitur ut in entibus, sed vera subintelligitur’). The other states that fallacies of this kind are particularly associated with sense impressions. In L’Oue au Chapelain the sense impression is visual, as indeed it is in the majority of cases involving mistaken identities or other false inferences, but deception may also depend on the sense of hearing (La Piere au Puis;36 Le Meunier et les deus Clers37), touch (Gombert et les deus Clers38), or even smell (The fresh Fish). Of major significance for the fabliaux is another Boolean opposition, that between (A+B=1) and ~(A+B=1), i.e. everything within a universe of discourse belongs either to class (A) or to class (B), or such is not the case. Logically assertion of the validity of the proposition takes the form (x ⊃ A) or (x ⊃ B). Its refutation takes the form (∃x) [there exists some (x) such that] (x ⊃ C), i.e. to counter the claim that the variable (x) belongs either to class (A) or to class (B) it is only necessary to demonstrate that (x) belongs to a class (C) in a revised universe of discourse. Propositions of this kind in the fabliaux occur in situations where the universe of discourse is conventionally assumed to comprise only two contradictory propositions, (x ⊃ A) or (x ⊃ B), as frequently happens, for example, in narratives involving legal proceedings, where the universe of discourse ‘verdict’ is assumed to be strictly divisible into two classes, ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty’, ‘liable to pay damages’ or ‘not liable to pay damages’, and so forth. What distinguishes this situation logically is the special circumstance that (x ⊃ B) has the exclusive significance (x ⊃ ~A). While of quite frequent occurrence in fabliau narratives, this fallacy makes no appearance among the fallacies dealt with by Aristotle in the Sophistici elenchi. This narrative situation is illustrated in Le Preudome qui rescolt son Compere de noier. A fisherman saves a fellow villager from drowning, but unfortunately blinds in one eye the person whom he is trying to help. Subsequently the injured man brings a court case against his rescuer claiming damages for the injury 35 36 37 38

‘Wish not to have any penises, nor me vaginas, and let it go at that’ (vv. 177–78). Eighteen Anglo-Norman Fabliaux, pp. 13–14. NRCF 7; 271–305; 396–405. NRCF 4; 279–301; 424–30.

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sustained. The claimant supposes that he will either be awarded damages or denied them, but since the reality of the injury is demonstrable, and the rescuer’s responsibility for inflicting it not in dispute, he is confident that a verdict will be delivered in his favour. Such a verdict would nevertheless violate any sense of justice, and the circumstances of the case leave the court in a dilemma. At this juncture a ‘wise fool’ intervenes with a solution to the problem. Put the claimant back in the water at the point where he was rescued. If he can then save himself, he should be awarded the damages he is seeking without further quibble. Faced with the choice of dropping his law suit or risking the possibility of drowning, the claimant naturally opts to abandon his claim, and the fisherman is absolved of any charges. The claimant supposes that only two options are open to the court, either (x ⊃ A), i.e. the claim for damages will be upheld, or (x ⊃ B) they will be denied, and he supposes that if the choice is restricted to just these two options the evidence strongly favours (x ⊃ A) as the probable outcome. When the ‘wise fool’ proposes a new category, (x ⊃ C), these assumptions are shattered, the claimant chooses to drop his legal action, and in the subsequent exoneration of the well-meaning if clumsy fisherman justice is seen to be done. Similar in structure to the preceding fabliau is Le povre Mercier.39 A petty tradesman places his horse under the protection of God and the local manorial lord. When the horse is killed by a wolf, he is offered only fifty percent of its replacement value by the latter on the basis that he hedged responsibility for its protection between the manorial lord and the Almighty. The merchant subsequently seizes the cloak of a casually encountered monk as recompense for his loss, holding him as a servant of God liable to assume his master’s debts. The monk appeals his case to the local court, but rather than having his cloak restored to him, he is offered a choice, either to pay the forfeit to the merchant or renounce his allegiance to God. He naturally chooses the prior course of action: ‘Sire, avant que Deu renoiesse, J’avroe plus chier que paiesse,’ Dit li moinnes, ‘quarante livres!’ ‘De trente sous serés delivres,’ Dit li sires, ‘seüremant! Et porrez plus hardiemant Prandre des biens Deu sanz outrage, Car por lui avez cest domage.’40

39

NRCF 8: 283–98; 387–89. ‘ “Sir, before renouncing God I would rather pay out forty pounds,” said the monk. “Your debt will be discharged for a mere thirty shillings,” said the knight, “and you will be able to enjoy the benefits God provides with greater confidence and less guilt, since you suffer this injury for His sake” ’ (vv. 243–50). 40

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Some anti-monachal sentiment appears to have influenced the outcome of the court proceedings in this instance, and the ‘judgement of Solomon’ resolution generates only a murky sense of justice by comparison with what transpires in Le Preudome qui rescolt son Compere de noier. In more extreme circumstances, however, the fallacy may give rise to a complete miscarriage of justice. Such is the case in Les trois Dames qui troverent un Vit.41 While on a pilgrimage, one of a group of three women stumbles across a detached but otherwise conspicuously healthy male member, and supposes herself to have made a lucky find. One of her travelling companions, however, claims a share of the booty, and unable to resolve their differences, the three women apply to the abbess of a nearby convent to settle their dispute. The women assume, evidently, that the abbess will rule in favour of either the finder or her companion. The abbess, however, claims the coveted object as the lost bolt-shaft of their convent door, a sudden and distressing revelation that the judgement of the abbess is not restricted to either of the two choices that the women had assumed were operative in the circumstances. There is some surreally obscene humour in the nature of the treasure discovered, and some religious satire in the intimation that the nuns are lubriciously happy to have had such an item fall into their laps, but these humorous effects are ancillary to the comic peripety created by the surprise inherent in the logical structure. Despite the trivialising influence of the circumstances surrounding the dénouement, the author of the continental version of the fabliau associates the tale with juridical concerns by reading into it a serious message on contemporary judicial corruption: Autresi font les jugeours: Covoiteus sont, jel sai de voir; Ja povres hons qui n’a avoir N’avra par eus droit en sa vie. 42

The women pilgrims expect a judgement in favour of the finder or her companion, but are confounded in their assumption by the abbess’s lie to the effect that the vit is a lost item from the convent’s security system. In all of the narratives dealt with as examples of fallacies involving the distinction between (A+B=1) and ~(A+B=1) the crucial issue is the invocation of what appears to be an inviolable universe of discourse. This situation is conventionally associated with court proceedings and the dichotomy between concepts such as ‘guilty’ and ‘not guilty.’ When the events of the narrative occur in the context of a conventional court situation, the challenge to the comprehensiveness of the accepted universe of discourse is usually made by some figure not immediately involved in the dispute to be settled, the judge in Le povre Mercier, or the ‘wise 41

NRCF 8; 269–81; 384–86. ‘Judges behave similarly. They are covetous, that I know for a fact. A poor man with no money will never in his life receive justice at their hands.’ 42

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fool’ in Le Preudome qui rescolt son Compere de noier, and the resultant verdict features a ‘judgement of Solomon’ solution. This is not the case, however, if the judge is a party to the dispute, as in Les trois Dames qui troverent un Vit, and in the absence of any pretence at distributive justice, a party to the dispute may act on his own behalf. With the group of stories examined above, the survey of logical devices creating humorous events in the fabliaux is complete. Every logical exchange that constitutes one of the core exchanges in all fabliau plots can be assimilated to one of the three patterns of opposition documented: (A+B=1) and (AxB=0) ~[AA] as opposed to (A+B=1) and ~(AxB=0) [AA]     (AxB=1) [AB] as opposed to ~(AxB=1) ~[AB]     (A+B=1) [A+B] as opposed to ~(A+B=1) ~[A+B] Now that the three contradictories of the Boolean system have been illustrated in their typical appearances in fabliau narrative, the next step is to demonstrate how they are integrated into a definitive structural model which will account for all the narratives constituting the complete fabliau corpus.

3

Outline of a Methodology Part 2: Episteme and Narreme Efforts to arrive at a structural definition of the genre have been made in the past. Joseph Bédier is conventionally credited with the first of these. The principles of his approach are encoded in the formula W + a + b + c, where omega represents the immutable core element of the narrative, and a, b, c its unessential accessory traits. Bédier’s intention was to mount a diachronic attack on the ‘théorie orientaliste’, and to discredit efforts to postulate antique near-eastern sources for a substantial number of medieval French narratives. His concentration on the accessory elements led directly to his thesis that the fabliaux were the product of an urbanised, mercantile, bourgeois society, since the elements chosen as definitive for the genre were essentially social. However, concentration on a different selection of accessory elements led Per Nykrog to reverse Bédier’s conclusions, and attribute the fabliaux to an aristocratic audience for whom the narratives constituted ‘un genre courtois burlesque.’ That two critics examining the same body of materials should arrive at such diametrically opposed conclusions indicates that their approaches were in some way flawed. Despite the fact that both were concerned to define the fabliaux as a literary genre, a synchronic definition would certainly have required that more attention than either critic was prepared to give should have been directed at an understanding of the core element W. Since it is not class-determined, the fabliaux might be seen as sufficiently catholic to appeal to both social groups. The dichotomy between them would then be false, and concern to specify one particular audience rather than another peripheral to an understanding of the essential nature of the genre. 

By Propp, Morphology of the Folktale, p. 13. Bédier, Fabliaux, p. 200. Bédier is following Gaston Paris, whom he quotes (p. 12) to the effect that: ‘Il faut de toute nécessité distinguer dans un conte entre les éléments qui le constituent réellement, et les traits qui n’y sont qu’accessoires, récents, et fortuits.’  Bédier’s attribution of fabliaux to the context of thirteenth-century middle-class French culture won almost universal acceptance. Typical are the views on the subject in Suchier and Birch-Hirschfeld, Geschichte der französischen Literatur; Wright, A History of French Literature; and even as late as Zumthor, Histoire littéraire.  Nykrog, Fabliaux, p. 71, and Chapter 3, pp. 72–104 passim.  Sociological approaches to the fabliaux have not fallen completely out of favour. Lorcin, in Façons de sentir et de penser, writes an essentially sociological analysis which frequently deals with texts at the border of fabliau authenticity. 



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The only other serious attempt to reach a comprehensive structural definition of the fabliau genre was that made by Mary Jane Stearns Schenck, using the formulation according to characters and functions developed by Vladimir Propp. Her study generates many worthwhile insights, but the methodology, devised to account for the Russian folktale, does not sit too comfortably with the very different corpus of French fabliaux. The former is, for the most part, a serious, univocal, and heroic genre, whilst the latter is humorous, equivocal, and anti-heroic. The fabliaux know nothing of the stock characters of folktale, ­princesses, witches, or prophetic heroes. And while certain functions of the folktale occur in fabliaux – arrival, departure, deception, and misdeed, for example – they occur incidentally rather than as elements in a formulated structure. It is feasible, as indeed Schenck’s study demonstrates, to devise a set of functions for the fabliaux which have some claim to be comprehensive, but where Propp’s functions for the Russian folktale are constitutive, those proposed for the fabliaux seem rather to be merely descriptive, an encoded but ultimately tautological recapitulation of the literal plot. Schenck’s Appendix C, for example, analyses the fabliau La Male Honte to produce a formula containing twentysix of the terms in her inventory of functions. Even for a reader fully familiar with the significance of each of these encoded functions, their sum and sequence obfuscates rather than clarifies the immediate and common sense observation that the narrative of La Male Honte was composed for the express purpose of creating a context within which the humorous possibilities inherent in the pun of the title might be activated. There is a further problem with the claim that the functions are comprehensive. Schenck states that the roles of ‘duper and victim are found in every fabliau and constitute part of its definition.’ With reference to La Male Honte, and indeed numerous other fabliaux, however, this assertion can be justified only by introducing the suspect concept of ‘the self-deceived duper.’ The expression is paradoxical, since the concept ‘duper’ becomes meaningless unless it implies consciousness of the deception practiced. Except for the purpose of artificially protecting the integrity of a system, a self-deceived duper cannot be meaningfully distinguished from a victim. In point of fact, La Male Honte presents us with two victims and no duper, while other fabliaux such as Le Testament de l’Asne present us with two dupers and no victim. The terms ‘duper’ and ‘victim’ are not well suited to roles that can be generalised across the complete fabliau corpus. The classical terms eiron and alazon fit better, but have, unfortunately, no English equivalents. Faute de mieux the terms ‘duper’ and ‘victim’ may need  Schenck, Tales. Theoretical flaws in the methodology adopted by Propp, and those of other structural analyses, are examined by Nathorst, Structural Studies of Traditional Tales.  Schenck, Tales, p. 38, acknowledges these essential differences, but argues nonetheless for the validity of the methodology as long as a different set of characters and functions are stipulated.  Ibid, p. 74.  NRCF 9: 237–50; 310–11.

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to be retained, but with the recognition that in certain circumstances the ‘dupers’ are simply the better informed participants in an action that they can control, but that affords them no personal, self-serving gratification. Each distinct literary genre may require a distinctive method of structural analysis. The system proposed in this study works ideally well as an elegant and comprehensive way of describing the structure of fabliaux, but would obviously not account satisfactorily for the structure of the Russian folktale. On the basis of Eugene Vance’s structural study of romance referred to in Chapter 1, that genre possibly shares with the fabliaux a structure based on a conjointure of rhetorical and logical elements. Such a relationship would be plausible given the chronological coincidence of the appearance of the two genres. From the foregoing account of the various logical contradictions that may form the basis of an exchange in the fabliaux, it should already be apparent that there are essentially four different sets of circumstances for such exchanges. They do not constitute a complete Greimasian actantial model, but may conveniently appropriate some of its terminology. The initiator of an exchange in the form of an ambiguous sign or proposition will be designated the subject-actant, and the recipient of the sign or the interpreter of the proposition will be designated the object-actant. The complete paradigm for the four exchanges of this kind will depend on the alignment of subject- and object-actants according to their consciousness of the existence of logical ambiguity in the exchanges between them. They can be described as follows: (i) Designation (E) Both the subject- and object-actants are unaware of the ambiguity inherent in the sign or proposition. The exchange typically generates an easily recognisable foolish act which helps define exchanges of this kind. Thus a loyal subject attempting to deliver the death duties of a friend is ordered to be hanged, an old woman smears grease on the hand of her manorial lord, guests entering a castle try to make themselves look shorter or taller to avoid what they mistakenly assume are threats to their well-being, a physician declares that an old man is pregnant, and so forth. The formula for exchanges of this kind will necessarily indicate the assumptions about class relationships made by the subject- and object-actants as these form the basis for some logical fallacy. In instances where confusion results from the assumption by both parties to the exchange that an ambiguous word or phrase has only one possible rather than two opposed meanings, the exchange will have the form:



E: S ~[AA] (x ⊃ A) ↔ O ~[AA] (x ⊃ B)

When a subject-actant is ignorant of the possibility that a sign assumed to be univocal may through inadvertent commitment of a consequens fallacy be misinterpreted by an object-actant, the appropriate form will be rather:



E: S ~[AB] (x ⊃ A) ↔ O [AB] [(x ⊃ A) ⊃ (x ⊃ B)]



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The designation (E) shows that the logical assumptions made by the subjectand object-actants are erroneous, or that the potential error inherent in the message conveyed by the subject-actant is activated by the object-actant. Fallacies dependent on the opposition between (A+B) and ~(A+B) are not applicable to the (E) type of development. To those narratives already associated with this particular pattern of development may be added Jean de Condé’s fabliau Les Braies le Priestre.10 The trousers unwittingly abandoned by a wife’s clerical lover are unwittingly appropriated by her husband. The foolish act follows when, expecting to find his purse with the money necessary to purchase an animal at the market, the husband discovers instead that the trousers he is wearing contain nothing other than the priest’s seal. In the same mould is Rutebeuf ’s Le Pet au Vilain.11 A devil sent to garner the soul of a dying peasant wrongly assumes that anything abandoning the body at the point of death will be the peasant’s soul. He consequently traps in his sack a stinking fart, which he later releases in Hell to the discomfiture of his fellow devils. The fabliau assumes a place with others of its kind as a comically obscene or scatological etiology: Qu’en enfer ne en paradix Ne puet vilains entrer sanz doute, Oïe aveiz la raison toute. Rutebuez ne seit entremetre Ou hom puisse arme a vilain metre, Qu’ele a failli a ces deus regnes. Or voit chanteir avec les reinnes, Que c’est li mieudres qu’il i voie; Ou el teigne droite la voie, Por sa penitance aligier, En la terre au peire Audigier: C’est en la terre de Cocuce, Ou Audigiers chie en s’aumuce.12

10

NRCF 10: 11–21; 340. NRCF 5: 359–70; 445–47. 12 ‘It is therefore the case, as you have heard explained in detail, that without question peasants are prohibited from entering either hell or heaven. Rutebeuf is at a loss to know where a peasant’s soul can be sent, since it fails to meet the qualification for entry to both these kingdoms. Either it can go croak with the frogs, which is the best solution he can envisage, or to lighten its penance it should hold strictly to the highway leading to the land of father Audigier, which is to say the land of Cockayne, where Audigier shits in his hood’ (vv. 64–76). With reference to the conclusion of this fabliau, see Brusegan, ‘Cocuce’. This humble narrative has also attracted the attention of Levy, ‘Du Fabliau à la Farce’. Levy compares Le Pet au Vilain and Le Prestre crucefié as fabliaux already charged with the performance potential apparent in the fifteenth-century farces that they inspired. See also this author’s extensive general study of the fabliaux, The Comic Text. 11

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(ii) Designation (EE) Both the subject- and object-actants are aware of the ambiguity inherent in some sign or proposition, but the ambiguity is deliberately created by the subject- and accepted by the object-actant to form a sophistical alternative to a reality that both wish to circumvent. The distinguishing feature of such exchanges is a nonce language or a type of obscene allegory whereby a girl’s mons Veneris becomes a meadow, her vagina becomes a fountain, and so forth. The formula for these exchanges will be: EE: S [AA] (x ⊃ AB) ↔ O [AA] (x ⊃ AB) The designation (EE) shows that assumptions based on the proposition [AA] are erroneous, but the sophistry initiated by the subject-actant is nevertheless accepted by the object-actant. A situation similar to that in Cele qui se fist foutre or La Damoisele qui ne pooit oïr parler de foutre occurs in L’Esquiriel.13 That the circumstances depicted involve voluntary collaboration between consenting adults to achieve sexual union despite obstacles, rather than efforts by a scheming protagonist to seduce a naïve innocent, is less clear in the latter instance. However, the young man’s suggestion that his penis is a squirrel is both accepted and elaborated upon by the young girl in the course of her submission to the lover’s advances, and other pointers indicate that she is not the unwitting victim of seduction or rape. La Pucele qui voloit voler14 and other involuntary seduction narratives, conclude with the seducer marrying the victim of his machinations, but there is no suggestion of a similar development in this case. There is, however, a brief parallel to the extensive touching and naming scene in La Damoisele qui ne pooit oïr parler de foutre, and more significantly a counterpart to the doting and abused parent in that fabliau, since the concerned farmer/father who wanted to protect his daughter from all exposure to foul language is matched by a mother concerned to keep hidden from her daughter the popular name for the deable pendeloche possessed by males. (iii) Designation (E1) The subject-actant is aware of the ambiguity inherent in the sign or the proposition, but the object-actant is not. Exchanges of this kind are distinguished by a subject-actant’s embellished lie involving an object-actant’s invalid deduction. Pattern (E1) also exhibits a definitive feature, the orchestration of manufactured evidence to solicit a false inference. This feature will be designated the coup de théâtre. It is manifest in all instances where action is initiated when one character assumes a disguise, or indulges in a histrionic performance such as that practiced by the faux-squeamish young man in La Damoisele qui ne pooit oïr parler de foutre. The formula for these exchanges will be: 13 14

NRCF 6: 33–49; 319–22. NRCF 6: 155–70; 336–39.



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E1: S ~[AB] (x ⊃ A) ↔ O [AB] [(x ⊃ A) ⊃ (x ⊃ B)] The designation (E1) shows that the subject-actant elicits from the object-actant a false inference that the subject-actant does not share. Fallacies dependent on the opposition between ~[AA] and [AA], or [A+B] and ~[A+B] are not applicable for the (E1) distribution of actants. Many fabliaux conform to the E1: S ~[AB] pattern, particularly those that relate to a wife’s efforts to conceal the presence of a lover and to facilitate his release before discovery by her husband. A number of these fabliaux appear in the Disciplina Clericalis, and are dealt with in the following chapter. They form part of the background to the fabliau Auberee examined there in detail. However, other fabliaux including La Feme qui cunquie son Baron15 also share the E1: S ~[AB] logical pattern. A wife surprised with her lover when her husband returns unexpectedly creates the opportunity to spirit him away in safety by releasing the bung from one of her husband’s wine casks, and pretending that she is preventing further accidental spillage by blocking the hole with her thumb. She then persuades her husband to take control while she searches for a replacement stopper, and profits from his confinement in the cellar to facilitate her lover’s escape. Two different but structurally analogous fabliaux conform to this pattern, the anonymous La Sorisete des Estopes16 and Gautier le Leu’s Le fol Vilain.17 Both depend for their humour on the imaginative invention of new brides who want either to have a last fling with a priest or to reward a faithful swain with their virginity. Confronted with amorous peasants who want to have sex with their new brides but are abysmally ignorant of feminine anatomy, both pretend that their pudenda are detachable items unfortunately left elsewhere and not immediately available for service. The bride in La Sorisete des Estopes sends her new groom to fetch the required item from the foot of her mother’s bed. The peasant’s acceptance of this outrageous suggestion gains credence from subsequent events, and initiates a series of farcical developments. Quick to catch on to her daughter’s manoeuvre, the mother directs her new son-in-law to a basket of flax in which, without her knowledge, a mouse has concealed itself. On his way home the peasant decides to exercise his marital rights, frightening the mouse so that it leaps from the basket and is lost in a muddy field. Returning after a futile and despairing search, the peasant is assured by his wife that her vagina is safely restored to its rightful place. He expresses some concern that it not fall victim to the cat, attributes its damp state to the adventure in the field, and resolves to leave it in peace for the night to recover from the trauma. In a summary statement very typical of fabliaux concerned with disputes between husband and wife, the author berates feminine mendacity. The monitory 15 16 17

NRCF 9: 125–33; 298. NRCF 6: 171–83; 340–42. NRCF 9 : 149–68; 301–03. See Berriot, ‘Les Fabliaux de Gautier le Leu’.

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tone of the address to husbands to guard against deceit by their own wives attests the survival of sentiments frequently articulated in the fable tradition to which this author attributes his own text: Enseignier voil por ceste fable Que fame set plus que deiable. Et certeinemant lo sachiez: Les iauz enbedeus me sachiez Se n’é a esciant dit voir! Qant ele viaut om decevoir, Plus l’en deçoit et plus l’afole Tot solemant par sa parole Que om ne feroit par angin. De ma fable faz tel defin Que chascuns se gart de la soe Q’ele ne li face la coe!18

Gautier le Leu begins his fabliau with a long series of incidents illustrating the stupidity of the prospective bridegroom, whose parallel adventures to those of the peasant in La Sorisete des Estopes do not begin until line 177 of his story. When the deception provoking the false inference is articulated, however, it is bolstered with more authenticating detail than its counterpart. The element of chance is eliminated, since the prospective bride arranges to have a mouse ready in a box for her husband to fetch, and she explains at length (vv. 255–67) the circumstances governing her decision to adopt this strategy. She left her vagina at midday on Saturday in a box at her family home, out of fear that in the course of their travels on horseback it would be broken. The husband can collect it if he wishes, and then they can amuse themselves. She did not dare send anyone else for it, out of fear that it might get lost, and she wouldn’t for the world have anyone else touch it with his thing, for she would be blamed if that happened. From this point on the two narratives proceed in fairly strict parallel, sharing most of the secondary sources of humour. However, Gautier noticeably has no agenda other than to tell an amusing anecdote, and dispenses entirely with the moralising evident in the conclusion to La Sorisete des Estopes: ‘Gautiers li Leus atant le lait, / Le conte del fol vilain lait. / De quanque il fisent puiscedi, / Je n’en sai plus ne plus n’en di.’19 The same logical pattern appears in La Pucele qui voloit voler. A young girl 18 ‘Through this fabliau I want to make it clear, and you are certainly aware of this for a fact, that a woman knows more than the devil himself. Gouge out both my eyes if I haven’t knowingly told the truth! When she wants to deceive a man, she tricks and befuddles him more, just by her talk alone, than a man can accomplish by cunning. I conclude my tale with this warning, that each husband take care that his wife doesn’t make him a cuckold!’ (vv. 213–24). 19 ‘Gautier le Leu leaves the story of the ugly and foolish peasant at this point. Of what they did after that I know and say nothing further’ (vv. 371–74).



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(one of the précieuses ridicules of the thirteenth century, according to Nykrog20) with an ambition to fly is persuaded by a clerk that physical activity in the areas of the mouth and the vagina is for the purpose of fashioning a beak and a tail. In this instance the audience are left in no doubt that the seduction has occurred contrary to the girl’s wishes, and she herself makes the point in an outspoken lament: Hé, dit, clers, vos m’avez gabee! La queue m’est el cors germee: Je cuit que je soie engroissiee. Malement m’avez engigniee: Je ne puis seulement aler! Comment porroie je voler? Empiriee sui durement: Bien savez engignier la gent!21

As seems to be conventional in cases where an innocent girl has been victimised by a callous seducer or rapist, reparation is made through the ultimate marriage of the exploitive character to the subject of his abuse.22 A number of single-episode fabliaux have a core exchange wherein the intentions of abusive subject-actants are misinterpreted by their victims. The friar in Frere Denise23 persuades a naïve girl to disguise herself as a man and enter his order on the pretext that she will thereby achieve sainthood, but with the real intention of abusing her sexually.24 A priest in Le Prestre et les deus Ribaus25 offers to mount the unruly horse he has lost gambling on the pretext that he can control it, but creates an opportunity to ride off and welsh on his debt. The man who offers to cure the bishop afflicted with a permanent erection in L’Anel qui

20

Nykrog, Fabliaux, p. 78. ‘Well, truth to tell, Mr. Clerk, you have made a fool of me! The tail has taken root in my body. I believe I am pregnant. You have tricked me badly. I cannot even walk! How would I be able to fly? I am seriously incapacitated. You certainly know how to deceive people!’ (vv. 85–92). 22 Of the three versions of this fabliau surviving to us, the only one not to mention that the clerk eventually married the girl he had seduced is that chosen by the editor of the NRCF treatment as the basis for the texte critique. Consequently for the majority of readers whose knowledge of the fabliau is most likely to be restricted to this version, the detail would be lost. It is, however, structurally significant, since the issue whether the seducer marries the girl he has seduced serves to differentiate such fabliaux as La Pucele qui voloit voler and La Gageure from others such as La Damoisele qui ne pooit oïr parler de foutre and L’Esquiriel. The editor’s decision in this instance exposes a weakness of the ‘best text’ editorial procedure by comparison with a more eclectic approach. 23 NRCF 6: 1–23; 315–17. 24 For the suggestion that the phrase ‘a cele aprist sa patrenostre’ implies that the lecherous friar had sexual intercourse with his naïve victim, see Ziolkowski, ‘The erotic pater noster redux’. 25 NRCF 5: 145–62; 404–07. 21

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faisoit les Vis grans et roides26 claims as payment for his services the ring whose removal he knows will effect the cure for which he is being rewarded. The clerk in Le povre Clerc27 pretends to recount a ‘fright’ he has experienced, but manages through a series of artful metaphors to reveal the presence of food and wine hidden by an inhospitable wife for the entertainment of a priest whose presence is also brought to light.28 Numerous other simple narratives that employ the same E1: S ~[AB] logical pattern merit brief mention. In La Damoisele qui sonjoit29 a girl is raped while asleep. She demands that the rapist repeat the operation, allegedly because asleep she was not conscious of what was happening, but suspectedly because she desires a repetition of the experience. Humour attaching to the logical peripety is tenuous, and the author seems to have been more concerned to create an extended sexual parody of single combat in the lists. Le Maignien qui foti la Dame30 tells how a wife supposes herself injured when a worm-eaten stool breaks as she prepares to enter her bath. Her mistaken concerns about her injury are confirmed by a naïve maid, and she allows herself to be sexually assaulted several times by a passing tinker who claims to have a ‘root’ capable of restoring her to health. In Le Foteor,31 the young man who has already sold his services, for twenty shillings to the good-looking mistress of the house, and for a hundred shillings to her less attractive maid, is surprised by the appearance of the husband while he is having a bath. Despite the lady’s frantic pleas that he should hide, he remains in the bath, and calmly confronts the husband. Persuaded by this exhibition of sang froid that nothing has as yet transpired, the husband pays his unwelcome guest a further twenty shillings to abandon his plans without being out of pocket. Finally, in a brazen coup de théâtre, a thief in Brifaut32 follows a peasant carrying a bolt of cloth to market, surreptitiously sews the cloth to his own garment, snatches it during a moment of confusion in the market crush, and upbraids his unfortunate victim for not having followed the thief ’s own practice in securing his cloth with needle and thread. (iv) Designation (E2) The object-actant is aware of the ambiguity inherent in a sign or a proposition, but the subject-actant is not. Uniquely this pattern may occur with any of the

26

NRCF 8: 311–17; 391. NRCF 7: 255–69; 394–95. 28 Despite Schenck’s opinion, Tales, p. 32, that the moral in this story has only a practical dimension, it may also carry religious implications. The clerk is associated with Christ and the seven acts of mercy (see, for example, the Judgement play), and the whole structure has parallels with the Harrowing of Hell. The husband and wife may be Adam and Eve figures since the husband has charitable inclinations which are belied and betrayed by the wife. 29 NRCF 4: 45–55; 370–73. 30 NRCF 6: 301–11; 363–64. 31 NRCF 6: 51–75; 323–26. 32 NRCF 6: 101–09; 329. 27



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three logical contradictions, although pattern E2: S [AA] appears only once in the fabliau corpus. The exchange in question is the first in L’Evesque qui beneï le Con, a fabliau that combines two distinct episodes. The bishop of the title, annoyed that one of his parish priests is living in concubinage with his mistress, attempts to enforce her rejection by threatening the offending cleric with a series of prohibitions. The priest’s mistress, however, is equal to the occasion, and nullifies the prohibitions with a series of sophistical circumventions. To the bishop’s order that the priest should drink (buver) no wine as long as he persists with his irregular domestic arrangements, she suggests that he is not thereby prohibited from sipping (humer) wine. Forbidden to eat goose (oie), she suggests that the priest eat gander (jars). And finally, when he is told he cannot sleep on a mattress (coute), she volunteers to make him up a comfortable bed with cushions (cousins). On each occasion the bishop supposes that his interdiction applies to drinking, or sipping, or both, and so with his other orders, but the prêtresse takes the stance that drinking and sipping are distinct modes of consuming liquids, and that prohibition of one does not imply prohibition of the other. The first episode of L’Evesque qui beneï le Con will therefore be represented by a triple use of the formula: E2: S [AA] (x ⊃ AB) ↔ O ~[AA] [(x ⊃ A) or (x ⊃ B)] The (E2) pattern involving the ~[A+B] fallacy is equally straightforward. The universe of discourse in Jean Bodel’s Les deus Chevaus is established by the rules for a contest devised by a monk who has waylaid a peasant on his way to market to sell a broken-down horse. The monk proposes that his own equally sorry nag and that of the peasant should be tied by their tails, so that whichever is first pulled backwards across a stipulated mark is forfeit to the winner’s owner. The peasant justifiably assumes that the only possible alternatives here are a favourable or an unfavourable outcome in accordance with the rules established for the contest. Unexpectedly the game is terminated (or the boundaries of the game’s universe of discourse violated) when the monk, aware that the peasant’s horse is about to triumph, cuts off its tail and aborts the contest. The complete exchange for narratives of this kind will conform to the pattern: E2: S [A+B] [(x ⊃ A) or (x ⊃ B)] ↔ O ~[A+B] (x ⊃ C) Just as in Les trois Dames qui troverent un Vit, serious issues are raised by this apparently trivial story. The two works coincide closely in the humorous implications of their structures.33 A somewhat more complex example occurs in La Coille noire,34 a fabliau that features such standard characteristics of the pattern as court proceedings to resolve a controversial charge, and an ingenious device to escape culpability by the accused party. 33 34

See Payen, ‘Le Statut de l’Ecrivain’. NRCF 5: 163–89; 408–11.

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A wife complains to an ecclesiastic court that her husband’s genitals are black. She supposedly expects, since the ragged state of his trousers has allowed her a glimpse of the offending phenomenon, that the court will find him guilty. Rather than pleading either guilty or not guilty, however, her husband responds by bringing a counter charge: ‘Biaus sire, a vos me claim / De ma fame, qui tot mon fain / M’a gasté a faire torchons’.35 Although the counter charge has no immediate bearing on the issue of the peasant’s guilt or innocence with regard to the original accusation, it does elicit an emphatic denial from the wife: ‘ “Vos mantez parmi les grenons,” / Fait ele, “dan vilains despers! / Plus a d’un an que ne fu ters / Mes cus de fain ne d’autre rien.” ’36 The court accepts that since the state of the defendant’s scrotum may be attributable to his wife’s unsanitary habits he does not have a case to answer. As evidenced in La Dame qui fist trois Tors, the pattern E2: S [AB] conventionally occurs as one element in a paired sequence. The husband’s reasoning accords with pattern E: S ~[AB] as illustrated by Marie’s Le riche Humme e sa Fille or by such episodes as that occurring in Le sot Chevalier. In the latter two instances, however, a false inference results from confusion of two material objects, the blood sample given by the sick parent and that received by his physician, or Walon’s backside and a wine skin. The problem is resolved by the intervention of an authority figure, the sick parent’s daughter or the foolish knight’s mother-in-law, who can identify the source of the confusion and resolve it. In fabliaux such as La Dame qui fist trois Tors the false inference does not result from confusing the true nature of two distinct items, but rather from the invalid interpretation of circumstantial evidence. In Le riche Humme e sa Fille or the episode from Le sot Chevalier the object-actant’s understanding of the material sign is both invalidly deduced and erroneous. The confusion is resolved when the authority figure identifies the error. In La Dame qui fist trois Tors, however, the husband’s understanding of the circumstance of his wife’s absence from the house is invalidly deduced but true. Instead of an authority figure appearing to correct the error, therefore, the husband’s deduction is challenged by the wife on the basis of its invalidity. She accomplishes this by an invalid and untrue argument of her own, that her absence was for the purpose of performing a superstitious ritual at their parish church. All that is required to invalidate her husband’s argument is a demonstration that the classes (A) and (B) are not identical, and that absence from the house under suspicious circumstances does not necessarily imply adultery. The antecedent on which the husband has based his consequent could equally give rise to a different and innocent explanation, the truth or validity of which is not at issue. The E2: S [AB] pattern therefore reverses the husband’s original false assumption to produce the formula: 35 ‘Good sir, I am lodging a complaint with you against my wife, who has wasted all my straw making arse-wipes’ (vv. 99–101). 36 ‘You are lying in your beard, you common peasant!’ she said. ‘It has been more than a year since my arse was wiped with straw or anything else’ (vv. 102–05).



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E2: S [AB] [(x ⊃ A) ⊃ (x ⊃ B)] ↔ O ~[AB] ~[(x ⊃ A) ⊃ (x ⊃ B)] The coup de théâtre device occurs particularly in exchanges involving pattern E2: S [AB], as was apparent, for example, in the activity of the clerk in L’Oue au Chapelain. Although in this instance the wife cannot manufacture evidence to reinforce her claim, her account exploits what was apparently a popular superstition, and for the first time acknowledges her pregnancy. Her husband seems so well pleased at this latter revelation that he is distracted from the inherent unlikelihood of the explanation his wife offers for her absence. Since this pattern appears only in sequence with pattern E: S ~[AB] it is featured here only by way of illustration. Structurally La Dame qui fist trois Tors belongs together with L’Oue au Chapelain and parallel narratives in Chapter 6, and will be dealt with there. The logical exchanges documented above are epistemes. As such they are subordinate to the narremes that incorporate the full narrative structure of individual fabliaux and are diagrammatically represented with the complete Greimasian actantial model. Epistemic structure is typically paradigmatic in that it exhibits the distinctive quality of permitting more than one pattern of development. The symbol (↔) used to differentiate the logical assumptions of the subject- and object-actants conveys this element of equivocation. The syntagms which reflect the choices exercised in the course of the narrative are determined by the nature of the narreme. It settles the final outcome of acceptance or rejection and thereby permits retrospective completion of the epistemic development. The symbol (→) serves to indicate that the triumph of one set of assumptions over the other has achieved a resolution. In the episteme distinction between the adjuvant and opposant actants consists exclusively in opposition over a logical contradiction, and the whole arena of activity is conceptual. Because the episteme is formulated in these strictly logical terms, it tells us nothing about the subject- and object-actants other than that they are aligned in accordance with one or the other of the antithetic propositions. They exist conceptually as reasoning intelligences, and only in the narreme acquire the qualities of fictional flesh and blood characters in a material world. The distinction in Le Vescie a Prestre37 between a charitable priest concerned to dispose of his worldly goods in the fairest and most even-handed way, and a group of importunate Jacobins concerned only to enrich themselves at whatever cost to the priest’s chosen beneficiaries, is a distinction appropriate only to the narreme. The difference between narreme and episteme is also indicated by what happens along the axis of communication. In the episteme the exchange consists exclusively in the acceptance or rejection by the object-actant of some proposition emanating from the subject-actant, while in the narreme the exchange is frequently material, a phenomenon that would be completely alien to the conceptual world of the episteme. It follows therefore that the priest’s bequest of his bladder to the Jacobins in Le Vescie a Prestre, the knight’s restoration to the old 37

NRCF 10: 285–303; 380–82.

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woman of her impounded cow in La Vieille qui oint la Palme au Chevalier, or the transfer to the king of Honte’s bag in La Male Honte all belong exclusively to the narremic structure of those fabliaux. Fabliau structure, as already noted, therefore has a dual aspect, comprising one or more epistemes that reflect the logical concerns endemic to all the constituent members of the fabliau genre, and a single narreme that subsumes the epistemic exchanges into a fully resolved narrative. It is in the narreme that the analytical model developed by Greimas exhibits its strengths as compared, for example, to that expounded by Vladimir Propp. Not only do the concepts of the adjuvant and opposant actants lend themselves ideally to expressing the underlying logical oppositions described in the epistemes, but also the concept of the actant itself is of immense importance. It permits the construction of a fully articulated actantial model even when, as is frequently the case, not all of the actants are semanticised within the narrative, and reveals connections between fabliaux of similar structure that would otherwise be concealed. Furthermore, and more importantly, recognition that the actant may have a significance that transcends the conventional qualities associated with the member of the dramatis personae representing that actant in the fabliau narrative has the potential to extend and deepen the overall meaning of what at first glance may appear to be a trivial anecdote. Much, of course, depends on the nature of the narrative itself. In La Male Honte, for example, the subject- and object-actants in the episteme, a peasant and his English king, exist essentially as functionaries whose roles are limited to exploiting whatever humour can be derived from the pun featured in the title. Despite the fact that the author indulges in some crosscultural satire at the expense of the English king, the story does not aspire to tell us anything about kingship, or about the relationship between a monarch and one of his more humble subjects. Such concerns clearly do not fall within the author’s intentions for his narrative, and the characters are not conceived to carry any such weighty implications. By contrast, in a fabliau such as Cele qui se fist foutre, opposition between the figures of the widow and the squire on the one hand, and the knight on the other, raises issues of profound importance for thirteenth-century culture. A criticism frequently levelled at fabliaux is that the summary statements have a tenuous relationship to the concerns expressed in the narrative. It is sometimes the case, however, that the author is addressing the wider issues raised by the actants semanticised through the characters, rather than issues invoked directly by the interaction of the characters themselves. Since the form of the narreme is dictated by the form of the episteme that it subsumes, each of the patterns (E), (EE), (E1) and (E2) will be examined in turn, and its relationship to the appropriate narreme expounded. (i) Pattern (E) Formulae: E: S1 ~[AA] (x ⊃ A) ↔ O1 ~[AA] (x ⊃ B)



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or E: S1 ~[AB] (x ⊃ A) ↔ O1 [AB] [(x ⊃ A) ⊃ (x ⊃ B)] Since pattern (E) introduces into the narreme a new actant who has played no part in the episteme, the subject-actant of the episteme is identified as S1, and the object-actant as O1. The new actant S2 is the authority figure who intervenes in the narreme to resolve the confusion created by the ambiguity of the sign or of the proposition in the episteme. The actant S2 facilitates the intended but inhibited transfer along the axis of communication in the Greimasian model which propels the narrative towards a satisfactory conclusion. The narreme for most simple fabliaux exhibiting the type (E) pattern of development will therefore have the form: N: S2 → O2 (S1/O1) The complete formula for these narratives will simply add the narreme shown above to the appropriate episteme. Using Marie de France’s Le riche Humme e sa Fille as an example, the narremic actantial model would be as shown in Figure 3.1.

Adjuvant → ~ [AB]

Sujet ← daughter S2

Opposant [AB]

  ↓ Destinateur → Objet → father S1 father/ physician S1/O1

Destinataire physician O1

     Figure 3.1 Actantial model for Pattern (E)

The daughter, whose substitution of her own blood sample for that of her father has created the confusion over the diagnosis, and generated the foolish act whereby the physician has declared her father pregnant, explains the situation to the victims of her activities and makes possible a correct communication from her father to his doctor. Marie’s epimythium (vv. 27–32) makes exaggerated claims for the significance of her story, which has only an extremely fragile connection with its moral conclusion. Investment of the adjuvant and opposant actants proceeds no further than is dictated by the logical fallacy underpinning the tale’s comic element. In a few exceptional cases the (E) type development lacks any clear authority figure to resolve the confusion and bring the narrative to a satisfactory closure. In Le Clerc qui fu repus derriere l’Escrin, for example, both of the wife’s suitors leave unmolested. The husband, described as a ‘wihos soffrans’ [‘a long-suffering

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cuckold’], seems disinclined to pursue any punishment for either his wife or her lovers. The wife, whose sexual indiscretions have been exposed, is clearly content to seek refuge in silence and to leave matters as they stand. The narreme therefore lacks any semanticised (S2) figure, and that role in the narreme must be assumed by the audience. Their final understanding of the complexities of the situation will not necessarily exceed that of the principal players, but they nevertheless uniquely possess the objectivity expected of the authority figure. Failure to reach any closure appropriate to tales of this kind is acknowledged by the author, who concludes his fabliau weakly by disavowing any insight into the final outcome of events: Point ne m’en couvient entremettre De dire qu’ele respondi, Ne comment ele s’escondi: Ele en sot si bien a chief traire Ke je atant m’en vorrai taire!38

A similar situation occurs in fabliaux combining epistemes into a more complex structure that will be examined in a later chapter. The wife in Les trois Boçus39 has no consciousness that her machinations to dispose of the bodies of three dead minstrels will result in the unwitting murder of her hunchback husband, and events have the same random quality in the analogous tales of Estormi40 and Les quatre Prestres.41 The authority figures in Les Braies le Priestre, the butcher’s fellows who have accompanied him to the market, have no better insight into the situation than the victim himself. They register their objective judgement on the circumstances leading to their companion’s humiliation, however, and spell out the full implications of what has occurred: Entour lui ot mout grant risee. Li bouciers fu tous entrepris Et de grant mautalent espris Quant le saiel au priestre troeve: Or puet veïr apierte preuve Que li priestres fu de li priés. Uns siens compains li dist apriés: ‘Compains, c’as tu fait de tes braies? Or as tu ensengnes bien vraies

Dou priestre dont le saiel as: 38 ‘Far be it from me to intervene by saying what she replied, or how she explained herself. She was so well versed in handling the situation that I would prefer to stay silent on the matter’ (vv. 144–48). 39 NRCF 5: 191–207; 412–14. 40 NRCF 1: 1–28; 315–18. 41 NRCF 8: 133–40; 362.



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De ta femme fait ses soulas, Et si ert dou tien parçonniers, Qu’il a te bourse a tes deniers!’42

Discovery that the peasant is wearing the priest’s trousers provides evidence, as his fellows point out, of his wife’s infidelity, and could lead to such further developments as appear in Les Braies au Cordelier.43 Jean de Condé, however, is content to conclude his fabliau with the foolish act. The role of authority figures similar to those of the peasant’s market companions are played by Satan and his fellow devils in Le Pet au vilain. (ii) Pattern (EE) Formula: EE: S1 [AA] (x ⊃ AB) ↔ O1 [AA] (x ⊃ AB) Because it is the second of the two patterns that introduce a new actant in the narreme, superscript numbers are used to identify the subject- and object-actants in the episteme. The pattern proves the value of the actant concept, since one of the fabliaux that conform to the model, Le Testament de l’Asne, has no representative whatever among the dramatis personae for the object-actant in the narreme. In this instance, however, the role of the actant is essential and unmistakeable. A rich priest owed his prosperity in part to a donkey that served him well for twenty years. When it died of old age, the priest was unwilling to have it skinned and disposed of in the normal fashion, but instead buried it in sacred ground. His action was brought to the attention of an avaricious bishop who saw an opportunity to profit from the priest’s sentimental but illicit self-indulgence. The bishop summoned the priest and upbraided him for misconduct against Holy Church. In response to the priest’s plea, however, he granted him respite to consider what he might do about the matter, warning him that he should not expect to win any compromise on the issue by offering money as a bribe. At the expiry of his term the priest returned, and told the bishop he was ready to make amends, and to pay penance in whatever fashion the bishop thought appropriate. Sensing that something to his profit was about to emerge from the situation, the bishop took the priest aside for a tête-à-tête, at which time the priest confided to the bishop that for twenty years his donkey had set aside twenty shillings each year for the salva42 ‘He was surrounded by a great burst of laughter. The butcher is completely dumbfounded and overwhelmed with angry rage when he finds the priest’s seal. Now he has incontrovertible proof of how intimately the priest has got to him. One of his fellows said to him afterwards: “Mate, what have you done with your trousers? You now have a clear idea of the priest whose seal you found. He enjoys your wife’s favours, and has a share of your goods, since he has his hands on your purse and your money!” ’ (vv. 88–100). For a comparison between this fabliau and the more complexly developed Les Braies au Cordelier see Pearcy, “Literary Relations of Les Braies au Cordelier’. 43 NRCF 3: 211–36; 438–42.

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tion of his soul, and had willed the total sum to the bishop as a legacy. ‘God bless him,’ said the bishop, accepting the money, ‘and forgive him his trespasses.’ The conspiracy between the priest and the bishop is clearly for the purpose of circumventing some sanction, which is the anti-simoniac Christian community’s disapproval of the ecclesiastical corruption attested by the priest’s willingness to bury his donkey in sacred ground in violation of church doctrine, and the bishop’s willingness to turn a blind eye to the offence as long as he has been financially compensated for the decision. The (EE) pattern of the episteme reflects the fact that while the class of bribes (A) and the class of legitimate charitable donations to the church (B) are mutually exclusive categories, the fanciful notion of a donkey’s legacy is sophistically accepted by the protagonists as blurring the distinction. The relationship between the protagonists in the episteme and the new actant introduced to complete the actantial pattern in the narreme is reversed by comparison with pattern (E). Instead of an authority figure emerging to correct a misconception, and to restore order to a disordered community, the representatives of disorder impose their will on the representatives of acceptable standards of social or religious behaviour, and triumph in their violation of conventional rational principles. The transfer of the twenty-pound bribe reflects achievement of what was aimed for on the axis of desire, and resolves the issues raised in the narrative to the benefit of the ecclesiastics but at the expense of those opposed to their self-serving sophistry. With full investment of the actants, the actantial model would have the form in Figure 3.2. The narreme for pattern (EE) will be: N: S2 (S1/O1) → O2 Solipsistic willingness Ecclesiastic corruption, Respect for tradition, to manipulate objective violation of church community standards, standards of truth & dogma, wealth, luxury. principles of behaviour. validity for personal advantage

Adjuvant → Sujet ← (AA) S2 (S1/O1): priest/bishop



Opposant ~(AA)

↓

Destinateur → Objet ← Destinataire S1: priest O2: Audience O1: bishop Despatch of what Christian community Receipt of what is sophistically Disaffection with church is realistically termed a legacy. establishment. Disapproval recognised as a of cynical profiteering. bribe.   Figure 3.2 Actantial model for Pattern (EE)



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Rutebeuf begins his fabliau with an attack on slanderers, and on those afflicted with the sin of envy, concerns which have only oblique relevance to the subject of his tale, but his summary statement, although brief, is more to the point: Rutebués nos dist et enseigne, Qui deniers porte a sa besoingne Ne doit douteir mauvais lyens: Li asnes remest crestiens, Qu’il paiat bien et bel son lais.44

A similarly serious significance finds expression in the parallel narreme for Cele qui se fist foutre. It differs from that for Le Testament de l’Asne only because the object-actant is semanticised in the person of the knight. His role, however, clearly has more than personal significance, since he represents attitudes that would have been endorsed by the public at large. As regards the widow, these would include respect for the suffering of a bereaved woman, expectation that her recent bereavement and fidelity to her husband’s memory would leave her indifferent to any sexual overtures, and an assumption that reverence for the authority of her deceased husband and his surviving male relatives would prohibit any move on her part to form a new amorous liaison. Similarly, as his emotional outburst against his squire testifies, the knight is outraged to discover that the squire does not share his views, but is a rebel against conventional social attitudes and standards. If we assume, as the sophistry propelling action along the axis of desire would suggest, that the object of exchange is the widow’s sexual favours, then as destinateur she is enabled, by circumvention of the obstacles represented by the knight, to bestow them on the squire as destinataire. There is also, however, the matter of the wager set up between the squire and the knight. No actual forfeit is stipulated for the loss of the bet, but it forms part of the framing device and is surely meant to have some significance in the final resolution of the plot. If, as seems necessary, we add the figure of the knight to the destinateur actant, leaving the squire once more in the role of destinataire, then what passes from one to the other is an acknowledgement on the part of the knight that his assumptions, although enjoying some general currency and apparently well-founded, are in fact flawed, subject to some sentimental delusion, and out of touch with the earthier realities of human nature. The ‘message’, that is to say, is basically an endorsement of fabliau ethic.45 44 ‘Rutebeuf tells us and makes clear that whoever carries enough money for his needs does not have to be afraid of punitive laws. The donkey is a confirmed Christian, because he paid up well and dutifully on his legacy’ (vv. 165–69). 45 Norris Lacy has some difficulty integrating what he terms ‘anti-prudery’ fabliaux with the rest of the fabliau corpus, in part because they seem to him to violate the duper/dupe division of characters, and lack any clear victim. These concerns should be partly allayed by recognition that ‘anti-prudery’ fabliaux simply reverse the pattern of those fabliaux where both participants in the episteme are victimised by ignorance. It is also worth noting that the

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Finally to conclude this section on (EE) patterns of fabliau structure, it is apparent that the role of the farmer/father in La Damoisele qui ne pooit oïr parler de foutre also extends beyond the personal to embrace matters of concern to the populace at large, specifically the need to uphold standards of honesty and integrity that his daughter and her paramour wilfully violate. Despite the fact that his significance as a representative figure is compromised by the role he is forced to play in the plot, which casts him as extremely naïve, a ‘vilains qui mout ert beste’ [‘a very foolish peasant’, v. 107], the wider implication of his admittedly ineffectual opposition to his daughter’s conduct is acknowledged in the wry epimythium to version D of the fabliau, quoted here in the diplomatic edition from NRCF: Par cest essanple monstrer uueil Que femes n’aient point d’orgueil De foutre paller hautement Quant il foutent tot igalment Mieldres raison est que se haucent Teus en parolent qui l’essaucent Quar mout a entre faire et dire Mais li cus plus que corde tire.46

There is one further issue to be discussed before leaving this section. La Damoisele qui ne pooit oïr parler de foutre, like Le sot Chevalier, contains in one version an accessory episode that meets all the requirements of an independent episteme, and that must consequently be accounted for in any full actantial description of the narrative. Such accessory episodes have their own epistemic structure, in this instance E1: S ~[AB], and need to be recorded alongside the episteme for the core exchange. They can, however, be readily assimilated to the narreme that accounts for the final resolution of the plot. (iii) Pattern (E1) Formula: E1: S ~[AB] (x ⊃ A) ↔ O [AB] [(x ⊃ A) ⊃ (x ⊃ B)] pattern of mutually sanctioned deceit is not, as witness Le Testament de l’Asne, confined to erotic, anti-prudery narratives. Cele qui se fist foutre can stand as a test case on this issue. Lacy has made a special study of this fabliau, and devotes an excellent first chapter of Reading Fabliaux to discussing its characteristics. He refers throughout to matters investigated in his dissertation, which covered much of the ground examined in Chapter 1 of the present study. The actantial model I propose following clarifies the conflict between the squire and the widow on the one hand, and the squire and the knight on the other, and helps identify the latter as victimised by his endorsement of an ideology rejected by the participants to the seduction. For Lacy’s comments on the matter see, for example, Reading Fabliaux, p. 151, n 2. 46 ‘By this example I wish to demonstrate that women should on no account be too proud to talk openly about fucking when they are doing it anyway. It makes more sense to name matters unashamedly, and there are some who take pride in acting that part, for there is a big gap between doing something and talking about it. But the bum draws one along more firmly than a cable’ (vv. 223–30).



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By comparison with patterns (E) and (EE), pattern (E1) is quite simple, since the distribution of actants in the narreme conforms precisely to that in the episteme: N: S → O The fact that roles in this pattern are frequently restricted to those of ‘duper’ and ‘victim’ defined in the most conventional way, simply by designating the protagonists ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ for example, limits the degree to which the narreme extends the significance of the conflict reflected in the episteme. The significance of the narrative may not exceed the conventional causes of conflict between them, particularly the husband’s usually despairing efforts to protect the integrity of his marriage. In these instances the summary epimythium may be relatively flippant or vacuous, as, for example, in Le Fevre de Creil,47 or Le Vilain de Bailluel.48 The three-line statement (vv. 357–59) with which Les Braies au Cordelier concludes is typical: ‘Bien s’est la borgoise chevie: / Mout a bien son plait afiné! / A tant ai mon flabel finé.’49 There are nevertheless exceptions when relationships are not strictly confined to the domestic arena. Le Prestre et Alison50 records a trick played on a village priest when the local prostitute is substituted for the young daughter of a bourgeoise whose favours he sought to purchase at great expense. The author’s summary recapitulates the humiliations to which, in the course of events, the errant priest is subject, but he first administers a general admonition to observe the proprieties in social behaviour: Savoir poez par ceste fable, Que fist Guillaumes li Normanz, Qui dist que cil n’est pas sachanz Qui de sa maison ist par nuit Por faire chose qui ennuit, Ne por tolir, ne por enbler. L’en devroit preudom hennorer La ou il est, en totes corz.51 47

NRCF 5: 71–82; 390–91. NRCF 5: 223–49; 418–24. In an elaborate coup de théâtre the wife in this fabliau convinces her husband, in a series of set pieces, that he is unwell, that he is seriously ill, and finally that he has in fact died. Ignoring his presence the wife and the priest summoned to perform the last rites proceed to make love. When the husband protests, he is told that, as a corpse, he has no entitlement to intervene. This final scene raises the issue of the theorem from two connecteds dealt with by Bochenski, Formal Logic, p. 130 in his section on MegarianStoic logic. The Stoics illustrated this theorem with the argument that from the proposition ‘if you know that you are dead [you are dead; if you know that you are dead] you are not dead’ there follows this other ‘therefore you do not know that you are dead.’ 49 ‘The housewife exculpated herself without difficulty. She was well able to round off her account with finesse. At that point my tale is at an end.’ 50 NRCF 8: 183–206; 369–73. 51 ‘You may understand by this fable, written by William the Norman, that he is not a wise 48

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(iv) Patterns E2 The formulae for patterns E2: S [AA], E2: S [A+B], and E2: S [AB] are expectedly quite straightforward, since like the narremic patterns for E1: ~[AB] they do not for the most part mandate the introduction of some new actant. Exceptionally in certain narratives that conform to the E2: S [A+B] pattern an actant additional to those participating in the episteme may be introduced. When this occurs, the new actant may complement the subject-actant of the narreme, or may replace actants from the episteme as in patterns (E) and (EE). Otherwise narratives conforming to pattern (E2) differ from those of pattern (E1) only in that the subject-actant of the episteme becomes the object-actant of the narreme and vice-versa. The two need to be differentiated with superscript numbers: N: S2 (O1) → O2 (S1) As already noted, only one fabliau episode conforms to the E2: S [AA] pattern. It has little general significance beyond the welcome circumvention of punitive decrees by a hypocritical and arrogant bishop. Examples of pattern E2: S [AB] are multiple, but since this pattern occurs only in conjunction with another episteme, narratives which feature it are dealt with in a subsequent chapter. Pattern E2: S [A+B] uniquely exhibits the potential to introduce characters into the narreme who have not been immediately involved in the epistemic exchange. There are three possibilities for narratives of this type. The protagonists in the episteme may be the only characters to appear in the narreme, the protagonists in the episteme may be joined by one or more new characters in the narreme, or, finally, a new character may assume the role of subject-actant in the narreme, while the protagonists in the episteme are jointly relegated to the object-actant role. The first of these possibilities is featured in Les deus Chevaux. This fabliau is represented by a narreme of the type: N: S2 (O1) → O2 (S1) The second possibility has already been illustrated by two of the examples of the pattern cited in an earlier chapter, Le Preudome qui rescolt son Compere de noier and Le povre Mercier. In the former, the fisherman who is the objectactant in the episteme shares his triumph in the narreme with the ‘wise fool’ who proposed a solution to resolve the dilemma facing the court. In the latter, the poor merchant who has appropriated the monk’s cloak in recompense for the loss of his horse is joined in victory with the manorial lord who devised the ‘judgement of Solomon’ resolution for the complaint lodged by the monk. The narreme for both of these fabliaux will therefore appear as: N: S3/S2 (O1) → O2 (S1)

man who leaves his house at night in order to commit some mischief, or to purloin or steal anything. One ought to respect an honest citizen, wherever he might be found’ (vv. 438–45).



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The same logical pattern forms the core episode in the more complex narrative of La vieille Truande. An old woman who fancies a handsome young traveller follows him to a river and insists that he carry her across. When he refuses, she upbraids him for mistreating his mother, and wrestles with him. At this juncture ‘uns haus hom’ [‘an important official’] on his way from court rides up with his company, sees the struggle taking place, and assumes that the young man has refused to pay a prostitute for her services. He urges the youth to settle his account since he has enjoyed the privilege he opted to buy. The woman reiterates her claim that the young man is her son, the courtier rebukes him for mistreating his mother, and the accused bachelor denies ever having set eyes on her before. The ‘judgement of Solomon’ follows when the courtier attempts to resolve the dispute by offering an alternative. Either the old woman is the young man’s mother, as she claims, in which case he should do as she asks, or she is a whore, as he claims, in which case he should have intercourse with her: Fait li sires: ‘Par saint Vincent, Se savoie or certainement Que la truande me mentist Et que ne vos apartenist, Il le vos convenroit ja foutre!’52

Such a judgement, which usually results in the plaintiff or the defendant voluntarily abandoning his suit, results in this case in a double turnabout. The whore immediately admits the truth that the bachelor is not her son, while the young man is forced into admitting the lie that she is his mother. The episteme and narreme for this fabliau will resemble those for Le Preudome qui rescolt son Compere de noier and Le povre Mercier, with the courtier and the old woman sharing the subject-actant slot in the narreme. However, since the bachelor is obliged, as the price of his admission, into agreeing to escort the old woman across the river, to grant her the hug and kiss she has been requesting, and to leave her his cloak, this fabliau concludes with a clear instance of the material exchange along the axis of communication that brings the narrative to satisfactory closure.53 The issue of a material exchange to conclude a narrative of type E2: S [A+B] is

52 ‘The official said, “By Saint Vincent, be fully aware of this, that if the old woman is lying to me, and if she isn’t related to you, then you will be obliged to fuck her!” ’ (vv. 175–79). In an echo of Joseph Bédier’s comment on Les trois Boçus, Jean Rychner characterises the exchanges here as ‘un intrigue qui se joue comme une partie d’échecs’. He remarks on this passage: ‘Cette sorte de jugement de Salomon entraîne un double retournement: celui de la truande, qui abandonnera aussitôt ses prétentions à la maternité, et celui du bachelier, qui préférera, à tout prendre, avoir la vieille pour mère et la passer au delà de l’eau.’ See Rychner, Contribution à l’Etude des Fabliaux. 53 La vieille Truande survives in four manuscripts, one of which, unusually, contains two almost identical versions of the narrative, together with a number of romances. This circumstance is investigated, and an explanation advanced, by Poe, ‘La vieille Truande’.

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even more explicit in the Anglo-Norman fabliau entitled La Gageure.54 It begins in a manner parallel to other narratives such as Aristote et Alixandre featuring a fake épreuve d’amour, but then veers off in an unexpected direction. A wife critical of the social status of her husband’s family conspires with her female cousin to persuade her husband’s brother to kiss the maid’s backside as proof of his devotion, while enticing her husband to witness what she anticipates will be a humiliating spectacle. Before the hidden spectator can emerge to ridicule the victim of her conspiracy, however, the squire exploits the circumstance that the maid has placed herself in a vulnerable position to assault her sexually. The maid’s assumption that the squire’s choices are restricted to either giving or withholding the ‘baiser honteux’ is exposed as fallacious. The narreme involves two characters who have played no part in the episteme, the wife who supported her cousin in arranging the fake épreuve d’amour, and her husband who sympathises with his brother the squire: N: S3/S2 (O1) → O3/O2 (S1) Since the wife bet her husband a cask of wine that he would witness his brother kissing her maid’s backside, there is a clearly defined material exchange in the form of a forfeit for a lost wager, a situation akin to what occurs in Cele qui se fist foutre. Finally, the third alternative, wherein both protagonists in the episteme are replaced as subject-actants in the narreme, is illustrated by Jean Bodel’s Le Couvoiteus et l’Envieus.55 The role of scourge to evil-doers is played by Saint Martin, who encounters the two characters, identified by their vices in the title, casually in the course of their travels, and promises them an enigmatic reward: Li uns de vos me ruist un don, Si avra lués que lui plaira, Et li autres, qui se taira, En avra maintenant deus tanz.56

The covetous man assumes that there are just two options, either that he will wish first and be blessed with riches, but that his companion will profit twofold, or that his companion will wish first and that he will profit twofold accordingly. Given this circumstance both are reluctant to make the first gesture until finally, provoked by the bullying impatience of the covetous man, the envious man opts to lose the sight of one eye, whereupon his companion is struck blind. The universe of discourse assumed to contain just two choices, either to vote first for something good, or to remain silent and enjoy twice the benefits, is shattered when one 54

NRCF 10: 1–10; 339. NRCF 6: 273–89; 357–59. 56 ‘One of you will ask me for a gift, and he will immediately be granted whatever he wants, and the other one, who holds his tongue, will straightway receive twice as much’ (vv. 42–45). 55



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of the travellers votes first for something bad. In this instance the intervention by Saint Martin profits neither of the protagonists: Tantost ot cil les elz crevez: Bien en fu tenuz li otroiz. De quatre elz perdirent les trois: N’i conquistrent autre rien nule, Ainz fist l’un borgne, l’autre avugle Sains Martins, et par lor sozhaiz!57

As he anticipated, saint Martin has exploited their character flaws to punish them both, and this outcome will be reflected in the narreme: N: S2 → S1/O1 The pattern E2 ~[A+B] without intervention by any outside agency may also generate a narrative that illustrates how issues that inflame the author’s passions provoke a commentary reflecting an unusual degree of social outrage. This effect has already been noted in Les trois Dames qui troverent un Vit. It recurs in Gautier le Leu’s Connebert. A smith traps a licentious priest in an affair with his wife, and is desperate to exact vengeance. His anger is augmented by the realisation that the priest is guilty of exploiting a privileged position within the community, and that as a deceived husband he is the victim of an unjust social system prejudicial to any hope of proper redress for his grievances. The universe of discourse in this situation offers two obvious possibilities. The priest would wish to be judged before an ecclesiastical court, but the smith is aware that benefit of clergy would probably mitigate the severity of the priest’s punishment to such an extent that his desire for vengeance would be unsatisfied. The smith is so angry that he would happily take vengeance in his own hands and castrate the offender, but the priest knows that by doing so the smith would be risking the dire consequences attendant on the serious crime of mutilating a cleric. The options available appear to produce an impasse. But at this juncture the smith devises a third alternative that obviates the objections attaching to both possibilities offered by the universe of discourse as currently constituted. He nails the priest by his scrotum to the anvil block in his forge, which he then sets alight, so that the priest’s options are in fact reduced to castration by self-mutilation or an even less acceptable death by fire. The brutality of the punishment meted out to the priest is a measure of the author’s indignation at the abuse by a rogue cleric of the benefits accruing to him as a member of a privileged and powerful institution. The indignation is confirmed by the fact that the narrative concludes, exceptionally, with a curse:

57 ‘Immediately his eyes were put out. The agreement made was precisely fulfilled. Of their four eyes they lost three. They acquired no other benefit whatsoever, but one Saint Martin left one-eyed, and the other blind, and that was by their own choice’ (vv. 78–83).

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‘Car fussent or si atorné Tuit li preste de mere né Qui sacremant de mariage Tornent a honte et a putage!’ Ainz cil n’en ot autre droiture.58

Chapters 2 and 3 have explored the repertoire of fabliaux that employ in a readily recognisable form one of the logical contradictions, ~(AA) and (AA), (AB) and ~(AB), (A+B) and ~(A+B), together with one of the related patterns derived from the distribution of actants, (E), (EE), (E1) and (E2). These chapters account for the structure of some forty fabliaux. Further fabliaux that conform to the same elementary patterns of logical development are dealt with incidentally in subsequent Chapters 4 and 5. In all about half of the extant corpus of fabliau texts conform to patterns of logical development already established. There are, however, a further group of fabliaux that utilise the same logical oppositions as those already treated, but combine them in a variety of ways to generate more logically complex structures and more convoluted narratives. These texts will be fully examined in Chapters 6 and 7, when matters such as a realistic fabliau inventory have been resolved.

58 ‘ “Would that all priests born of woman, who turn the sacrament of marriage to shame and whoredom, should suffer a similar fate!” This one at least received nothing but his just deserts’ (vv. 302–6).

4

Origins: Fabliau to Fable The Paris B.N. Fr. 12603 Version of Auberee As a preliminary move to establish fundamental differences between the two genres, Chapter 1 examined the relationship between a traditional fable, The Matron of Ephesus, and what is unquestionably a fabliau, Cele qui se fist foutre. One clear distinction emerges from the fact that while the narreme (see Fig. 1.2, page 24) adequately accounts for the narrative action in the fable, and recurs as part of the structure of the fabliau, only in the fabliau can this narreme be analysed into epistemes of the kind described in Chapter 3. This epistemic structural level articulates an engagement with logical concerns which in the fabliau manifest themselves also at the narremic level. Humour based on logic is arguably the definitive characteristic which distinguishes fabliaux from the majority of fables, but The Matron of Ephesus is unique in offering a fable without epistemic exchanges which is demonstrably associated with a later fabliau where both epistemic and narremic levels are replete with logical interests. Understanding the relationship between fabliau and fable cannot therefore be refined further through the earlier sort of comparison. No other fables stand in a sufficiently close source relationship to fabliaux to make detailed comparison feasible. More importantly, all the narratives occurring within fable anthologies that are most closely associated with fabliaux exhibit the same epistemic structure as fabliaux, and therefore belong to the fabliau genre, provided, of course, that they satisfy other criteria such as having been written in, or translated into, French verse. It is nevertheless reasonable to assume that fabliaux incorporated into fable collections are early examples of the genre. As a group, therefore, they may exhibit certain characteristics which associate them with their fable context, and distinguish them from later fabliaux circulating independently. Consideration of an associated group of tales may help to identify features characteristic of the fabliaux that appear in the context of fable anthologies, and isolation of such features as the conventional investment of actants provides useful information in documenting the nature of the shift from early to late fabliaux. There survive a group of narratives so intimately allied to fabliaux that Nykrog appropriated six of them to add to his fabliau inventory. They share a motif defined as ‘ruses d’une femme pour se tirer d’une mauvais pas’ (hereafter ‘ruses d’une femme’), a motif of sufficiently frequent occurrence among the fabliaux to persuade Nykrog of the fabliau qualities of those narratives from fable antholo-

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gies that incorporate it. Expressed in terms of the analytical procedures outlined in Chapters 2 and 3, all of these narratives share the same narremic structure and investment of actants. The actantial model that accounts comprehensively for all examples of the type will have approximately the same form as that shown in Chapter 1 for The Matron of Ephesus, although the object-actant is semanticised as a live husband rather than a corpse, and a range of different but still essentially vapid figures fill the destinataire role played by the soldier / knight character in the classical fable. The distribution of actants is expressed in the agreement reached between the three women in Version I of Les trois Dames qui troverent l’Anel that the ring they have found should be granted to the one among them: ‘Qui son mari mieus guileroit / Por fere a son ami son buen’, a statement that adequately accounts for the subject (wife), object (husband), and destinataire (lover) actants as shown in Figure 4.1. This is the basic narreme for all eleven of the following exemplars, and expresses the common ground that binds them together as a group. Adjuvant → Sujet ← Mother-in-law/ Wife (Wife / Lover)    (Mother-in-law)

Opposant Husband

↓



Destinateur → Wife / Husband

Objet → Husband



Figure 4.1 Actantial model for fabliaux from fable anthologies

Destinataire Lover / Wife

Alternation of wife and mother-in-law as subject- and adjuvant actants requires a specific definition of the axis of desire. It cannot, for example, be invested as sexual desire, not only because the presence or absence of the lover is a variable in the pattern, but also because such an investment would be inappropriate for those females who may replace the wife as subject-actant but have no sexual designs on the young man. The axis of desire must be invested as the wife’s search for freedom from masculine surveillance and dominance, a desire that accounts for the assistance she receives from other women acting on the basis of feminine solidarity, and for the presence in one rare instance of the lover  Nykrog, Fabliaux, p. 16, describes his procedures as follows: ‘J’ai admis cinq contes des versions françaises de la Disciplina Clericalis … parce qu’ils correspondent exactement au schéma le plus typique de l’intrigue d’un fabliau (une femme, surprise par son mari en flagrant délit d’adultère se tire d’affaire par une improvisation) … C’est le même argument de la conformité au schéma signalé, qui m’a fait admettre deux fables de l’Isopet de Marie de France.’ Rychner, Contribution, vol. 1, p. 11, described the schema as ‘ruses d’une femme pour se tirer d’un mauvais pas’. I extend its significance to include other similar narratives involving feminine wiles.  NRCF 2; 215–40; 409–10.  ‘Who best deceived her husband in order to benefit her lover’ (vv. 6–7).



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as adjuvant in the intrigue to deceive the husband. In most instances the difficult circumstance (‘mauvais pas’) arises from the threat that the wife will be exposed as an adulteress, while in some other instances the difficulty results from her inability to escape the jealous surveillance of her husband long enough to effect a rendez-vous with her lover. Unlike The Matron of Ephesus, all of the ‘ruses d’une femme’ narratives incorporate some version of the (E1) or (E2) epistemic structure, and are differentiated by the various logical exchanges involved in the narrative’s development. Six of the fables classified as fabliaux by Nykrog were drawn from two sources. The Fables of Marie de France furnished Nykrog’s fabliau no. 157, Le Vilain qui vit un autre Home od sa Feme, and no. 158, Le Vilain qui od sa Fame vit aler son Dru. From the French verse translation of Petrus Alphonsi’s Disciplina Clericalis, he took fabliaux no. 60, L’Espée, no. 66, La Femme qui charma son Mari, no 99, La Pierre au Puis, and no. 144, Le Velous. To these may be added a previously unacknowledged version of the fabliau Le Cuvier. On the basis of how the passage in Trubert quoted in footnote 2 to Chapter 1 describes the relationship between fables and fabliaux, four more tales from the two versions of Les trois Dames qui trouverent l’anel may be added to the count. Two tales, The Husband made Monk and The fresh Fish appear in both versions I and II of the fabliau, while two others, The substitute Bride and Dame Avonde are unique to their individual compilations. The fable associations of the incorporated tales are apparent from the existence of Latin prose versions for some of them surviving among exempla from sermon literature. For purposes of easy reference it will be convenient to provide identifying numbers for the narratives to be analysed:  For the text of the two narratives from the Fables of Marie de France, and for the D version of the fables translated from the Disciplina Clericalis of Petrus Alphonsi, see Eighteen Anglo-Norman Fabliaux, pp. 7–15. For the A version of works from the Disciplina Clericalis see Petri Alfonsi Disciplina Clericalis III; and Le Chastoiement d’un Père à son Fils, ed. Montgomery. See also Pearcy, ‘Le Cuvier’.  In choosing fables which might be added to the fabliau canon Nykrog was restricted to works written in or translated into French verse, but clearly no such restriction would apply to other fables that share the ‘ruses d’une femme’ motif. Two such, from the Sermones Vulgares of Jacques de Vitry are exempla no. 230, The Wife who fell in the Mud, and no. 251, Seeing Double. Two tales from the Gesta Romanorum might also be considered, a version of La Femme qui charma son Mari that appears as Cap. 122, ‘De adulteris mulierebis et excecacione quorundum prelatorum’ [‘Of unfaithful wives and the excesses of certain priests’], and a version of Le Velous that appears as Cap. 123, ‘Quod juvencule sunt per parentes a luxuriosis cohercende et voluntati proprie non reliquende’ [‘That young people are enticed into licentiousness by their parents, and do not give it up of their own volition’]. For the text of these fables see Gesta Romanorum, ed. Oesterley. The Latin text of the fables of Petrus Alphonsi can be found in Petri Alfonsi Disciplina Clericalis I. The Latin texts exhibit the same fable qualities as the French narratives from fable anthologies, but contribute few features that cannot be authenticated from narratives appropriated as fabliaux. Illustration will consequently be confined normally to the latter. See also, with regard to the relationship between Latin and vernacular narratives, Dronke, ‘Medieval Fabliau’.

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1 Le Vilain qui vit un autre Home od sa Feme [Marie: Fables, no. 44]. 2 Le Vilain qui od sa Fame vit aler son Dru [Marie: Fables, no. 45]. 3 La Femme qui charma son Mari [Disciplina Clericalis A and D]. 4 Le Velous [Disciplina Clericalis A and D]. 5 L’Espée [Disciplina Clericalis A and D]. 6 La Pierre au Puis [Disciplina Clericalis A and D]. 7 Le Cuvier [Disciplina Clericalis h]. 8 The Husband made Monk [Les trois Dames qui trouverent l’Anel I and II]. 9 The fresh Fish [Les trois Dames qui trouverent l’Anel I and II]. 10 The substitute Bride [Les trois Dames qui trouverent l’Anel I]. 11 Dame Avonde [Les trois Dames qui trouverent l’Anel II]. As already noted, there are a few non-substantive variants that can now be tied to specific tales. The Husband made Monk and The fresh Fish from Les trois Dames qui trouverent l’Anel II lack the figure of the lover. In three other tales (nos. 4, 5, and 7) the wife’s role as deviser and initiator of the plot to deceive the husband is usurped by another female figure, the wife’s mother in (4) and (5), and a helpful neighbour in (7). In one instance, The Husband made Monk from Les trois Dames qui trouverent l’Anel I, the lover’s part in assisting the wife to deceive her husband is so substantial that a precise reflection of all actantial roles would require acknowledging his participation as adjuvant in the wife’s schemes, as well as the destinataire recipient of her sexual favours. Finally, it is sometimes the case that the lover, although filling the destinataire role in the narreme, is physically absent from the scene, or, in those narratives where there is a threat that the husband will discover his presence in the house, departs so precipitately that he cannot be the recipient of any exchange from the wife. In these instances it sometimes happens, as in Marie’s fable no. 45, that while the lover is the beneficiary of the wife’s sexual favours, the husband furnishes the message acknowledging the wife’s dominance in their marriage. The variants from the pattern noted above can be accommodated without any radical alteration to the actantial model. In one instance from Les trois Dames qui trouverent l’Anel that features no lover, his role as destinataire is replaced by a group of neighbours from the quarelling couple’s village. The wife’s trickery has no ulterior motive beyond humiliation of her husband and a demonstration that she can control her domestic situation at will. When the lover actively assists the wife in her intrigue he simply fills an actant slot which otherwise remains unsemanticised. Triumphant deception of the husband, and control of the domestic arena by a conspiracy of mutually supportive women is the motivating force behind the action in these stories, and the lover is no more than the casual beneficiary of their efforts. If he is completely absent from the events of the intrigue then the wife as destinataire wins from the husband as object and destinateur exculpation from any charge of sexual misconduct. Such is especially the case when the husband is forced into an admission that his wife is guiltless and his supicions ill-founded.



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Each of the eleven narratives in the ‘ruses d’une femme’ group falls roughly into one of two classes, depending on whether the wife is defending herself against a charge of adultery, or manipulating reality to protect some future sexual adventure. The two fabliaux by Marie de France belong with the former group. The wife’s problem is exacerbated by the fact that her husband has actually witnessed her ‘in flagrante’, so her first move is to substitute for the evidence of his senses a proposition whose logical validity can be challenged. In Le Vilain qui od sa Fame vit aler son Dru the husband’s assertion ‘Qu’il ot veü sun lechëur’ [‘That he saw her paramour’] is countered by the wife’s question ‘Quidastes vus humme vëeir / Aler od mei?’ [‘Did you suppose that you saw a man accompanying me?’]. She implies, in other words, that he has moved from a valid proposition to the invalid consequens that if one thinks one has seen something one has seen it. She continues this evasive strategy with a consequens fallacy of her own, ­embellished in typical coup de théâtre fashion: ‘Lasse!’ fet ele, ‘morte sui! Demain murrai u uncore hui! A ma aiole avint autresi E a ma mere, kar jel vi: Un poi devant lur finement Ceo fu scëu apertement Que uns bachelers les cundueit, Et que od eus autre rien n’aveit.’

Her lie would have gained support from the popular superstition that those fated to die were observed to be accompanied by a spectral male presence. The husband recants his statement, and agrees to swear formally in church in the presence of his wife’s relatives that he did not see anyone with her, and will never mention the topic again. The wife in Marie’s other fabliau, Le Vilain qui vit un autre Home od sa Feme, pursues the same line of defence in suggesting that her husband is guilty of a logical fallacy: ‘ “Jel vi,” fet il, “si dei bien creire!” / “Fous es,” fet ele, “se  In this fabliau and its companion piece, Le Vilain qui vit un autre Home od sa Feme, Marie’s female protagonists are adopting a stance articulated in one of six impossibilia discussed by Siger of Brabant, ed. Baeumker, p. 7: ‘Proponebat secundo quod omnia quae nobis apparent sunt simulacra et sicut somnia, ita quod non simus certi de existentia alicuius rei’ [‘In the second place he proposed that all things which appear to us are phantasmata and dreamlike, so that we cannot be certain of the existence of anything’].  ‘ “Alas!” she said, “I am a dead woman! I shall die tomorrow, or perhaps even today! Something similar happened to my grandmother, and to my mother, as I saw for myself. A little before their death it was generally known that a young man led them away, and yet they were unaccompanied by anyone” ’ (vv. 19–26).  Analogues for the idea of death signalled by the presence of an other-world guide are given by Warnke, ‘Quellen des Esope’.

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tu creiz / Pur verité quanke tu veiz!” ’. Her refutation also exploits a fallacy dependent on the (AB) relationship, but it takes the form of a false analogy, i.e. if what you suppose yourself to have seen when spying on your wife’s activities is analogous to what you suppose you see when looking into a barrel of rainwater, then the fact that the latter circumstance involves an optical illusion suggests that the same may be true of the former circumstance. Both epistemes for Marie’s tales will follow the E2: S [AB] pattern. The same formula covers events in L’Espée. A husband’s suspicions are aroused when he returns home unexpectedly to find a stranger with his wife and motherin-law in the house. The mother-in-law, however, responds with impromptu ingenuity to the emergency, and functions as a talented stage manager in organising a coup de théâtre: La viele pas ne se obblïa: Derere l’us le valet mussa. Baila lui une nuwe espee. La veile n’ert pas esgarree, Einz dist li qu’il mot ne sonast Si li sires l’areisonast, Mes qu’il feït itel semblant Cum c’il ëust pöour mout grant.10

The duped husband assumes the truth of the story that the intruder is a fugitive, and out of sympathy for his plight invites him to remain and share the meal for which he had originally been invited. Three fabliaux from the Disciplina Clericalis employ fallacies based on E1: S ~[AB] propositions to spirit lovers threatened with discovery out of the house. Kissing a husband’s good eye for the alleged purpose of protecting it from injury in La Femme qui charma son Mari, holding up a bed cover allegedly for the husband’s inspection in Le Velous, and summoning assistance for the alleged purpose of combating a fire in Le Cuvier all serve the real purpose of facilitating a lover’s escape.11 The same formula accounts for the remaining five fabliaux, although the purpose is for the wife to win freedom to join a lover rather than to conceal his presence in the house. An elaborately constructed coup de théâtre involving numerous pieces of circumstantial evidence is commonplace. The wife in The Husband made Monk plies the victim with alcohol until he is inebriated, shaves  ‘ “I saw him,” he said, “so I have to believe it!” “You are a fool,” she said, “if you believe whatever you see is gospel truth” ’ (vv. 14–16). 10 ‘The old woman was not perturbed. She hid the young man behind the door, and placed a naked sword in his hand. She was not misled about what to do, but told him that if the husband questioned him he was not to say a word, but should make pretence that he was ­frightened to death’ (vv. 21–28). 11 The first two of these narratives are examined in detail by Söderhjelm, ‘Oculus – Linteus’.



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his head in the form of a tonsure, dresses him in clerical garb, and transports him in his unconscious state to the gates of a monastery, so that on recovery he erroneously assumes that he is the recipient of a divine summons. The husband in Dame Avonde is persuaded to kneel, eyes tight shut, holding a candle while his wife entertains her lover,12 and the husband in The substitute Bride relinquishes his disguised wife to her lover, mistakenly supposing that he is giving away his niece. In La Pierre au Puis a wife fools her husband into believing she has committed suicide by throwing a large stone into their well. The tale concludes with a complicated series of threatened and actual statements made before familial witnesses, and is finally resolved in favour of the wife. The tale of The fresh Fish begins when a wife leaves her house on a Friday to buy fish for her husband’s dinner. She stays away exactly one week, spending the time with her lover, and returns with some newly acquired fish as though she had been absent only as long as was necessary to make her purchase. She responds to her husband’s accusation of adultery with the consequens fallacy that the freshness of the fish proves the brevity of her absence. Her husband is naturally not convinced by this argument, but the wife’s triumph is complete when a group of neighbours, summoned by her call for assistance to deal with her husband’s irate outburst, are convinced by the evidence that he is mad, and tie him up to constrain him. The neighbours function as object-actants in the episteme, and as recipients of the message that the husband has taken leave of his senses, as destinataires in the narreme. The foregoing analysis demonstrates that the eleven tales chosen as early examples of fabliaux occurring in fable anthologies or portmanteau fabliaux show a remarkable degree of uniformity. Not only do they all conform to the same narreme, but they also employ only two associated patterns (E1) and (E2) for actant distribution, and only one source, (AB) vs. ~(AB), of logical fallacies. These facts do not necessarily imply, however, that the authors were familiar with only a narrow range of the extensive repertoire of possibilities available to later exponents of the genre. Such a conclusion would be a distortion created by the nature of the tales selected. If the selection were extended to include embryonic fabliaux from fable anthologies that do not conform to the ‘ruses d’une femme’ pattern, Marie’s Un riche Humme e sa Fille or La Contrarieuse for example, actant distribution and fallacies change, the former to include pattern 12 It is commonplace in the fabliaux for the duper to bolster the credibility of some embellished lie by invoking the support of a familiar superstition. That regarding the figure of Dame Avonde was apparently widespread, and is recorded in at least two texts roughly contemporary with the fabliau itself. One is an exemplum of Jacques de Vitry ‘De muliere quae de nocte equitabat cum dominabus’ [‘Of the wife who rode around at night with her mistresses’], in Wright, Latin Stories, 19. There is a long and detailed account of Dame Avonde’s activities in Le Roman de la Rose (vv. 18395–409): Don maintes genz, par leur folies, / cuident estre par nuit estries, / erranz aveques dame Habonde; / … / et se partent des cors leur ames / et vont avec les bones dames / par leus forains et par mesons.’ Text in Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, Le Roman de la Rose, vol. 3, pp. 52–53. There is an English version in Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, The Romance of the Rose, § 85, vv. 93–104.

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(E) and the latter pattern (A+B). The predominance of tales featuring a conflict between husband and wife is perhaps significant, together with the employment of patterns (E1) and (E2) that readily divide subject- and object-actants into duper and victim figures. No fabliaux unfortunately derive from any of the ‘ruses d’une femme’ group in an immediate enough way to make possible the kind of detailed comparison necessary to reveal subtly nuanced distinctions in treatments of the same motif. But what resists demonstration by one process, movement from fable to fabliau, may yield the pertinent data by way of another, the reverse movement from fabliau to fable. Ample evidence indicates that the remanieur responsible for the F version of Auberee13 from Paris B.N. fr. 12603 was reworking his fabliau copy text in a manner designed to bring the final product closer to fable form. It is also possible to show that Auberee is closely enough related to the group of fables sharing the ‘ruses d’une femme’ motif to reveal the generic significance of the changes introduced by the author of version F. The role of the remanieur of F has been discussed in detail in a study devoted to the interrelationship of different versions of Auberee.14 The stemma offered by Lee (and which she acknowledges is tentative) has the form given in Fig. 4.2. It indicates that F is a comparatively late redaction more closely associated with C than with the other texts of the fabliau.15 O  a

a



b



c

C  

d

F A

f D

→ E B

e J

Figure 4.2 The different versions of Auberee

Lee compares the remaniements A and F as equally flawed by a failure to understand and respect the narrative technique of the original text, but she argues that while A violates the equilibrium of his exemplar by over-compression, F errs in the opposite direction and amplifies to the point where the clarity of his exemplar is occluded. The F version of Auberee is described (p. 55) as ‘le fruit d’un 13 For diplomatic editions of the seven extant manuscripts of Auberee, the reconstruction of a lost fragment, and a critical edition, see NRCF 1; 161–312; 359–82. 14 Lee, Remaniements. 15 Lee, Remaniements, p. 14.



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désir de s’approprier le texte et de le modifier selon un projet précis au niveau du contenu et du style narratif, un projet qui révèle une incomprehension de fond de l’art narratif tel qu’il apparaît dans le texte base.’ There is certainly some truth in the perception that F changes its base text in a purposeful and systematic way, but the idea that the changes result from a failure to comprehend and respond sympathetically to the narrative art of the fabliau base text ignores clear pointers to the fact that the materials of F are being refashioned according to the quite different dictates of fable form. Four of the extant seven manuscripts of Auberée, and the reconstructed fragment f, conclude with some close approximation of the following epimythium illustrated here from E: Par cest fablel vos vel mostrer 628 Mieus ne puet on fame troueer Que de son cors face mesfait Se par autre fame nos fait Telle ist fors de sa droite voie 632 Se n’iert fame qui la desuoie Qui seroit nete et pure et fine Jci nostre flabliaus define.16

This whole passage is missing from B and C. Uniquely, F substitutes proverbe for fablel in line 627, and essamples for flabliaus in line 634. The significance of these substitutions has to be cautiously evaluated.17 The nomenclature employed by the authors of short popular narratives in the late Middle Ages is notoriously capricious.18 If appearance of the terms essample and proverbe in F were casual, no clear conclusions would emerge about the remanieur’s conception of the genre of his artefact. But the form of the passage in all other versions of Auberee where it survives demonstrates beyond doubt that the remanieur of F deliberately removed two references to his base text as a fabliau, and substituted alternatives which suggest that he rejected this designation for his remaniement. The terms chosen, while certainly not incompatible with a conception of the revised tale as a fable, do not prove that the author of F necessarily supposed his redaction to be creating this precise generic shift. Demonstration that the changes he effected carry such significance requires an understanding of Auberee’s relationship to 16 ‘I want to show by this fabliau that in truth one cannot find a woman who does bad things with her body unless she is enticed into it by another woman. There are some who leave the straight and narrow path who would be pure, spotless and upright if there weren’t some woman to lead them astray. At this point our fabliau comes to an end’ (vv. 627–34). 17 In accordance with her generally low estimate of the activities of the author of F, Lee, Remaniements, p. 60, dismisses these changes as of no significance: ‘Le terme le plus logique était flabel; son remplacement par proverbe et essamples dans F est complètement aléatoire et se conforme plutôt aux autres remaniements présents dans cette rédaction.’ 18 The issue is discussed at length by Nykrog, Fabliaux, pp. 3–13, and by Noomen, ‘Qu’est-ce qu’un Fabliau?’

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its fable antecedents sufficiently precise to allow identification of those features constituting some reversal of the process of derivation. The fable text most closely associated with Auberee is La Vieille et la Lisette from the Disciplina Clericalis.19 The two texts share a number of distinctive features, including the appearance, quite unusual in the fabliaux, of a procuress among the cast of characters.20 La Vieille et la Lisette, however, is neither the source for Auberee nor sufficiently close to it in surface texture that a detailed comparison would yield any identifiably useful data. Even if the common ground between the two works were more extensive, a comparison involving La Vieille et la Lisette treated in isolation from other fable literature would leave the definitively fable features of the F-remaniement unidentified, and would consequently fail to register the generic significance of any differences from other versions of Auberee that might be revealed. Demonstration of the fable significance of the modifications made by the remanieur of F has to proceed circuitously in a manner calculated to engage La Vieille et la Lisette through its relationship with a representative group of the fabliaux incorporated in fable anthologies rather than as an individual text. Technically La Vieille et la Lisette does not belong with the ‘ruses d’une femme’ narratives, but its consistent appearance throughout the manuscript tradition of the Disciplina Clericalis among a group of four tales which do conform to the pattern associate it closely with tales of this type. The association offers an opportunity to utilise the body of narrative materials discussed in the beginning of this chapter to extrapolate a normative framework which will promote detailed understanding of La Vieille et la Lisette as a transition text between conventional ‘ruses d’une femme’ fables and the fabliau Auberee. Chapters 2 and 3 were devoted to establishing a means of representing diagrammatically the epistemic structure typical of the ‘ruses d’une femme’ tale type. Concentration was almost exclusively on the logical investment of the adjuvant and opposant actants in the episteme common to all the constituent members of the group. The outcome established that structurally all the narratives in the ‘ruses d’une femme’ group were indistinguishable from fabliaux which exploit the same theme. While the exercise has value in extending the fabliau corpus in the direction already proposed in Per Nykrog’s study, it is inefficacious in positing any factors which might distinguish what then become early fabliaux in a fableanthology context from later, and typically isolated fabliau texts. That failure can be rectified by turning attention to the subject-, object-, and destinataire actants in the narreme proper which were neglected in favour of the adjuvant and 19

Text in Eighteen Anglo-Norman Fabliaux, pp. 11–12. Antecedents for the procuress Auberée are reviewed by Lee, Remaniements, pp. 11–13. She notes, in addition to La Vieille et la Lisette, the pseudo-Ovidian Vetula, and the Latin elegiac comedy Pamphilus. The main character in Richeut is an entremetteuse whose name acquires status as a class designation for all members of the profession. See Richeut, ed. Vernay. The only fabliau besides Auberee to feature a procuress is Le Prestre teint (NRCF 7; 307–30; 406–09) attributed to Gautier le Leu. 20



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opposant actants in previous chapters. Examining those actants in some detail will establish whether there exist non-generic distinctions between earlier and later manifestations of fabliau form, distinctions which will contribute significantly to our understanding of the nature and development of the genre. Since the action in ‘ruses d’une femme’ narratives routinely involves some deceit successfully practiced on her husband by his wife or those allied with her, the axis of desire is defined primarily in subversive terms as opposition to the husband’s will, and as rejection of the value system which he represents. It follows, therefore, that the object-actant manifested by the duped husband will be semantically well invested, while that manifested by the wife will draw much of its implicit significance in contrastive terms as an inversion of the value system attributed to the victim of her intrigues. The husband is an emphatically social being for whom marriage is a key factor in his integration into the social order. He derives his power from the institution of Christian marriage, and from the principles of hierarchy which authenticate his position as head of his household. In the segment of fable literature under investigation he is most frequently identified through his role in marriage as mari (3, 4, 5, 6, 8, and 10); his authority may be acknowledged by the designations sire or seignor (3, 4, 5, 6, 8 and 9); and authorial approval of his conduct in marital affairs is implied by a pervasive reference to him as a preudom (3, 4, 6, 8, 9 and 11).21 The fact that the husband (in no. 8) can be persuaded, however duplicitously, to enter a monastery attests to his religious devotion, and the importance of the Christian faith in his everyday life is also apparent in fables (e.g. 4 and 5) where his absence from the house is prompted by a wish to attend church service or to go on a pilgrimage. On other occasions absence is prompted by the demands of work. These may be very vaguely intimated (‘Li sire en sun bosoin alat’,22 7 h), briefly specified (‘il fu a marchié alé’,23 6 A), or, as occurs in (3 A), elaborated in some detail: ‘Li prodom une vigne aveit / Ou mout grant entente meteit: / Mout l’alout sovent regarder / Et prooignier et atorner’.24 The general impression of the object-actant semanticised by the husband is hard-working and God-fearing. The wife’s activities in these fables reflect a persistent will to subvert, and it is therefore not surprising to discover that husbands are preoccupied with the need 21 Other designations of the husband are more sporadic, and of less clear implication. The husband’s social status is occasionally noted. This is presumably the significance of miles in the Latin versions of La Femme qui charma son Mari and Le Velous incorporated into the Gesta Romanorum, Caps. 122 and 123, and certainly of bourgeois (8 and 10), and vilein (nos. 1, 2, and 9). Respect for the husband’s authority probably explains baron (2, 8, 10 and 11), which then functions simply as a variant for sire / seignor. Finally, with the introduction into some fables of the wife’s mother, there is a tendency to identify characters according to familial relationships, and the husband may then appear as the gendre (5). 22 ‘The husband went about his business’. 23 ‘He had gone to the market’. 24 ‘The goodman had a vineyard to which he devoted a great deal of attention. He often went to look at it, to prune the vines and rake over the soil.’

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to protect their marriages against violation. Such is the aim of the young man in La Piere au Puis (no. 6), who prior to marriage (vv. D: 1–6) seeks obsessively to prepare himself for the battle of wills he anticipates encountering by learning as much as possible about feminine wiles. Attempts to enforce the wife’s compliance with the dictates of monogamy through sequestration and surveillance are a standard feature of fable literature. The wife in Jacques de Vitry’s tale of The Wife who fell in the mud rebels against a husband’s custodianship so oppressive that ‘numquam sine ipso illam egredi sinebat’.25 A peasant in Le Vilain qui vit un autre Home od sa Feme (no. 1) ‘gueita / Dedenz sun hus, si espïa’,26 and the husbands in Le Velous (no. 4) and L’Espée (no. 5) entrust their wives to the guardianship of their mothers-in-law when obliged to absent themselves from home (4: vv. 4–6): ‘Sa femme bailla a sa mere / Que la guardast e enseingnast / Quë entretaunt ne folëast’.27 Husbands in fables exhibit some of the characteristics of the typical jaloux of courtly romance, translated, in most instances, into a lower-class domestic milieu. The young man who was anxious to acquire in advance of marriage the intelligence necessary to map out a defensive strategy initiates a Draconian regimen to safeguard the integrity of the relationship once he has entered into it: Sa feme mist enz en prison. Quant fors isseit de sa meison, Dedenz l’enserrout fermement, Et quant i entrout, ensement; Et la nuit quant il se couchout, Les clés desoz son chief posout.28

He aspires to create an environment where the physical needs of nutrition and sexual gratification of both husband and wife are fully catered for, but where control of the domestic economy and of the wife’s sexuality rests completely with the husband. The two issues, money and sex, are closely linked. A principle of frugality as applied to the behaviour of the husband, and of profligacy as applied to that of the wife, would be appropriate to describe their conduct in both areas, and betrayal in one often implies betrayal in the other. When, for example, the husband returns unexpectedly in L’Espée, the wife and mother-in-law are as concerned to explain why they have cooked a chicken as to account for the presence of the wife’s lover in the house: ‘Je et ta feme mangion / Et avion cuit un chapon / Qui se 25

‘She was never able to go anywhere without him.’ ‘[K]ept watch inside his door, and spied on his wife’s activities.’ 27 ‘He left his wife in the charge of her mother to guard and instruct, lest in the meantime she should do something foolish.’ 28 ‘He put his wife inside in prison. When he left his house he locked her in securely, and when he came in he did the same thing; and at night when he lay down he placed the keys under his head’ (no. A 6: vv. 1999–2004). 26



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moreit de la pepie;/ Autrement nel cuisission mie’.29 Among other concerns, the wife’s infidelity may threaten the family budget through expenditures on food and drink to entertain gallants,30 and even protecting the legitimacy of offspring may be governed, at the social level of fable literature, by economic as much as by dynastic considerations, husbands being anxious to avoid the financial burden of raising other people’s children.31 The object-actant of the husband in fables is most simply and comprehensively to be understood as the principle of ‘mastery’, the exercise of an absolute authority sanctioned by the dominant social and religious institutions of the period. Mastery was meant to protect the solvency of the domestic economy from the wife’s prodigality, and the sexual integrity of the marriage from her promiscuity. La Piere au Puis (no. 6) uniquely begins at a point prior to the marriage of the ultimately cuckolded husband. The attitudes attributed to the ‘sage home’ from whom the prospective bridegroom seeks advice (vv. 16–30) are indistinguishable from those of the husband himself. They articulate the social concerns of married life as the husband would like to see it practised, the social dogma of a benign patriarchal tyranny which in large measure provokes the marital discord evident throughout the group of narratives under discussion. Wives in fable literature operate according to principles quite different from those espoused by their husbands. Marriage replaces the parental home as their economic base, but offers no escape from masculine authority. The need to assert freedom of action, particularly sexual freedom, is presented in fable literature as a trait fundamental to the feminine psyche, so important and so pervasive in women’s behaviour as to appear to be biologically determined. A number of the terms used to designate the female protagonist in the group of tales examined in this study, moillier (4, 5, and 8), and feme (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8) allow the figure to hover interestingly between social and biological roles, since they signify both ‘wife’ and ‘woman’. The term most frequently used as an equivalent for masculine sire / seignor is dame (2, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11). No equivalent for the laudatory preudom appears anywhere among the ‘ruses d’une femme’ fables,

29 ‘Your wife and I are eating, and we have cooked a chicken, one that died of fowl disease. Otherwise we would not have cooked it’ (no. A 5: vv. 1395–98). 30 The wife in tale (4) makes a habit of entertaining her lover in this fairly lavish fashion (vv. 9–10): ‘Mander le sout privëement, / Manger e beivere od ly sovent’ [‘She used to send for him secretly, to eat and to drink with him often’], as does her counterpart in tale (5): (vv. 9–12): ‘Un jour le juvencel manderent / E un beu digner apresterent: / Deduient soi privëement / Od bon vin cler e o piment’ [‘One day they sent for the young man, and prepared a splendid dinner. They enjoyed themselves clandestinely, with good clear wine and spiced wine’]. 31 A peasant informed by a soothsayer that two of his four sons were fathered by the local priest responds by wishing to have them identified, but the soothsayer, anticipating the probable outcome of such a revelation, refuses, saying, ‘Vade, rustice, pasce et illos et illos’ [‘Away with you, peasant, and feed both these and those others’]. See John of Garland, ed. and trans. Lawler, pp. 78–79. The same story is in Wright, Latin Stories 15, and with some minor modifications, in Jacques de Vitry, ed. Crane, Exempla 233.

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but in contrast to the treatment of husbands there is a sprinkling of pejoratives, pautoniere (‘debauchee’, 9: I, v. 166), and pute (‘whore’, 9: I, v. 172).32 The view that women act on biological impulse connects narratives featuring human protagonists to traditional beast fables because, like the animals in the latter works, women come to be viewed less as individuals than as representatives of their species. The idea that creatures are incapable of acting otherwise than in accordance with the dictates of their nature is well illustrated in the fable of the hen which cannot resist scratching for her food even when presented with a basketful of grain: Par ceste essample veut mustrer, Que plusurs gens poënt trover Aveir e ceo que unt mester; Mes ne poënt pas changier Lur nature ne lur usage, Tuz jurs coveitent en lur curage.33

In the Latin fabular tradition Venus, calling Juno’s chastity into question, specifically compares the scratching of the hen in this story to the natural and never satisfied lust of women: ‘Selunc ma nature, sulunc mun us’.34 The wife’s characteristic attributes, evident in her ability to circumvent or vitiate the effects of male supervision, are ingenuity and quickwittedness (‘La femme ert pleine de veisdie’35), and the ability to act decisively to protect her interests at critical moments (‘La femme pas ne s’ublia’36). These qualities, and the habit of resorting to trickery, deceit, lies, and hypocrisy in pursuing selfish and appetitive desires, are responsible for the comparison often drawn between socially disruptive female characters in popular narrative literature of the early 32 Some other variants parallel those used to designate husbands. Latin uxor in Jacques de Vitry’s exemplum Seeing double identifies the wife exclusively by her social role. Social status is twice indicated by the appellative borjoise (8 and 11). Fables featuring the wife’s mother identify the wife as her fille (4), and the introduction of this older-generation female sometimes leads to the wife being referred to as a meschine (4 and 5). 33 ‘By this exemplum I wish to show that many people can get hold of as much wealth as they need, but they cannot change their natures nor their habits, but are always lusting after something in their hearts.’ Marie de France, De la femme e de sa geline, No. 103 in Spiegel, Fables, pp. 254–57. The editor notes (p. 278) that her choice of readings in the last line, coveitent (lust) for avive (alive) is closer to the earlier Latin versions (Hervieux, Fabulistes, vol. 2, pp. 70 and 496–97; and Babrius and Phaedrus, p. 539). The same sentiments about the impossibility of escaping innate qualities appear in the epimythium to De l’osture et de huan, (Fable no. 80 in Spiegel, pp. 212–13) which relates how a sweet apple fell from its tree and rolled under one that bore bitter fruit, but would be immediately recognisable as to its true source from its taste. A man may conceal his true nature, but can never completely escape from it. 34 ‘According to my nature, according to my habit’, v. 20. 35 ‘Woman is full of deceit’ (A: 6, v. 1607). 36 ‘The woman was not caught unawares’ (A: 6, v. 1621).



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thirteenth century and the renart of beast fable and animal epic.37 If women and foxes are alike in working to achieve their aims by morally suspect means, they are also linked as victims of hierarchical structures which discriminate against them. Both suffer by having to function within systems favouring qualities which they innately lack and undervaluing others which they possess as the birthright of their species. The hierarchy of power in the animal world stretches from the highest predator to the lowest prey. Its gradations are governed by the single principle of effective force. Because human society is also hierarchically organised, the analogy between the two systems makes possible in beast fable the epimythic application to human society of a moral dictum derived from a narrative based in the animal world.38 However, gradations in the hierarchical system of human society are governed by several principles, birth and privilege, wealth, and (because this is a patriarchy) sex. The relative absence of social mobility in the Middle Ages imparts a rigidity to hierarchy akin to that operative in beast-fable and animal epic. But while both systems are paradigmatically immutable, individuals within the system are subject to vicissitudes of fortune which may temporarily and locally invert conventional hierarchical orderings. A free mouse may have more effective force than a captive lion, and a young ram may prove more than a match for an old wolf. The special quality of the fox, evident particularly in his relentless feud with the wolf, is his ability to manipulate such inversions to his own advantage, so that his hierarchical inferiority to the wolf in physical force is counterpoised by his ingenious ability to create confrontations in circumstances where his opponent’s superior strength is rendered ineffective. Women in fable literature are similarly disadvantaged by comparison with their husbands, whose capacity to enforce their will through physical dominance draws support from the social and religious institutions of a patriarchal system. From a disinterested perspective a fox’s appetite for food and a woman’s desire for sex may appear equally natural, and equally inappropriate as the target for moral censure. The struggle to gratify these needs in opposition to an entrenched system designed to curtail or deny them then acquires an element of the heroic sufficient to mitigate criticism of the means employed to secure enfranchisement. Such is the implication of the moralitas with which Marie concludes Le Vilain qui vit un autre Home od sa Feme: 37 Recognition of the shared qualities of women and foxes antedates the influence of Le Roman de Renart in establishing the latter’s characteristic features. The equation is articulated straightforwardly in the Evangile aux Femmes, ed. Keidel, p. 42, v. 100: ‘Feme est comme goupille preste adies a dechoiure’ [‘A woman, like a fox, is always ready to deceive’]. Among the fabliaux Les Braies au Cordelier remarks that an errant wife, ‘sot mout de renart’ (v. 237), and Le Prestre et la Dame (NRCF 8: 255–67; 382–83) includes the statement, ‘Mout set feme de renardie’ (v. 171). For other references of the same kind in Le Roman des Sept Sages, Le Roman de la Violette, Courtois d’Arras, and a satirical song by Gobin de Reims, see Flinn, Le Roman de Renart dans la littérature française, pp. 131–34. 38 As, for example, in Marie’s fable no. 16, Del leün e de la suriz (vv. 45–49), which urges the rich and powerful not to abuse their privileged position.

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Par ceste essample nus devise Que mult vaut meuz sen e quointise E plus aïde a meinte gent Que sis aveirs ne si parent.39

Infidelity in such a context becomes symptomatic of a wife’s needs as she functions in a society uncomfortable with, and committed to eradicating, the traits which define her existence as a member of a distinct species. The conflict in fable literature is between culture, defined as total obedience to a husband’s authority and conformity to the dictates of monogamous Christian marriage, and nature, defined as complete freedom from constraints and random promiscuity. The overall spirit of this group of anthropomorphised fables is very close to that operative in Le Roman de Renart, where culture as represented by the marriage of Isengrin and Hersent, or by the distributive justice of the court of Noble the Lion, is challenged by the natural rapist instincts and amoral brigandage of Renart. In a number of fables a second female assumes the wife’s place in devising and implementing the plot to deceive her accomplice’s husband. Such a figure appears early as the cunning old crone, ‘quamdam vetulam levam, valde ­maliciosam, que multa sciebat’,40 who in Jacques de Vitry’s exemplum Seeing Double persuades a jealous husband that supicions of his wife’s infidelity result from an optical illusion. She shows up again in (7) as a helpful housewife who sets fire to her kitchen to create the diversion necessary to allow her neighbour’s lover to escape detection. She is referred to throughout as la vieille, and on one occasion (5) as la viellote. In fables (4) and (5) she is the husband’s mother-in-law, enlisted to guard her daughter and support her son-in-law’s authority, but in practice a doctrinaire enemy to this cause, and fully sympathetic with her daughter’s desire to break free from surveillance and sexual constraints. The unholy alliance between wife and mother is acknowledged in one version of L’Espée, and provokes from the author a wryly ironic comment: ‘Mere que mere, en quel maniere / Mesoïst ele sa preiere? / Qui fust ce qui bien en deïst, / Se mere a la fille faillist?’41 The lover’s part in the narrative syntax is that of indirect object, the beneficiary of some profit, normally the gift of the wife’s sexual favours, which falls to him as a result of the wife’s successful resolution of the conflict with her husband. Alternatively the wife’s efforts, rather than initiating an affair, may protect the possibility for continuing, or for concluding without the threat of recrimination, an affair initiated prior to the main action of the story. In either event nothing further is learned about the adversarial relationship between husband and wife. The wife needs a sexual partner to confirm the reality of the act of infidelity, even 39 ‘By this exemplum we can understand that quick-wittedness and sharp practice are worth more and are of greater help to many people than their fortune or their family connections’ (vv. 33–36). 40 ‘Some frivolous, very vicious old woman, who knew a thing or two.’ 41 ‘As a mother, how is she going to deny the request? Who is going to speak well of a mother who would let down her own daughter?’ (A: 5, vv.1345–48).



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if its significance is essentially a symbolic expression of her rebellion against her husband’s authority. She needs to protect the affair against discovery if the rebellious act is to be seen as successful. The lover’s role in these fables is functional, and he often lacks any individualising particulars beyond those which make him eligible for the role assigned to him, that he should be young, available, and attractive. His role as accomplice in the wife’s extra-marital escapade is minimally suggested by his designation as ami (3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10); dru (2, 6); and, with some hint of social disaffection, lecheor (2, 3, 4, 5, and 7). The lover’s youth is stressed when he is described by such terms as juvencel (5, 6); vassal (3, 5); vallet (11); damoisel (6); or bachelor (6). The moral censure implied by lecheor is more forcefully conveyed by houlier (11) and pautonier (5). The lover’s attractiveness may be briefly specified (‘mult estut e gent e bel’42), his capacity to stir the wife’s emotions is frequently mentioned (8, 9, 10 and 11), and, as in a passage in (6), these two effects may be combined. The only other information provided with some consistency concerns the love-making itself: ‘Ensemble sunt toute la nuit / Od lur joie, od lur deduit’.43 Apart from these few bald observations relating to the lover’s functional role as co-conspirator in the wife’s act of domestic insurrection, we are told next-to-nothing about him. In the eleven narratives analysed the lover’s voice is heard only once (10), in a brief expression of awe at the wife’s ingenuity. In addition to being granted the wife’s sexual favours, or being protected against discovery, the lover may also receive a sign from the wife articulating the success of her intrigue. In those fables where attention is centered on escaping detection, as for example in the version of La Femme qui charma son Mari from Cap. 122 of the Gesta Romanorum, the lover may receive a sign that the coast is clear for him to make his getaway: ‘manu amasio innuens ille recessit’.44 When the lover is a fugitive and hence shadowy figure whose disappearance from the scene is so precipitate as to render him unavailable for the communication of any explicit sign of the wife’s triumph, the husband may confirm his wife’s ascendency in a variant exchange by acknowledging to her, or to the members of her family, his submissiveness to her will. The phenomenon is well illustrated in Marie’s Le Vilain qui od sa Fame vit aler son Dru: Tuzjurz me sereit repruvé Que vilement avereie erré, Si vus ne jurez serement, Si que le veient mi parent, Que n’en veïstes hume od mei. Plus afierez la vostre fei 42

‘He was in all respects noble and handsome’ (no. 6). ‘They were together the whole night, enjoying themselves and taking their pleasure’ (6; and cf. 3 and 4). 44 ‘She dismissed him with a wave of her hand.’ 43

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Que jamés mot n’en sunerez Ne ja nel me repruverez.45

In other fables the lover combines receipt of the wife’s sexual favours with receipt of a sign that this privilege results from the wife’s elimination of all opposition to the gratification of her desires. The husband’s submissive and exploitable naivety is iconically illustrated in Dame Avonde (11), and with less outrageous violation of decency in L’Espée (5). In one version of The fresh Fish (9), a husband is tricked into appearing deranged, and the vicious treatment to which he is subjected by his neighbours is witnessed by the wife and a lover invited to share in the completeness of her triumph: Ainçois a mandé son ami, Et il vint maintenant a li. En sa chambre l’en a mené; Par un pertuis li a moustré Com li vilains estoit liié. Bien l’a maté et cunchiié Et bien vaincu par son barat!46

In the narreme common to all the fables featuring the ‘ruses d’une femme’ motif a shared axis of desire signifies feminine disaffection with masculine authority and a wish to assert independence of action, particularly in circumventing the constraints of surveillance and sequestration on enforced marital fidelity. The destinataire actant as represented by the lover is weakly invested, and of such little influence on the overall significance of the complete actantial 45 ‘I shall always be criticised for having misbehaved shamefully towards you unless you make a solemn oath in front of my family members that you did not see a man in my company. Furthermore you will affirm a promise never to say a word about it in the future, nor ever reproach me on the subject’ (vv. 41–48). The same pattern is perceptible in Jacques de Vitry’s exemplum Seeing Double, which says of the husband that, ‘peciit ab ea veniam quod malum credidisset ab ea’ [‘He had abused her good nature in that he had believed ill of her’], and in Le Vilain qui vit un autre Home od sa Feme (vv. 28–32): ‘Dist li vileins, “Jeo me repent! / Chescun deit meuz creire e saver / Ceo que sa femme dit pur veir / Que tut ceo que cis faus oilz veient, / Que par vëue le foleient.” ’ [‘The peasant said, “I’m sorry! Everyone ought rather to believe and accept what his wife tells him is true than trust the evidence of his fallible eyes, which fool him through faulty vision!” ’]. La Piere au Puis (Disciplina Clericalis D no.6, Eighteen AngloNorman Fabliaux, pp. 13–14) lays great emphasis on this significatory process. A husband’s insistence that his wife’s misbehaviour should be publicly exposed to her family (vv. 75–82, 93–94) is followed by her sign of submission (vv. 83–92), but once her trickery has turned the tables on her husband, his sign of submission (vv. 113–18) is followed by her insistence that his falsely imputed misbehaviour should be publicly exposed to the assembled members of their two families (vv. 119–36). 46 ‘Thereupon she sent for her lover, and he straightway came to join her. She led him to her bedroom. Through an aperture she showed him how the peasant was tied up. She had deceived and check-mated him well, and conquered him completely with her trickery’ (9: I, vv. 189–95).



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model that it may be left void. In instances where the lover is unavailable as the recipient of the wife’s triumphalist sign, the destinataire actant may be substituted by a group representing the local community, or by the tricked and bemused husband himself. It sometimes happens that figures other than the wife or her female accomplice need to be accommodated to adjuvant and opposant actants. When this occurs, as in The Man made Monk where the lover is active in helping the wife, or in La Piere au Puis where a wise man offers advice to a prospective groom, the values represented by the adjuvant or opposant actants are assimilated to those represented by the subject- or object-actants respectively. The transition text which relates ‘ruses d’une femme’ fables with Auberee is La Vieille et la Lisette, the sixth fable from the Disciplina Clericalis (A: vv. 1581–1950; D: vv. 1–143) appropriated as a fabliau (no. 147) by Nykrog. This fable survives in at least two other versions, exemplum no. 250 from the Sermones Vulgares of Jacques de Vitry, and Cap. 28, De inexecrabili dolo vetularum47 in the Gesta Romanorum. The version in Jacques de Vitry is quite brief, and for ease of reference may profitably be quoted in full (Crane’s translation): An old woman failed to persuade a certain matron to accept the love of a young man. Then she said to the youth: ‘Pretend to be ill and let that woman know that you are ill from love of her.’ Now the old woman had a little bitch which she kept without food for three days, and then gave bread and mustard and took to the house of the woman. There the dog began to weep on account of the mustard, and when the matron asked why it was, the old woman said with a sigh: ‘This bitch was once a woman who allowed a youth to die from love of her. When he was very ill he changed the woman into a bitch by means of certain spells. This God permitted for her sin in letting a man die whom she could have saved, and now too late she laments that she did not consent to his love while she lived.’ The matron feared lest the same thing should happen to her, and accepted the youth as her lover.

The actantial model appropriate to this and other versions of La Vieille et la Lisette will have the form shown in Figure 4.3. Adjuvant →    Ø Destinateur → La Vieille



Sujet ← Opposant La Vieille    Ø ↓ Objet ← Destinataire Wife Lover

    Figure 4.3 Actantial model for La Vieille et la Lisette

47

‘Concerning the abominable evil of old women’.

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As in tales (4) and (5), an older woman replaces the wife as subject, and uniquely in La Vieille et la Lisette this figure also replaces the wife as destinateur, to reflect the fact that acceptance of the youth’s advances is coerced rather than voluntary.The entremetteuse responsible for delivering the wife to the lover will also be the source of any sign associated with this exchange. The most striking departure from the actantial model proposed for the ‘ruse d’une femme’ tales is the absence of the husband, and his replacement by the wife as victim of the intrigue. This shift in the semanticisation of the object-actant, common to all versions of La Vieille et la Lisette, does not necessarily change the ideological investment of the actant itself, as long as the wife represents submission to her husband’s authority and devotion to the ideals of monogamous Christian marriage. As noted in the case of Marie’s version of The Matron of Ephesus, however, alteration in the distribution of actants prepares the way for a different reading of the significance of the narrative, and mandates a careful consideration of the accessory features affecting its meaning. Close scrutiny of Jacques de Vitry’s treatment of the story reveals that fundamentally very little has changed by comparison with the ‘ruse d’une femme’ motif that the author introduced into his own fables Seeing Double and The Wife who Fell in the Mud.48 While the marriage subverted by the activities of the bawd in La Vieille et la Lisette is demonstrably different from those under assault in ‘ruse d’une femme’ fables, the wife’s unqualified representation of ideal Christian marriage means that the nature of the conflict remains virtually the same. The threat to marriage stemming from random promiscuity is replaced by that stemming from rape, or rape by proxy, so that the culture versus nature clash survives although the polarities have been shifted. When compared to other versions of the motif, Jacques de Vitry’s treatment is conservative in a way that protects its assimilation to a mindset evident in his other fables dealing with husband and wife relationships. Among the factors affecting the reading of Jacques de Vitry’s version of La Vieille et la Lisette are a number that acquire significance by comparison with other treatments. The husband is not mentioned, and his absence from the house is unaccounted for. Only in this version does the procuress urge the youth to feign a sickness that he apparently does not genuinely experience. Most importantly, the bawd’s mendacious account of the unfortunate metamorphosis into a weeping bitch of the woman reluctant to violate her marriage vows is full of the most outrageous perversions of Christian doctrine, and while Jacques de Vitry may view the bawd’s account cynically, it paves the way for similar attitudes to be taken seriously in other later versions of the motif. In the A version from the Disciplina Clericalis, however, the account preserves most of the features 48 A connection between a typical ‘ruse d’une femme’ tale such as The Wife who Fell in the Mud and works featuring an entremetteuse can be made through the Athanaïs and Paridés episode of the romance Eracle, where the fable plot reappears but with the introduction of a procuress who devises the plan to circumvent surveillance of the wife’s activities. See Gautier d’Arras, Eracle, vv. 3367–4722.



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of Jacques de Vitry’s version, although the sentiments of the abused female are attributed to the bawd’s daughter. She is said to have chosen to conduct her life in a manner which conventional Christian moralists could hardly fail to approve: ‘Quer en proposement aveit / Que chastement toz dis vivreit / Ne ja a li n’aprismereit / Home, se sis espos n’esteit’.49 When a love-sick youth dies as a result of her single-minded pursuit of this policy, God himself is said to have punished behaviour now condemned as stemming from pride (A: vv. 1882–88), and from the particularly hateful sin of failing to take pity on the suffering of others. Conventional Christian moral principles, which we expect to see invoked in support of chastity and the inviolability of marriage, are here, in the form of pity for the lover’s sufferings, enlisted in the cause of adultery. Movement away from the significance of Jacques de Vitry’s version begins with an increased emphasis on the husband’s role, and on his relationship to a wife initially portrayed as impeccably virtuous. The husband’s absence from the house in the A version of the Disciplina Clericalis is for irreproachable religious reasons: ‘A son seignor vint en corage / Qu’il ireit en pelerinage / A mon seignor saint Pere a Rome’.50 While in ‘ruses d’une femme’ narratives his departure provides a welcome relief from oppressive supervision, the leave-taking in this version of La Vieille et la Lisette is tearful, and neither party anticipates any problem from their enforced separation other than temporary suspension of the mutual support which helps to sustain their ideal marriage (A: vv. 1592–96). The husband has such total faith in his wife’s virtue that he sees no need to entrust surveillance of her to anyone. His confidence in her is not misplaced. Marriage gives her little cause for dissatisfaction, or occasion to rebel against her husband’s authority. She is an honest woman, loyal and loving, content to submit herself to her husband’s will, and rigorously opposed to the idea that love outside of marriage could hold any appeal for her: De grant beauté ert replenie Et mout menout honeste vie, Quer bien et de leal amor Serveit et amout son seignor. Nus ne la peüst a ce traire Que autre amor li peüst plaire.51

On his departure the husband reassures his wife that her impeccable life style 49 ‘For it was her intention always to live virtuously, and never to make herself available to a man unless he were her husband’ (A: vv. 1871–74). 50 ‘It occurred to her husband that he should go on a pilgrimage to my lord saint Peter at Rome’ (A: vv.1589–91). 51 ‘She was blessed with abundant beauty, and she lived a very honest life, for she served and loved her husband well and with a faithful affection. No one could persuade her to find any other love appealing’ (A: vv. 1583–88).

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will render her immune to all danger, and once left alone she heeds his advice to the point of excelling in the practice of an exemplary virtue: ‘[Ele] n’aveit pensé se bien non: / Contint sei si come el soleit / Et mieuz encore, se mieuz poeit’.52 She does not permit herself any even momentary and venial lapse of vigilance, but unwittingly attracts a young man’s attention while modestly pursuing the pattern of her social life: Un jor eissi de sa meison; Mais nel fist pas senz acheison, Quer chiés une soue veisine Mout humblement, la teste encline, Ala ou ele aveit a faire.53

She is portrayed as a paragon of wifely virtues, a docile and submissive Griselda, a bourgeois husband’s dream companion fashioned according to the programme for initiation into wifehood devised for his young bride by the menagier of Paris.54 Her moral status is confirmed by the fact that she is accorded the approving designation (v. 1819) prode dame. If she has a fault it is that her virtue makes it difficult for her to perceive the operation of vice in others. She does not feel resentment that her marital situation subjects her to masculine hegemony, but perceives it rather as comfortable, emotionally satisfying, and free in the sense that freedom may be understood as absolute submission to an authority acknowledged by reason to be just. The role of the entremetteuse who devises and implements the intrigue is very different from that of the female figures who in fables (4), (5), and (7) collaborate with the wife to subvert marriage by circumventing constraints on sexual freedom. The institution attacked is the same, and the women who assist the wife may well take a vicarious pleasure in helping to liberate her from unwelcome and resented male dominance. They share a doctrinal commitment to the cause of women’s enfranchisement through adultery, and act out of friendship or maternal affection. However, rather than collaborating with an unfaithful wife to deceive her husband, the procuress makes a faithful wife the victim of her intrigue. From the husband’s perspective her activities are unqualifiedly sinister, and this view may govern the way she is portrayed, but from the perspective of the seducer who has employed her services, and from the bawd’s own estimate of her value, a different attitude begins to influence the nature of her portrait in versions of La Vieille et la Lisette. For an author basically supportive of monogamous Christian marriage and opposed to its violation by the infidelities of treacherously manipulative wives, 52 ‘Her only thoughts were virtuous. She conducted herself as she was accustomed to do, and even better, if better were possible’ (A: vv. 1604–06). 53 ‘One day she left the house, but not without reason, for she was going humbly, with her head held low, to a neighbour’s house where she had some business’ (A, vv. 1607–11). 54 For this portrait of the perfect bourgeois wife see Le Mesnagier de Paris, ed. Pichon.



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the procuress may indeed appear as simply another collaborater in adultery, without the mitigation of friendship or familial loyalty. Such a view appears sporadically in late versions of the story. It accounts for the virulence with which the bawd’s role is attacked in the chapter heading in the Gesta Romanorum, and for the conclusion of the D version of the tale from the Disciplina Clericalis, which accuses the procuress of precisely the crime committed at their own volition by wives in ‘ruses d’une femme’ fables: Cele le bacheler manda, Privëement les asembla; Taunt fist la veile mal artouse Que putein fist la bone espouse; Ne se travaila pas en vein Quant de prode femme fist putein.55

To the traditional moralist what happens in La Vieille et la Lisette may still look like rape cosmetically hidden under the trappings of conventional religious doctrine, and this air of fraudulence contributes to the negative description of the procuress: Dras aveit de religion Et s’apuiout o un baston; Bien semblout chose esperitable, Et ce esteit membre a deable, Quer por maus engienz porpenser N’aveit en tot le mont sa per.56

She is depicted in similar terms in the Gesta Romanorum (‘quandam vetulam in proposito sanctam reputatam’57), and in the D version from the Disciplina Clericalis (vv. 41–42). Her air of mature dignity, respectability, and sanctity are instrumental in winning the trust of the wife who admits her to the house and lends a credulous ear to her outrageously improbable account of metamorphosis: ‘Quant la prode dame la vit, / Et por l’aage et por l’abit / Qui de religion semblout / L’enora a quant qu’ele pout’.58 Something particularly sinister about the deceit practiced by the bawd in La 55 ‘She summoned the young man and secretly brought them together. The evil scheming old woman accomplished so much that she made the good wife a whore. She did not waste her efforts, but turned an admirable woman into a prostitute’ (vv. 138–43). 56 ‘She was wearing clothes appropriate to someone in religious orders, and she leant for support on a stick. She had the air of a spiritual being, but she was a member of the devil’s faction, for in devising wicked schemes there was no match for her throughout the world’ (A: vv. 1771–76). 57 ‘A certain old woman displaying her reputation for holiness.’ 58 ‘When the good woman saw her, both on account of her age and her clothing, which seemed to associate her with a religious calling, she treated her with as much respect as she could’ (A: vv. 1819–22).

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Vieille et la Lisette distinguishes it from that practised by wives in ‘ruse d’une femme’ fables, where trickery and deceit are accepted as the necessary means by which women are empowered to function in a male-dominated world. The presence of ‘la vieille’ in La Vieille et la Lisette, like the presence of Faux Semblant in the train of Cupid in Le Roman de la Rose, proclaims that her activities promote a novel and subversive social doctrine which embraces hypocrisy as necessary to its modus operandi in a hostile environment. The principal factor behind the more sympathetic view of the activities of the procuress is the changed status of the lover, whose increasingly important presence transforms the nature of the relationship between them. In the version of the tale from the Gesta Romanorum the temporarily abandoned and disconsolate wife is persuaded by a neighbour to attend a festival, and in the erotically charged atmosphere of this environment she attracts the attention of the youth destined to become her lover. The intensity of his reaction to first seeing the object of his desire is fully documented: ‘Quam quidam juvenis aspectam ardenti amore, cepit amare et plurimos nuncios ad eam direxit cupiens ab illa, quantum ardebat amari’.59 When the virtuous wife scornfully rejects his overtures he is devastated, and lapses into a genuine melancholy where the torments of unrequited love seriously threaten his survival. The lover in the D version of La Vieille et la Lisette from the Disciplina Clericalis is portrayed in almost identical terms as his fellow in the Gesta Romanorum, and these two texts seem to be closely affiliated. In the A version from the Disciplina Clericalis the portrait of the lover shows an even more remarkable development. At 369 lines A is almost three times the length of D, and space devoted to amplifying the portrait of the lover accounts for most of the discrepancy. The three-stage process by which the young man falls in love, from first vision through recollection of the image of beauty to the fostering of an affection in the heart is described in detail (vv. 1613–34); details are also provided of his courtship through intermediaries, the promise of rich gifts, and a series of personal and impassioned pleas for mercy (vv. 1695–1716). The reader is given several opportunities to witness the intensity of his suffering when the chaste wife shows herself resolutely unmoved by his plight (vv. 1717– 23; 1767–70; 1777–84). Most remarkable of all are two extended monologues (vv. 1635–94; 1724–66) dealing with the psychology of fin amor in a manner reminiscent of Chrétien de Troyes. The first seventeen lines of the second of these speeches convey their flavour: ‘Deus!’ dist il, ‘tant mein male vie, Tant sui folez!–Et je por quei? Quant je aim ce qui n’aime mei. Je n’en puis mais.–Si puis.–Coment? Je l’aamai trop folement, Si m’en deüsse arriere traire. 59 ‘When a certain young man afire with passion saw her, he fell in love and sent numerous messengers to inform her how much he was consumed with desire.’



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Veirs est, se jel peüsse faire; Mais n’en puis oster mon corage. Par fei, donc ne sui je pas sage, Quer uns saives hom s’en tornast Ou seveaus sagement l’amast! Sagement? Ice ne puet estre, Quer chescuns hom est d’amer mestre. Li plus fous en est plus senez; Qui sens i quiert, si est desvez; Et tost i puet aveir damage Qui en amor veut estre sage.’60

The monologues of the lover in the A version of La Vieille et la Lisette fully articulate for the first time in fable literature a revolutionary doctrine of amorous passion capable of turning the rational world upside down.61 This principle of fin amor plays a key role in defining the positive aspects of the bawd’s profession, since insofar as her motivations are discernible at all she acts out of sympathy for the lover and a wish to relieve his distress. She assumes the role of physician in seeking to cure what the Gesta Romanorum 60 ‘ “God!” he said, “what a miserable life I lead, I am so befuddled! – And why is that? Because I love someone who does not love me. I cannot go on like this. – Yes I can. – How? I dote on her too foolishly, and I ought to back off. That’s true, if only I could do it. But I cannot get her out of my mind. In faith, I am thereby not too clever, for a wise man would wisely transfer his affections to someone who loved him. Wisely? That cannot be, for each man is his own master in love. The most foolish is more wise in this regard. Whoever looks to find reason in that quarter is thereby lost. And he who wants to act wisely in love can quickly find himself in trouble.” ’ 61 Emergence of an embryonic concern with this phenomenon can be traced to fables (5) and (6), and seems to be closely associated with those female figures, in this instance the wife’s mother, who anticipate the arrival of the entremetteuse. There are hints in these texts that extra-marital sex, as well as symbolising feminine defiance of authority, may have an experientially festive dimension. The lover’s visit to the house is often the occasion for an impromptu banquet which the wife’s mother will share (4, vv. 1133–34): ‘La mere bien le consenteit / E od eus mangout e beveit’ [The mother willingly approved the arrangement, and ate and drank with them’]. Little reflects the influence of fin amor which is so pervasive in version A of La Vieille et la Lisette, but one passage suggests that the author of the A-version of Le Velous was familiar with the rhetorical style employed in courtly genres to debate issues of love. When the daughter seeks her mother’s permission to pursue an adulterous relationship, he records the dialogue between them in the following highly stylised terms (vv. 1271–78): ‘ “Por quei diz tu?” – “Mere, por mei.”/ “Aimes tu donc?” – “Oïl, par fei.”/ “Et a tis amis de tei cure?”/ “Oïl, il m’aime senz mesure.”/ “Coment le sez tu?” – “Bien le sai.”/ “Et tu coment?” – “Esprové l’ai, / Que n’est riens plus de mei li plaise.”/ “Mande le, je te ferai aise.” ’ The fragmented syntax appears to be a deliberate attempt to convey a sense of the lover’s emotional turmoil. If this is not a straightforward imitation of the exchanges between Lavinia and her mother in the Roman d’Eneas, it undoubtedly stems from the same rhetorical tradition, so close are the passages in form (vv. 7953–58): ‘ “Aimme lou, fille?” – “Ge ne sai.”/ “Gel t’ai mostré.” – “Et ge m’esmai.”/ “De coi?” – “Del mal, de la dolor / qui toz tens vait sevant d’amor.”/ “Et ja est ce tot soatume.”/ “Soef trait mal qui l’acostume.” ’ See Eneas, ed. de Grave. Other exchanges in the same style are found at vv. 7931–44 and vv. 8487–8505.

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and the Disciplina Clericalis D versions of La Vieille et la Lisette begin to refer to as love’s wound: ‘Quamdiu infirmus abscondit a medico suam infirmitatem, non poterit curari. Ideo ostende michi causam tanti doloris! Cum dei adjutorio te curabo’.62 She expresses the same sentiments in version A (vv. 1785–90), and here the metaphor controls the author’s final comment on the outcome of events (vv. 1949–50): ‘De celi li bailla saisine / Qui de son mal ert medicine’.63 The entremetteuse confidently assumes divine blessing on her enterprise to trick the virtuous wife into adultery: ‘Ne te tameir! / O l’aïe Deu t’aiderai’.64 Far from experiencing any sense of guilt about her role, she feels her motives are so good that they will win her remission for her sins: ‘Jeo volunters e bonement, / E par icel encheisoun / Que Deu me face verray pardoun, / Si li plest, de tuz mes pechés’.65 The idea of preserving the physical rather than the spiritual health of a young man becoming dangerously morose over his failure to win the love of a virtuous maid or happily married woman is urged as a moral imperative, at odds with, and taking precedence over, a traditional concern with chastity. This confusion of moral values appears also in the two love-psychology monologues in version A of the Disciplina Clericalis. The promotion of unreason as suited to deal with matters of love has already been noted in the lover’s second speech. In the first he considers the evil of attempting to entice a faithful wife into infidelity, but decides that failure to promote his cause with the utmost vigour could make him guilty of suicide, an act (‘ce nos dit l’escrit’ [‘as scripture tells us’]) of mortal sin. A vision emerges of a love relationship outside of ­Christian marriage but with the trappings of a religious doctrine, and the opposition changes from a culture versus nature clash to one where culture as represented by monogamous Christian marriage is challenged by a new and different concept of the complex of attitudes governing the relationship between the sexes. This new relationship exhibits some of the qualities associated with ‘courtly love’, although clearly the action in La Vieille et la Lisette is far removed from the milieu of the court. The term fin amor avoids any implication that this relationship is an elitist social phenomenon. It is, however, compatible with other non-socially determined attitudes expressed in fable and animal epic. The nature of fin amor can best be understood by a full homologation in the form of a semiotic square66 (as in Figure 4.3) of the logical possibilities inherent in the actantial models whose opposition created the circumstances for the wager in Cele qui se fist foutre.

62 ‘For as long as a sick person conceals his illness from his physician, he cannot be cured. Therefore show me the cause of your so painful grief. With God’s help I shall heal your hurt.’ 63 ‘For this she who was physician for his complaint brought him relief.’ 64 ‘Don’t be anxious! With God’s blessing I will help you’ (A: vv. 1798–99). 65 ‘I will do it willingly and happily, and for this reason, that if it pleases Him God will grant me total forgiveness for all my sins’ (D: vv. 132–35). 66 For a full discussion of this schema see Greimas, ‘Les Jeux des contraintes sémiotiques’, in Du Sens, pp. 135–55.





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Culture

Nature

Love within Random marriage (the promiscuity ‘marriage debt’)   S1 S2 (non S)



fin amor

Rape



S2 [~(non S1)]





Figure 4.4 The nature of fin amor

S1

In the case of random promiscuity the woman’s sexual appetite is the motivating force behind the erotic activity in opposition to married love. In the case of rape motivation stems from the man. This is the situation in early versions of La Vieille et la Lisette, although the male lover operates for the most part through the female figure of the entremetteuse. Theoretically sexual appetite plays no part in the motivation of either partner in ‘married love’, since both are responsive to the demands of the marriage debt, and constrained by the requirement to perform the sex act routinely for the exclusive purpose of propagation. In fin amor, by contrast with all three other possibilities, the sexual appetites of both partners are actively engaged in the relationship, and neither is controlled by the wishes of the other nor subject to the constraints imposed by the external system of orthodox Christianity. While relations between the widow and the knight-warden in The Matron of Ephesus typically reflect the sexuality of random promiscuity associated with fable literature, that between the widow and the squire in Cele qui se fist foutre is associated with a new concept of fin amor typical of (EE) patterns of development in the fabliaux. In the amorous intrigues of fabliaux with fable affiliations both random promiscuity and rape are seen as natural deviations from married love. They constitute less of a threat than fin amor because they are susceptible to correction, and to rehabilitation within a programme with an immense weight of social and religious authority on its side. Fin amor, on the other hand, offers an alternative, pseudo-religious system with its own enticing system of values. Its intrusion into sexual relations in the later Middle Ages is dramatically apparent in the flourishing of courtly romance, but it is also readily discernible as a force in the

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development of the fabliaux, and is in large measure responsible for differentiating early and late examples of the genre. The system outlined in the semiotic square above, which we may label ‘erotic’, is isomorphic in fable literature with an economic system where the semic equivalents would be for S1 ‘niggardliness’ (husbandry); for S2 ‘profligacy’ (fole largesse); for S2 ‘largesse’; and for S1 ‘theft.’ Correspondence between the two systems is a recurring feature in fable literature and fabliaux, and may be explicitly activated at any point to contribute an extra dimension to the semantic investment of actants. The conflict between actants takes place across the same axes. If in the erotic system adversarial positions are represented by the conflict between married love and random promiscuity, in the economic model the conflict is precisely parallel, and occurs between husbandry and profligacy. Just as in the fable-related narratives the fin amor pole of the erotic paradigm is neglected, so is that of largesse in the economic paradigm.67 Fin amor is the new concept generated from the homologation whose other terms are familiar from conflict situations recurrent throughout anthropomorphised fable and beast epic. Its status, as the ‘negation of a negation’ gives it a mysterious, enigmatic quality68 which may help account for the signs of strain in achieving articulation in La Vieille et la Lisette, and the equivocal way in which the new concept of love differentiates itself from the other three terms in the logical paradigm. Of critical concern here is the extent to which the wife voluntarily and spontaneously bestows her love on a youth whose devotion and suffering have somehow merited the free gift of her grace. Such a perception of the wife’s role in all versions of La Vieille et la Lisette is hardly compatible with the circumstance that she is coerced into granting the lover her sexual favours. If the lover were the agent immediately responsible for the deception, and if no motivation were attributed to him beyond the momentary gratification of physical desire, then the relationship would border on rape. Since the duper role is in fact assumed by the entremetteuse, the lover is distanced and protected from so harsh a judgement of his behaviour.69 As the devotion and suffering of the lover are developed, and as his portrait as a humble petitioner for the wife’s affections replaces that of callously exploitive lecher, the entremetteuse comes increasingly to be appreci-

67 A sense of the homologous nature of the erotic and economic schema is apparent from a statement by one of the characters in Ipomedon (vv. 5439–41): ‘But ofte I haue hard saye, by skille, / A woman to take be hyr own wille, / Ys thefte of curtessy.’ See Ipomedon, ed. Kölbing, p. 156. 68 The properties of the category S2 in the semiotic square are examined by Jameson, The Prison House of Language, p. 166. 69 The description of her activities in the D-version of La Vieille et la Lisette (v. 143: ‘de prode femme fist putein’) echoes that given of Sanson, son of the eponymous entremetteuse in Richeut, p. 108, vv. 924–26: ‘Mar lo creïrent les nonains, / Car les plusor en fist putains, / Puis les roba’ [‘The nuns were wrong to believe him, for he made whores of most of them, and afterwards robbed them’]. This passage also makes the isomorphic connection between rape and theft.



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ated as a healer, a promoter of harmony, and the advocate of a doctrine stressing the Christian virtues of humility and compassion. Women in traditional fable-anthology narratives act as representatives of their species. They utilise their species’ conventional strengths – mendacity, duplicity, quick-wittedness, ingenuity – to combat entrenched, institutionalised male dominance through individual rebellious acts of infidelity. The wife in La Vieille et la Lisette acts as an individual in choosing (in this particular instance in being forced to choose) between marital fidelity and alliance with a subversive cultural movement which has appropriated traditional Christian virtues. La Vieille et la Lisette functions to promote the conflict between one kind of cultural system (married love) and another (fin amor). It is a development crucial to our understanding of the kind of cultural shift which appears when moving from a group of fable-anthology narratives to a fully developed fabliau such as Auberee. The plot of Auberee, which in the critical edition comprises 653 lines, is considerably more complex than that of any of the tales so far discussed. A virtuous young woman accepts by default an older bourgeois husband because her marriage to a young man with whom she was romantically engaged is opposed by the boy’s socially ambitious father. Unable to overcome the unhappiness caused by the frustration of his desires, the young man engages the services of a procuress, dame Auberée, who appears to work as a seamstress. She surreptitiously plants the young man’s cloak, to which she has attached needle and thimble, in the wife’s bedchamber. When the husband, on finding the cloak, takes it as evidence of his wife’s infidelity and ejects her from the house, Auberée waylays her in the street, takes her home, and arranges for her seduction by the love-sick youth. The experience proving less traumatic than she anticipated, the wife later collaborates with Auberée to convince her husband that his suspicions were unfounded. When at Auberée’s prompting he discovers in the cloak the tools of the seamstress’s trade, he accepts her story that the cloak was inadvertently left behind when she paid his wife a social visit. He ends up happily convinced of his wife’s innocence. The plot combines the actantial model uniquely represented by La Vieille et la Lisette with the actantial model represented by the various tales in the ‘ruses d’une femme’ group. The wife is tricked by Auberée (‘la vieille la sert de lobes’, v. 198) into permitting the fabrication of evidence which leads to expulsion from her home, and then tricked into seeking sanctuary where she will be most vulnerable to a sexual assault. The husband is similarly tricked into suspecting his innocent wife of infidelity, and then with the guilty wife’s participation he is tricked into accepting the false evidence of her innocence. The epistemic development in Auberee is complex, and a full articulation of its structure must be pended until complex structures are examined in Chapter 6. The summary clearly indicates, however, that the narrative features the sort of epistemic exchanges which define a fabliau plot. Both the actantial structures which create the conditions for the wager in Cele qui se fist foutre also appear in Auberee, but the sophistry which magically reconciles the opposing patterns in the former fabliau makes no

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appearance in the latter. These patterns function in concert to produce a coherent narrative only because a dramatic shift in the wife’s personality transforms her from resolutely chaste maid and faithful spouse into a resourceful adulteress, a transformation required by the exigencies of the role of married mistress in a fin amor relationship. The actants in this composite model are for the most part the same as when the respective models occur independently. The husband displays the characteristics typical of his fellows in the ‘ruses d’une femme’ tales. He obviously prizes the institution of marriage and is happy to be part of a domestic menage. He looks for a new wife, ‘Par le conseil de ses amis’70 within a month of his first wife’s death, requests the girl’s hand in marriage from her father, and meeting with his approval marries her as soon as possible thereafter (vv. 70–73). The courtship is conducted with dignity, with respect for the social proprieties, and, noticeably, without a hint of passion. The husband is hard-working enough that the procuress approaches his wife in her home on market day confident that he will be gone about his business (vv. 146–48; 230–33). If his love for his wife is not physically passionate, it is not devoid of possessiveness nor immune from jealousy (v. 251), and when discovery of a stranger’s cloak in his bedchamber leads him to suspect his wife of betraying him he is depicted as being wounded to the quick: Et qui or li boutast el cors Un coutel par desouz le flanc, N’en tresist il goute de sanc, Tant est durement esbahiz! ‘Ha! las, dist il, tant sui traïz! Onc ceste fame ne m’ama!’71

Although he reacts angrily to the discovery, and precipitately ejects his wife from the house, he is unhappy at being provoked into such an act, waits impatiently to hear comforting news (vv. 473–75), and is delighted when he receives some promise that things might not be as bad as they seemed (vv. 519–22). His pleasure when he thinks he has proof of his wife’s innocence exceeds all bounds: ‘Qui li donast demie Puille / N’eüst il pas joie greignor!’72 He may not display a passionate nature, but belief in his wife’s honesty is important to his sense of what constitutes a happy marriage. The lover too is a quite conventional figure, but fashioned this time according to the dictates of the adjuvant actant in La Vieille et la Lisette. He falls in love with a poor neighbour’s daughter while she is still marriageable (vv. 20–21), and dictatorial parental opposition to the match serves only to augment his passion 70

‘With the advice of his friends’ (v. 65). ‘And if he had been struck with a knife in his body above his midriff not a drop of blood would have been drawn, he was so taken aback! “Alas,” he said, “how thoroughly I am betrayed! This woman never loved me!” ’ (vv. 243–48). 72 ‘Had he been offered half of Puille he could not have been happier!’ (vv. 638–39). 71



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(vv. 53–58). He suffers the sense of alienation and depression attendant upon frustrated desire: ‘Mes au vallet mout en pesa, / Qui i pensoit et jor et nuit. / Ne voit riens qui ne li anuit, / Einz het le solaz de la gent’;73 he develops the usual symptoms of the lovers’ disease hereos, pallor (‘Mout seult cil estre gent et bel / Qui or a le vis teint et pale!’74) and sleeplessness (‘le vallet … ne dort pas: / Torne et retorne en son lit’75); but despite his suffering he remains a loyal servant to the god of love (‘Bien l’a Amours en son destroit!’76), and actively seeks relief through the mediation of the bawd, dame Auberée. The wife is made interesting by the fact that her role embraces elements from two actantial models, that for the typical ‘ruses d’une femme’ tale, and that for the special case of La Vieille et la Lisette. She begins in conformity with the latter type as a chaste maid committed to the idea that marriage is the only proper context for a physical relationship: Cele li dist apertement Que mieus le vendroit reposer, S’il ne la voleit espouser; Mes, si li plesoit qu’i l’eüst A moillier si come il deüst: ‘De ce avroie je grant joie!’77

She carries the same attitudes into her marriage, and initially resists the lover’s advances when she finds herself alone with him in Auberée’s bedroom (vv. 377– 80). But when the lover points out that anyone responding to her cries would with difficulty be dissuaded from believing that he had already seduced her, that such a course of action would inevitably create a damaging scandal, and that the resourcefulness of the entremetteuse would guarantee that knowledge of her surrender to his desires would be kept secret, she has a change of heart (vv. 403–8), and voluntarily surrenders to his advances. Her participation in the charade of calumniated innocence staged by the procuress to deceive the husband about his wife’s activities during her banishment from the house confirms the extent to which her transformation differs from that of her counterpart in La Vieille et la Lisette. Collaboration with a female accomplice to deceive her husband associates the wife with her ‘ruses d’une femme’ precursors, but prior association with the victimised wife of La Vieille et la Lisette prohibits any absolute identification with either figure. She is 73 ‘But it weighed heavily with the lad, who dwelt on the matter day and night. He saw nothing that did not annoy him; but he loathed the comfort of company’ (vv. 74–77). 74 ‘He used to be noble-looking and handsome, but now his face is wan and pallid!’ (vv. 91–92). 75 ‘The young man doesn’t sleep, but tosses and turns in his bed’ (vv. 324–25). 76 ‘Love has him fast in his shackles!’ (v. 140). 77 ‘She told him plainly that she would rather refuse him unless he was prepared to marry her. But, if it pleased him to take her as his wife, as he should, “That would make me very happy!” ’ (vv. 22–27).

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defined by the interplay between them, and emerges as the fabliau equivalent to the courtly mistress of romance, a woman who violates her marriage vows under circumstances which prohibit viewing that violation as casual, or prompted solely by sexual appetite. The wife in Auberee chooses, somewhat reluctantly, to grant her favours to a young man whose passionate devotion makes him a more worthy recipient than the man to whom she is bound in marriage. In keeping with the composite and complex nature of the plot of Auberee, the bawd who gives her name to the story is described in terms which associate her with the ancillary women of fables (4), (5), and (7), and with her fellow procuress in La Vieille et la Lisette. She is, of course, a skilled and inveterate trickster (‘de meint barat mout savoit’78) whose particular area of expertise is later described in detail: ‘Ja si ne fust fame enserree / Qu’a sa corde ne la treïst!’79 We are not left to speculate on the bawd’s motives for supporting the lover, since Auberée acts on the purely mercenary basis of a handsome reward of forty pounds for her services. This intrusion of the financial into an otherwise sentimental context at least protects her from any suspicion of malignity such as attached to the activities of the bawd in La Vieille et la Lisette. Furthermore some otherwise gratuitous information about the past history of the money serves to activate the economic isomorph depicted earlier, and contributes to defining the meaning of the text through a parallel system of logical oppositions. Little mention has yet been made of the one change to the typical cast of characters in the tales so far examined, the appearance in Auberee of the unusual figure of the lover’s father.80 His opposition to marriage as a love match, but support for marriage as an institution, and for mariages de convenance as an acceptable avenue to social advancement, indicates that he shares attitudes towards marriage with the bourgeois husband. He is naturally associated with that character as a manifestation of the opposant actant in the actantial model proper to ‘ruses d’une femme’ narratives. However, conflict between the lover and his rich father over money raises issues which contribute significantly to defining the lover’s role. Two pieces of information are pertinent. The lover in his youth dispensed his patrimony open-handedly: ‘Le borgeis ot un mout bel fil, / Qui meint denier mist a essil / Tant com il fu en sa janesce’.81 Later (vv. 127–32) he is shown stealing from his father the money he needs to pay for the services 78

‘She knew plenty about a variety of devious devices’ (v. 108). ‘No woman was ever shut away so fast that she could not fish her out with her line!’ (vv. 113–14). 80 His presence is unusual in the fabliaux, and may reflect some influence on Auberee of classical comedy, where conflict between father and son is conventional, and often manifests itself in the son’s symbolic theft from the father of the money necessary to purchase the favours of a girl both men covet. 81 ‘The townsman had a very fine son who dispensed a great deal of money while he was an adolescent’ (vv. 13–15). NRCF, ‘Glossaire’, p. 395, notes that the expression metre a essil, used here in the figurative sense of dépenser follement [to spend rashly], normally carries the sexual meaning ravager, as it does when applied to Sanson in Richeut, v. 74: ‘Mainte fames mist à essil’ [‘He violated a large number of women’]. 79



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of the procuress. Seizure of the forty pounds from the father’s coffer confirms the son’s opposition to the value system endorsed by his father and the bourgeois husband of the wife he plans to seduce. His financial dealings, the transfer of the money to Auberée to pay for services rendered, also miss conforming either to profligacy (by the lover’s standards the rewards are of a different order of value from the costs) or to theft (the money was stolen only to be given away in a laudable cause).82 Payment of the huge reward to the entremetteuse is as equivocal an act as the wife’s surrender to the lover’s importunities. In the context of that love relationship the transaction may register itself as largesse, an action worthy of a courtly lover and reflecting his nature so intimately as to help define its special qualities. The foregoing discussion makes possible some refinement of the suggestion advanced earlier that fabliaux are related to fables as artefacts of comparatively complex structure to incremental materials of a comparatively less organised nature. In light of the structural investigations of Chapters 2 and 3, this perception would need to be amended to a comparison between those fabliaux which appear in the context of a fable anthology, and can be classified as early on the basis both of chronology and a discernible association with other fable literature, and fabliaux which appear later in isolation and differ from those retaining aspects of their fable ancestry. In the case of Auberee and the fable literature with which it has been shown to be affiliated, the distinction is between a plot based on the opposition of culture and nature and one based on the opposition of two cultural phenomena. Proof of the hypothesis that the remanieur of the F version of Auberee was attempting to rewrite his fabliau exemplar as a fable requires demonstration that he was promoting elements which contribute to reading his text as a culture versus nature clash, and de-emphasising elements of a culture versus culture opposition. One easily assessable piece of evidence relevant to this procedure concerns the signs exchanged along the axis of communication. In ‘ruses d’une femme’ narratives signs attesting the wife’s mastery over her husband take one of two forms, either a sign of submission given by the husband to the wife, or a sign of dominance given by the wife to her lover. As signs witnesssing the triumph of nature over culture, neither communication figures very prominently in the standard text of Auberee. The closest brief passage is a couplet recording the husband’s words to his wife when he lifts her from her prostrate attitude of prayer: ‘En bas li dist que par iuresce / Li auoit fet tel mesprison’.83 In the F version of Auberee, however, the sign of the husband’s submissiveness is considerably amplified with a long statement made when he discovers the needle and thimble in the lover’s

82 One of the ennobling effects of love on the young man is to make him indifferent to money, and to cause him to despise the wealth which motivated his father’s opposition to union with the girl he desired (vv. 77–81). 83 ‘He whispered that drunkenness had caused him to misjudge her so badly’ (C: vv. 535– 36).

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cloak. Although delivered as a monologue, the message is clearly intended for the wife: Bien sai me femme n’est pas fole Mais voist souuent a la carole A tous iours mais voir l’amerai A nul iour mais nel mesquerrai Jel seruirai car chou est drois Car ainsi le porte li lois De cest sercort dont le mescroie Et grant mal i souspecenoie A ma femme qui simple cose Que plus est vermeille que rosse Car bien ai le cose esprouuee.84

Even more striking is the sign to the lover of the befuddlement which renders the husband ludicrous. It is responsible for the one change which the remanieur of F makes to the plot of his copy text. While the latter abandons the lover ‘à son propre sort une fois qu’il ne sert plus à la narration’ (Lee, Remaniements, p. 53), F introduces a new scene by prolonging the lover’s part in the action for the period necessary for him to witness Auberée’s repossession of his cloak from the husband: Et li vallés bien l’esgarda Qui tout adiés fu en agait Tel ioie en a ne set qu’il fait Que pour vn poi ne muert de ris Pour le bourgois qu’est abaubis.85

Through these signs the remanieur of F focuses attention on the idea that the conflict in Auberee is a struggle for mastery between the forces of culture, as represented by the husband, and the forces of nature as represented by the entremetteuse acting as agent for the wife and the lover. For the monitory purposes characteristic of fable literature humiliation of the husband is as important in resolving this struggle as achieving a successful outcome for the amorous 84 ‘I know for a fact that my wife isn’t stupid, she just has feet that itch to dance. From now on I will always love her, and never distrust her. I will look after her, for that is the right thing to do. That is the lesson I learned as a consequence of that cloak which caused me to misjudge her, and to suspect my wife of some serious offence. I chastised her, although she is innocent, and more lovely than a crimson rose. I have now resolved the matter to my complete satisfaction’ (F: vv. 737–47). 85 ‘And the young man, who was constantly on the lookout, watched him carefully. He took such pleasure in what he saw he didn’t know what he was doing, for at the sight of the husband’s confusion he almost died laughing’ (F: vv. 754–58). This scene is exactly comparable to that quoted earlier from the conclusion of The fresh Fish as it appears in Les trois Dames qui troverent l’Anel I.



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intrigue. Overt submission by the husband to the wife, or demonstration to the lover of how convincingly the husband has been duped therefore make a significant contribution to realising the fable qualities of F. These qualities also appear in the way the characters are depicted by comparison with other versions of the fabliau. The husband in fable literature is duped because his marital role requires that he be defeated as champion of a social institution perceived by his adversary as repressively inhospitable to spontaneous sensuality. The circumstances of the conflict mandate that he be victimised, but he is not vilified, and there is no suggestion, as in the tales where fin amor is crucial in differentiating between adversarial positions, that a personality tainted by vulgarity, insensitivity, crass materialism, and a penchant to be physically abusive denies the husband the affections of a wife who enjoys the very different qualities exhibited by a lover of her choice. Such vilification of the husband, and the beginnings of a generic bifurcation of the attitudes towards husbands and lovers, start to manifest themselves in the fabliaux which structurally belong to the ‘ruses d’une femme’ group represented in large part by earlier narrative exemplars. Of the three fabliaux that fit comfortably into this pattern La Dame qui fist trois Tors has already been dealt with at some length, but two others, Les Braies au Cordelier and Le Chevalier a la Robe vermeille86 warrant more extensive commentary. Although the wife’s intrigue to escape an accusation of infidelity in Les Braies au Cordelier is very typical of the group with which it is associated, the narrative is a slightly more complex version of stories recounting confusion over a material sign. Events are set in motion when a husband misappropriates as his own a cleric’s trousers from his wife’s bedroom. This episode, in a manner typical of (E) exchanges, concludes with a foolish act when the peasant attempts to pay for his meal with the non-commercial accoutrements of the clerical profession (vv. 267–79).This episode could stand alone as a complete narrative, as it does in Jean de Condé’s Les Braies le Priestre. In Les Braies au Cordelier, however, it informs the husband of his wife’s infidelity, and ushers in the same sequence of accusation and refutation as that found in other ‘ruses d’une femme’ narratives. The clerical lover disappears after the first exchange, and the wife organises the coup de théâtre whereby her husband becomes convinced of her innocence.87 The pattern for the narreme is completed by the message won from the husband by the wife: ‘Tel amende vos en ferai/ Que ja mais de vos ne serai/ En soupeçon de jalousie!’88 No authoritative figure intervened to explain the confusion over the trousers. The peasant worked this out for himself, and drew the further but 86

NRCF 2: 241–308; 411–24. The credibility of her claim is also supported by the currency of popular suspicions about the sexual prowess of Franciscan friars, as pointed out by Per Nykrog, Fabliaux, pp. 134–35, that suggest the mere presence of a pair of their trousers would have efficacy as a fertility talisman. 88 ‘I will make you such amends that I will never suspect you out of jealousy’ (vv. 344– 46). 87

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vulnerable conclusion that the presence of the clerk’s trousers on his bed implied his wife’s adultery. In both La Dame qui fist trois Tors and Les Braies au Cordelier the husband is depicted as a physically abusive character. The priest lover in the former tale expresses his concern that his mistress will be subjected to physical violence (vv. 112–14), and his fears turn out to be well-founded: ‘Mautalenz l’arguë et atize: / Sa fame a par les treces prize, / Por le trenchier son coutel trait.’89 In Les Braies au Cordelier (vv. 232–34) the wife reassures a lover apprehensive that something similar might happen to her. He also has just cause for concern, since the husband later admits to a friar: ‘Par poi que n’ai ma feme ocise.’90 Violence is averted in both instances because the wife, to cover her guilt, invents an excuse having to do with a present or hoped-for pregnancy. The husband’s concern, it is suggested, stems less from a desire not to divide his wife’s affections with a rival than from the need to protect the legitimacy of his offspring, and this gives rise to an associated tendency to regard his wife primarily as a child-bearer.The wife’s choice to remain faithful or to break her marriage vows is no longer exclusively a choice between submissiveness or rebellion, but one which intimately affects her self-image as influenced by the myriad cross-currents of fashion, taste, and cultural identity.91 A contrast in the personalities of husband and lover is fully developed in the third fabliau that conforms to the ‘ruses d’une femme’ pattern, Le Chevalier a la Robe vermeille. The distinction is articulated succinctly in the opening segment of the story with portraits of a dashing, adventurous courtly lover, and a cautious, legalistic vavassour husband: Li amis a la dame iert tieus Qu’il erroit par tote la terre Por honour et por pris conqerre, Tant que tuit le tindrent a preu. Et li vavaseur pour son preu Entendoit a autre maniere, Qu’il avoit la langue maniere A beau parler et sagement, Et bien savoit un jugement Recorder: c’iert touz ses deliz.92 89 ‘An evil disposition weighed on his mind and provoked him. He seized his wife by her hair, and drew his knife to cut it off ’ (vv. 135–37). 90 ‘I was on the verge of killing my wife’ (v. 329). 91 The issue of the husband’s violence resurfaces in Jean de Condé’s Le Pliçon (NRCF 10: 23–32; 341. See particularly vv. 71–73, 86–90). 92 ‘The nature of the wife’s lover was such that he used to ride all over the country seeking to enhance his reputation and win fame, so that everyone regarded him as valiant. And the vavassour staked his reputation on achievements of an entirely different sort, for he was skilled at speaking elegantly and wisely, and he knew how to register a judgement, an activity on which rested all his joy in life’ (vv. 14–23).



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The brilliance of the story, however, results from the ingenious way that it fuses the erotic and economic homologations to achieve its comic effects. Trapped by the husband’s unexpected return, the lover abandons his palfrey, his gilded spurs, his two hunting dogs, his hawk, and a fur-lined scarlet robe. To the husband’s natural suspicions that these items constitute evidence of a lover’s precipitate departure, the wife announces that they were left as gifts by her brother: Et li vavasor, qui envie Avoit du beau cheval avoir, Li dist: ‘Dame, vos dite voir! Du palefroi m’est il mout bel, Et des chenez et de l’oisel, Mes un petit i mespreïtes De ce que la robe preïtes, Car ce semble estre coveitise!’ ‘Non fet, sire, mes grant franchise!’93

Once the husband has fallen asleep, the lover vanishes together with the abandoned articles, and the wife then completely reverses her attitudes towards the social propriety of giving and receiving gifts in order to persuade her husband that he must have dreamt the whole episode of her brother’s visit: Et s’il estoit ci orendroit, Ne vodroit il en nul endroit Qu’en vostre dos fust enbatue Robe que il eüst vestue: Ce deüst dire uns fous, uns ivres! Ja vaut plus de quatre cens livres La grant rente que vos avez Et la terre que vos tenez: Querez robe a vostre talent Et parlefroi bel et amblant, Et qui voise tost l’anbleüre! De vos ne sai dire mesure.94

93 ‘And the vavassour, who quite fancied owning the fine horse, said to her: “Lady, you speak the truth! I am more than happy to have the palfrey, and the little dogs, and the hawk, but you overstepped the mark a bit in accepting the cloak, because that gives the impression of covetousness!” “No it does not, sir, but it looks rather like magnanimity!” ’ (vv. 127–35). 94 ‘And if he were here at this time there is no way that he would wish to see you put on your back a cloak that he had worn. That is something a fool or a drunk might say! The large income that you have, and the territory that you control are worth more than four hundred pounds. Look yourself out any cloak that you fancy, and a handsome and well-gaited palfrey that would amble along at a good rate! I don’t know within reason what to say about you’ (vv. 248–59).

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Despite the vavassour’s evident affluence, his uncertainty about such aristocratic values as franchise and largesse means that he can be manipulated at will by a wife who shares a perfect understanding of such matters with her lover, and who is thereby confirmed in her choice of the man on whom she wishes to bestow her affections. Overt and cruel criticism of the husband is not a prominent feature of the standard versions of Auberee, but on several occasions the remanieur of version F portrays him in a more sympathetic light. He intervenes authorially to this effect twice in a long interpolated passage extending Auberée’s histrionic lamentations over the cost to her of the alleged loss of the lover’s cloak: Sachiés plus de .xl. fois La male uielle demanois Chou fait elle sachiés pour voir Pour le bourgois mieus deceuoir Le penne li trait bien par l’uel. … Quant li bourgois oi aubree Qui li a vendut la uessee Et pour uessie et pour lanterne Je le preudomme point ne ferne Qui n’i entendoit se bien non.95

On another occasion he adds details which contrast the behaviour of the lover and the husband to the latter’s advantage, as when (F: vv. 582–88) Auberée reassures the lover that his cloak will be restored to him before nightfall. The significance of the contrast here is inescapable. The lover, having gratified his desire, now focuses his attention on retrieving a prized item of personal adornment. The husband meanwhile is concerned to comfort with a nourishing drink a young wife he has been fooled into believing spent the night in prayer at their parish church. F is also alone in reporting that the husband later leaves the house to seek food for his wife (F: vv. 607–10). These unique additions to the base text create an impression of the husband as a caring but abused provider. The F-remanieur’s preoccupation with food influences his description (twice expanded at vv. 179–80 and 701–06) of the edible items begged from the bourgeoise by Auberée on the pretence that they would aid the recovery of a sick daughter, but in fact utilised to supplement a bordello supper (F: vv. 429–34) following the wife’s seduction. As in fables (4) and (5), the activities of mother-in-law and entremetteuse in conspiring to cuckold the husband are matched by those aimed at stealing his 95 ‘Know that the wicked old woman, in order the more thoroughly to deceive the husband, quickly gave him to understand on more than forty occasions that she was telling the truth. She really pulled the wool over his eyes. … When the husband hears Auberée, who has sold him a bladder and persuaded him that the bladder is a lantern, well, I don’t hold the good fellow in any way responsible, for he took everything he heard in good part’ (F: vv. 633–49).



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food, a parallelism which helps to reinstate a bipolar fable opposition between monogamous Christian marriage and theft (quasi-rape). Apart from the passages which imply an unfavourable comparison with the husband, the F variants offer little direct criticism of the lover. After verse 92 (‘Deduisant va par le castel’96), a line common to all versions, the F-remanieur adds four lines which appear intended to convey an adverse impression of his character: ‘Ensi comme il faisoit souuent / Pour che aloit entre la gent / Qu’il voloit oublier l’amour / La v pensoit et nuit et iour’.97 Line 94 directly contradicts what was said previously at line 75, and the whole passage is at odds with the earlier portrait of a love-sick youth deliberately eschewing companionship to nurture his hopeless passion in melancholy isolation. The portrait in F, by contrast, suggests a pragmatist looking for quick relief from his discontents. The entremetteuse is also on the receiving end of criticism introduced in the course of the F-remanieur’s changes to his exemplar. Chief among the changes unique to F is the designation ‘la richiaus [Auberée],’ so consistently applied that Lee describes it as ‘un vrai “tic” du remanieur’.98 The name is that of the eponymous heroine of Richeut, but Auberée’s activities have little in common with those practised by that character, and the reference is more probably to the general type of the procuress as described, for example, in the Tristan of Thomas: Or me dites, reïne Ysolt, Des quant avez esté Richolt? U apreïstes sun mester De malveis hume si preiser E d’une caitive traïr?99

The designation, by contrast with the neutral la vieille or ‘Auberee’ of other versions, promotes a fable view of the entremetteuse as ally of an unworthy lover and betrayer of a wronged wife, rather than the fabliau view of her as mediator in a bona fide love match. Also unique to the F-version of Auberee is a comparison of the procuress to a fox: ‘Celle li enquiert de son estre / Qui mout sauoit de renardie / Et de mainte kunchirie’.100 As noted earlier (see the context for note 20), comparison with 96

‘He wandered around the castle for his amusement.’ ‘So as he often used to do, he consequently sought the company of other people, for he wanted to put out of his mind the love he thought about night and day.’ 98 Remaniements, p. 69: see vv. 203, 321, 588, 613, 764, and 789. 99 ‘So tell me, queen Isolde, since when did you become a procuress? Where did you learn her skill in praising an evil man in this way, and in betraying his victim?’ Le Roman de Tristan par Thomas, ed. Bédier, vol. 1, p. 346. Bringvain (vv. 1301–02) accuses Isolt of having tricked her into sleeping with Kaherdin, a knight whom she now wrongly suspects of unworthy motives for seducing her. 100 ‘She, who knew a lot about fox-like cunning and a great deal about deceit, asked him concerning his circumstances’ (vv. 108–10). 97

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Renart of the woman responsible for duping the husband carries a particular resonance in fable literature. In the F-remaniement it may be intended only as a testament to the evil character of the bawd, and the immoral nature of her modus operandi, in which case the comparison is generically non-significant. But if in portraying Auberée in these terms the remanieur means to associate her as agent with the wife’s deception of her husband, then her actions assume significance as an assault on marriage and on hierarchical principles in general. The last narrative concern of interest is the treatment of the extra-marital love relationship itself. Nykrog’s judgement101 that Auberée consistently respects the proprieties of courtly romance would hold good, substantially, for all versions of the story. Nevertheless, variants introduced in F make it less true for this remaniement than for its companion pieces.The first of these changes occurs in the description of an encounter between the lover and the girl destined to become his mistress after her marriage. The meeting is decribed as follows in C: ‘A tant plus pres de lié se trest / Si ont d’amours asés parlé / Quant une piece i ont esté / Si s’en reuint en sa meson’.102 The F-remaniement replaces vv. 31–32 with a couplet which other versions (E: vv 381–82; D: vv. 388–89; C: vv. 393–94) reserve for their description of the seduction at Auberée’s house: ‘Si l’enbracha parmi les flans / Qu’ele auoit bien fais et blans’.103 The love-talk in C is replaced by what is, under the circumstances, a brutally direct physical assault, with the result that the encounter loses some of its aura of innocent sentimentality. More significant is the fact that having transferred this couplet to a position where its effect is very different from that in its original context, the F-remanieur excises the rest of an extremely important passage: La bouche li bese et la face La borgeise ne set que face Mieus li uendroit estre a repos Qu’el porroit acuillir tel los Par ses uoisins et tel renon Jamés n’auroit se honte non La bourgeise let son orgeil Or est tornee en autre fueil Mout l’asouage et mout l’apese Et le uallet l’acole et bese.104

101

Fabliaux, p. 74. ‘Thereupon he drew closer to her, and they talked a lot about love. Once they had been there for a while, he returned to his house’ (vv. 30–33). 103 ‘He caught hold of her around her hips, which were well-formed and white.’ 104 ‘He planted kisses on her mouth and cheeks. The housewife did not know what to do. She would have preferred to be resting in her bed, for she could earn such a reputation and such notoriety among her neighbours that she would never know anything but shame. What the woman did was abandon her pride. Now she completely changes her attitude, she makes it much softer and much lighter, and the young man embraces and kisses her’ (C: vv. 395–404). 102



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These verses mark the transition from the quasi-rape of a virtuous wife to her mutual participation with her seducer in an illicit love relationship. From a moral concern about chastity the wife slips to concern about reputation and the fear of scandal, and then abandons all scruple in deciding to accede to the lover’s desires. According to the author of the C version of Auberee she thereby relinquishes that sin of pride which damned the spectral daughter of the entremetteuse to her unfortunate metamorphosis in La Vieille et la Lisette. This passage charts the wife’s transition from faithful adherence to the dictates of one system, Christian marriage, to initially reluctant but ultimately enthusiastic endorsement of the rival and heretically opposed system of fin amor. It also marks a shift from a conflict between culture and nature to a conflict between cultural systems, and contributes to identifying the narrative as a fabliau rather than a fable. But no such shift is discernible in F, which dispenses with the whole passage. This loss of material from the text is compensated for in part by an interpolation of ten lines immediately following the point where the above-quoted passage was expunged, but the effect is to accentuate the shift in emphasis created by the curtailment rather than to restore any of the significance of the deleted verses: Car n’en quier ichi plus parler Ne vilain mot ne ruis conter Toute la nuit iurent ensamble La bourgoise de pauour tranble Que ele crient mout son mari Qui mout auoit le cuer mari De sa femme nient ne sauoit En quel lieu elle se gissoit Mais elle fait bien son soulas Son ami tient entre ses bras.105

Rather than elaborating the night of love in either sexually explicit or euphemistic fashion, the F-remanieur concentrates on the husband, and on the wife’s fears of what might happen should he become aware of the real situation. Attention is therefore diverted away from celebration of a love relationship and towards a fugitive and potentially dangerous act of infidelity. The issue of the vocabulary appropriate for describing an adulterous affair is featured in a passage following that quoted earlier (F: vv. 582–88) which contrasted the lover’s concern to recover his cloak with the husband’s concern for his wife’s welfare. The scribal tradition shows considerable confusion, much of it (e.g. D, J) apparently created by lack of familiarity with the meaning of 105 ‘For I do not plan to say any more at this point, nor do I wish to employ any vulgar language. They lie together the whole night. The housewife, who was very apprehensive about her husband’s reaction, shook with fear, for he was deeply afflicted in his heart. He knew nothing about his wife, where she was lying, but she was making good cheer, for she held her lover in her arms’ (F: vv. 416–25).

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sorplus which appears in E and A: ‘Mout li fu poi du mautalent / Que se sires auoit eu / Quant il n’a le sorplus seu’.106 F (v. 594) replaces the last line with one which simply reiterates the wife’s guilt: ‘Car son voloir ot bien eut’.107 It is not certain that the word sorplus appeared in the F-remanieur’s copy text, or that, consequently, he deliberately purged his treatment of this courtly euphemism,108 but in the context of the weary wife’s indifference to the pain and irritation suffered by her husband, and her satisfaction that he has successfully been kept in ignorance of what actually transpired, it is perfectly consonant with the attitudes apprehensible elsewhere in this version that he would have chosen to do so. The unique variants introduced by the F-remanieur in the course of his narrative suggest that he reconceived his fabliau copy text as a fable (essample, proverbe), and this impression is reinforced in his much amplified epimythium, which considerably changes the moral stance of the other versions. The moralitas quoted at the beginning of this chapter when discussing the F-remanieur’s radically shifted choices of generic terminology (E: vv. 627–34) exculpates the wife, or at least mitigates her guilt at the expense of the bawd responsible for leading her astray. Condemnation of the bawd herself, however, is not strident, and is further diffused in the lines immediately preceding the moral summary. Since the wife’s ultimate compliance with an initially coerced sexual adventure has proven felicitous, since the lover’s desires have been satisfied, and since the husband, ignorant of these circumstances, has been happily persuaded of his wife’s loyalty, the procuress comes to be viewed as a socially valuable functionary, a labourer worthy her hire: ‘Et la vielle ot .xl. liures / Bien a son loier deserui / Quar tuit troi sont a gré serui’.109 The author of the F-remaniement of Auberee preserves these lines from his copy text, but the sentiments are clearly not to his liking, and he takes the first opportunity to reverse them by roundly cursing the entremetteuse and the profession she epitomises: Ensi chieus essamples define De dame aubree de compiengne S’en dites tout maus li auiengne Et li et toutes les richiaus Qui se mellent d’estre piés haus.110

106 ‘Little did she care about the upset that her husband would have suffered, since he knew nothing about the sorplus’ (vv. 506–08). 107 ‘For she had achieved her desire’. 108 Use of the term surplus is widespread in courtly literature of the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries. For a discussion of its significance, see Camille, ‘Gothic Signs and the Surplus’. 109 ‘And the old woman had forty pounds. She well deserved her recompense, for all three had what they wanted’ (A: vv. 596–98). 110 ‘Thus concludes this exemplum of Lady Auberee of Compiègne. And one might wish every evil to befall her, both her and all bawds who busy themselves about such matters all the



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The meaning of piés haus is unclear, and these lines are followed by others of a daunting obscurity which recount the subsequent early death of the husband and the remarriage of his widow to the vallet who seduced her. This development is, of course, alien to the idea that married love and fin amor are irreconcilable. But the fact that this detail is unique to the F version of Auberee has a further, more significant implication. Statements to the effect that a young man eventually marries the girl with whom he has been romantically engaged occur exclusively in those fabliaux where the young woman is so clearly the abused victim of deceit that, if the lover is not unequivocally guilty of rape, as in La Gageure, he is guilty of a seduction bordering on rape, as in La Pucele qui voloit voler. The F-remanieur clearly rejects any notion that the role of the procuress is morally ambiguous, and defends marriage as an institution, fundamental to Christian culture, from a viewpoint which condemns any threat to that institution as immoral and anti-cultural. Final clarification of the F-remanieur’s moral stance is provided by the addition of a second moralitas very different in its implications from that preserved in the remaniement from the copy text: C’ains dieus ne fist li mal avoir Comme de male femme auoir Que femmes font et mal et bien On nes puet tenir en loijen Qui boine l’a si le maingtienne Et la mauuaisse son frain tiengne111

The conventionality of the sentiments expressed, and their deviation from those of the superseded moralitas, may be illustrated by comparison with the metatextual commentary from another tale hovering generically between fable and fabliau, La Dame escoillee.112 It concludes with the following summary statement: Benoit soit il, et cil si soient Qui lor males femes chastoient; Honi soient, et il si ierent, Cil qui lor feme tel dangierent. Les bones devez mout amer, Et chier tenir et hennorer, Et il otroit mal et contraire A ramposneuse de put aire. time and everywhere’ (F: vv. 786–90). I have adopted the explanation of F 790 offered by the editors of the NRCF version, 1: 381. 111 ‘God never brought more misery than to have a bad wife. Whether wives behave badly or well, one cannot keep them shackled. Whoever has a good one should take care of her, and keep a bad one on a tight rein’ (F: vv. 801–06). 112 NRCF 8: 1–125; 347–60.

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Teus est de cest flabel la some:

Dahet feme qui despit home!113 The tale is here identified as a flabel, but a long and contentious promythium twice uses the designation essanple,114 in conformity with one of the choices preferred by the remanieur of the F version of Auberee. The moral summaries of F and La Dame escoillee resemble one another in numerous ways which significantly differentiate F from other versions of Auberee. The two texts share, for example, an authorial stance which assumes an audience comprised exclusively of married men, and both offer ex cathedra advice to husbands on the treatment of wives while cursing women judged guilty of moral dereliction. Of most significance, however, is the perception of feminine nature which emerges from the two commentaries. Both make an absolute division between good and bad wives, and both suggest that the distinction is more a matter of feminine biology, and the degree of control exerted over the training of recalcitrant wives by their husbands, than of the exercise of free will in making moral choices on the part of the wives themselves. The domineering mother-inlaw in La Dame escoillee is subjected to a mock castration intended to cure a ‘mannishness’ evidently thought of as innate and in danger of being transmitted to her daughter. The supplementary moralitas in F advises husbands to keep bad wives on a tight rein, as though their problems stemmed from the same biological source, and were to be treated in the same essentially physical manner, as those of a testy horse. The attitudes evidenced here are typical of those associated with fable literature of ultimately oriental origin, in particular, of course, the Disciplina Clericalis. The closest extant analogue of La Dame escoillee appears uniquely as the story Tentamina told by Gentullus in the French version of Le Roman des Sept Sages.115 Since the antecedents of Auberee are to be found in various oriental versions of this same work,116 the F-remanieur is not labouring to impose an alien perspective on intractable materials originally conceived to convey a very different vision, but rather aiming to restore to the text values inherent in its own fable ancestry. 113 ‘Blessed be the one, and others likewise, who chastise their wicked wives. Let those be shamed, and they will be, who allow their wives to dominate them. You should love the good ones sincerely, and hold them dear and honour them. And he should treat badly and disagreeably a nagging wife of evil disposition. That is what this fabliau adds up to. Cursed be the woman who holds men in contempt’ (vv. 565–74). 114 The passage is sufficiently informative as to warrant quotation (vv. 1–22): ‘Seignor, qui les femes avez … Oez une essanple petite / Qui por vos est issi escrite: / Bien i poez pranre essanplaire / Que vos ne devez mie faire / Du tot le bon a voz molliers, / Que mains ne vos en tignent chiers’ [‘Gentlemen, you who have wives … Listen to a short exemplum, which is written here for your benefit. You would be well advised to take example from it, to the affect that you should not entirely spoil your wives, lest they think less well of you on that account’]. 115 Speer, K, pp. 173–81, vv. 2479–2814; C (fragmentary), pp. 239–42, vv. 1–151. 116 For a detailed examination of the oriental materials see Auberée, ed. Ebeling, pp. ­1–77.



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The F-remaniement of Auberee is a remaniement, and as such necessarily follows the basic plot, and preserves much of the surface texture of its source. Nevertheless, most of the variants introduced by the remanieur can be accommodated to a single and coherent process, that of restoring to a fabliau text qualities associated with an antecedent fable literature. As suggested earlier, this process reverses a natural literary evolution towards greater complexity. The simplification effected has nothing to do with the degree of literary elaboration of the text, and indeed the F-remaniement is easily the longest and rhetorically most amplified version of Auberee. But at the logico-semantic level the conflict in F is moved towards a clash of opposites (culture versus nature) simpler in conception than the clash between rival cultural phenomena more pervasively and emphatically articulated in other versions. In the case of Auberee the distinction involves a fable conflict between married love and random promiscuity or rape, and a fabliau conflict between married love and fin amor. Arguing that the doctrine of fin amor plays a crucial part in the evolution of fabliau from fable does not pose a great challenge to critical orthodoxy given Nykrog’s well-known definition of the fabliaux as ‘un genre courtois burlesque.’ But it is important to note that this process occurs without any obligatory mediation through romance. The new cultural phenomenon of fin amor finds expression in fabliaux as a natural development from attitudes already present in fable literature, and the love relationship is conducted at a social level already established as the milieu in which the events of fable literature are enacted. The audience for fabliaux was initially the same as that envisaged by Marie for both the exquisitely courtly Lais and the less-than-courtly Fables, and while that audience was consequently capable of recognising and responding to the burlesque possibilities for playing off the non-courtly against the courtly, such burlesque humour occurs only sporadically in a genre where the non-burlesque influence of fin amor is much more widespread. Concentration in this chapter on ‘ruses d’une femme’ fables and on the single fabliau Auberee has tended to exaggerate the importance of fin amor in the evolution of fabliaux from fables. Its influence on the process is certainly significant, and it may be the most recognisable and important single factor in effecting the generic shift investigated here, but its role should properly be seen as symptomatic of the more general principle that fabliaux transform the conflict between culture and nature characteristic of fable literature into an opposition between rival cultural systems. Numerous fabliaux which neglect fin amor or treat it only superficially may still feature a conflict of this type. It appears, for example, as a clash between civil and ecclesiastic justice in Les deus Chevaus and in Connebert, or between different concepts of hospitality, social duty or commercial enterprise, in Le Bouchier d’Abeville117 and in Le Prestre et le Chevalier.118 The issue is raised overtly in the latter fabliau, and the outline of a semiotic 117 118

NRCF 3; 237–335; 443–58. NRCF 9; 67–124; 290–97.

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square ­isomorphic with that governing erotic relationships is suggested by the contrast between generosity and meanness of spirit in the relationship between host and guest. The following exchange occurs between a prêtresse, who has been sacrificed to a guest-knight’s demands, and the priest who has been disappointed in his hopes of exploiting his role as host to his financial advantage: ‘Ciertes, on vous devroit larder,’ Fait elle, ‘quant vous deveastes Vostre ostel et ne herbregastes Un gentil homme par frankisse! Or voi que vostre couvoitisse L’a herbregié et vous honni.’119

Characters in fabliaux are defined horizontally by their place within an intricate and mutable web of contemporary social concerns, rather than vertically within the traditional hierarchies of an enduring social and religious ideology. As implied by the promythium of La vieille Truande, fabliaux are structurally more complex than fables, most profoundly at the logico-semantic level of the actants, but also at the narrative level where characters and events are depicted in a manner adequate to express an underlying conflict definitively typical of the fabliau genre.

119 ‘ “Indeed, your skin ought to be threaded with strips of fat,” she said, “that you should deny entry to your house and refuse to lodge with unquestioning generosity a worthy man! Now see how your covetousness has given him lodging and brought you shame” ’ (vv. 1191– 96).

5

The Fabliau Canon An understanding of the definitive characteristics of the fabliau genre began with the great manuscript collections. Some of these combined copies of the Fables of Marie de France (e.g., MS Paris B.N. fr. 1593), and of Le Chastoiement d’un Père à son Fils (e.g., MS Paris B.N. fr. 19152) with a collection of short, humorous, generally narrative pieces in French octosyllabic couplets circulating independently of any synoptic framework. These independent pieces were also assembled in extensive miscellanies which might contain forty (MS Berne 354) or as many as fifty-eight (MS Paris B.N. fr. 837) fabliau texts. Some perception of fabliaux as a distinct genre with its own characteristic features clearly influenced this process of selection and assemblage, but the theoretical principles underlying this procedure are not articulated. In practice, as subsequent scholarship has demonstrated, it led to the tentative establishment of a corpus which has a group of identifiably related texts at its nexus, but extends through a cortex of heterogeneous materials with diminishingly recognisable association to the core group. The earliest printed editions, those of Barbazan, Barbazan and Méon and Legrand d’Aussy,  preserved the mix of fable anthology and fabliau miscellany established through the manuscript tradition. This policy was subjected to radical revision in the Recueil Général et Complet des Fabliaux des XIIIe et XIVe Siècles, a landmark edition which initiated modern fabliau scholarship. While aiming to provide critical editions of all known fabliau texts, the editors omitted fable anthologies, presumably because the majority of the stories which they contained were beast fables with animal protagonists, and thus clearly distinguishable from fabliaux. A considerable number of the tales in both the Fables of Marie and Le Chastoiement d’un Père à son Fils qualify formally as fabliaux, but Montaiglon and Raynaud chose to ignore their existence, and they have since played only a minor role in critical discussion of the genre, particularly in the seminal and immensely influential study by Joseph Bédier. He used his minimalist definition of fabliaux as ‘des contes à rire en vers’ to eliminate from MR a number of pieces which were deficient either in humour or in narrative interest. Bédier added one  The role of manuscript compilations in establishing generic identity has never been adequately assessed. A recent contribution to discussion of the issue is B. Nolan, ‘Turning over the Leaves’.  Fabliaux et Contes, ed. Barbazan.  Fabliaux et Contes, ed. Barbazan and Méon.  Fabliaux ou Contes, ed. Legrand d’Aussy.

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text, La Feme qui cunquie son Baron, overlooked by the editors of MR, but his major contribution was to purge the edition of inappropriate materials. By applying these criteria with greater rigour, Per Nykrog further reduced the authority of MR in establishing a fabliau corpus. But the overall effect of Nykrog’s study was to swell the numbers to the highest count of fabliau texts so far proposed. One factor in this augmentation was the discovery, between the time of Bédier’s study and Nykrog’s own some sixty years later, of a number of previously unknown fabliaux, particularly those attributed to the fablëor Gautier le Leu. But Nykrog also took issue with MR’s decision, endorsed by Bédier, to exclude tales from fable anthologies. Nykrog included as fabliaux five tales from the Disciplina Clericalis (three of them specifically identified as fabliaux in the Continental A-version of the text), and six tales from the Fables of Marie. Nykrog’s definition of the fabliaux as ‘un genre courtois burlesque’ would not have influenced his selection of materials from Marie or Petrus Alphonsi. Although the author demonstrated convincingly that a significant number of fabliaux contain passages which parody the literary tropes and figures associated with courtly romance conventions, and was thus able to challenge Bédier’s view that the fabliau genre was a bourgeois phenomenon, the number of fabliaux which contain such passages is comparatively small. The courtly burlesque element is totally missing from so great a majority of the surviving texts that the criterion is of no assistance in deciding the generic identity of individual tales. Most of the texts which Nykrog appropriated from Marie’s Fables or the Disciplina Clericalis completely lack any courtly dimension. Sentiments associated with courtly love psychology find expression in the Continental A-version of La Vieille et la Lisette, but despite their preciosity they are treated with a totally nonburlesque seriousness. Nykrog identified the group of tales classified according to Rychner’s designation as ‘ruses d’une femme pour se tirer d’un mauvais pas’, and incorporated by analogy other exemplars perceived by the editor as being in some manner affiliated with it. All but one of the five tales adopted from the Disciplina Clericalis precisely fit this description, as do two of the six tales from the Fables of Marie. It is also well reflected in the fabliau corpus as a whole, but only a small minority of the texts in Nykrog’s fabliau inventory fit the pattern precisely, and a large majority have no demonstrable connection with it whatsoever. Nykrog himself makes no attempt to exploit this structural criterion to establish a definitive inventory of the genre. The latest contribution towards establishing a fabliau canon is that by the editors of the NRCF. Their methodology is radically at odds with that of Nykrog, and results in a fabliau inventory significantly curtailed by comparison with that of the Danish critic. To the formal qualities of the fabliau as a brief narrative with human protagonists written in octosyllabic French verse, they opted to add the further stipulation that the work should be recorded independently of any more extensive compilation, and thus reverted to the pre-Nykrog policy of excluding the works of Marie and Petrus Alphonsi from the canon. After this arbitrary formal exclusion, the editors’ methodology consists of establishing a core group

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of tales contextually identified as fabliaux, and from them extrapolating characteristics useful in identifying and incorporating other examples of the genre. The procedure is heavily dependent on a notoriously unreliable medieval literary terminology. Several texts identifying themselves as fabliaux have to be rejected, while a large number which lack any such designation are included on the basis of conformity to some prototypical fabliau model conceived in as subjectively implicit a fashion as that underlying the fabliau inventories of Bédier and Nykrog. The one attempt to define the genre in objectively structural terms is that made by Mary Jane Stearns Schenck discussed in detail in Chapter 3. Schenck’s investigation does not require any radical revision of the fabliau inventory, although she does reject from the canon a number of texts that fail to comply with the structural criteria she considers definitive for the genre. Where her rejections coincide with those mandated by the analytical procedures advocated in the present study they are noted in footnote 40 in this chapter. The problems of definition which have confounded editors since they first confronted the multiplicity and variety of fabliau texts are not beyond resolution. Bédier made a promising start with his definition, which enabled him to discard from the heterogeneous collection of materials assembled in MR a number of anomalous pieces. The strength of Bédier’s definition lies in its generality and comprehensiveness, but it is inefficacious in deciding whether individual works with borderline characteristics such as are found in Marie’s Fables or in the French verse translations of the Disciplina Clericalis should be regarded as fabliaux. Some comic dits have a skeletal narrative framework, and some comic narratives contain extended passages of moral instruction, so that the basic concept conte may be only tenuously present in a few texts which have hovered on the margins of the accepted canon. The problem is even greater with the concept of fabliau humour, which as first glance suggests, and as critical opinion since Bédier confirms, appears beset by an intractable subjectivity. Fabliau humour, however, has some special qualities which earlier chapters have endeavoured to define, and which can be objectively correlated with narrative development. The basis of fabliau humour being logic, the typical fabliau develops through the chance occurrence or cunning orchestration of equivocal circumstances, false inferences, and transformations in the system of truth values. The logical peripeties may be simple and isolated, as they are for the most part in the ‘ruses d’une femme’ tales already analysed, or they may be contingent and cumulative, so that in a complex fabliau such as Le Chevalier qui fist sa Fame confesse a wife mendaciously claims to have been pretending not to recognise her disguised husband when she admitted to a series of outrageous, and to that extent implausible, sexual indiscretions. The presence of at least one false inference and one reversal of truth values is an essential ingredient in the plot of



NRCF 4: 227–43; 414–15.

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all fabliaux, and in conjunction with traditional criteria it suffices to establish a comprehensive and generically uniform fabliau canon. The canon thus predicated does not require any fundamental revision of the fabliau corpus suggested by the editors of MR or NRCF or by the fabliau inventories proposed in the critical studies of Bédier and Nykrog. If the comprehensive inventory assembled by Nykrog in his 1957 study is taken as the basis for a reexamination of the corpus, the number of additions to the canon is minimal. The number of exclusions is considerably more extensive, but most involve texts, or occasionally groups of texts, whose fabliau identity has been challenged, and which may have been excluded from one or the other edition or inventory. The process of elimination may begin with certain recognised groups of tales which, despite exhibiting some fabliau features, have always held a marginal place in the fabliau canon. These may now be excluded according to the demonstrable criteria of deficiency in logical development and a lack of humorous peripety. The first such group consists primarily of those texts labelled tableaux de moeurs by Bédier. Among their number are Gautier le Leu’s La Veuve, and the anonymous Le Vallet aux douze Fames and Le Vallet qui d’Aise a Malaise se met. All three were accepted as fabliaux by Bédier and Nykrog, but the designation tableau de moeurs rightly calls their fabliau status into question, and La Veuve has since been discarded from the NRCF. To their number should be added Les trois Dames de Paris, although it has a more fully developed narrative structure than its companion pieces and is accepted as a fabliau by all of the above authorities.10 There is even a trace of logical concerns in the husbands’ mistaken inference that the three women in a drunken stupor are dead, and their decision to transport them to the church of the Innocents for burial. As an example of a false assumption prompting a foolish act, however, the episode is qualitatively different from the typical pattern. The planned interment is happily abandoned when the women recover consciousness, but the event is neither central to the narrative contours nor particularly charged with typical fabliau humour. In none of the so-called tableaux de moeurs is it possible to correlate any fabliau narreme with a logical epistemic structure, an essential ingredient in works incontestably identified with the fabliau genre. All four texts are close to the thumbnail sketches of renaissance ‘character’ portraits, and the same iconic designations

 Bédier, Fabliaux, p. 31 remarks that ‘la limite est parfois indécise entre les dits et les fabliaux’, and asks concerning Le Valet qui d’Aise a Malaise se met whether it is ‘un conte très faible ou un excellent tableau de mœurs’. He concludes that it is both, but like La Veuve and Le Vallet aux douze Femmes it can confidently be excluded from the fabliau canon on the basis that it lacks any logical interest.  NRCF 4: 131–50; 390–94.  NRCF 8: 319–38; 392–95.  NRCF 10: 97–113; 353–57. 10 Significantly Les trois Dames de Paris appears uniquely with one other marginal fabliau text, Les trois Chanoinesses de Couloigne, in MS Paris, Arsenal, 3525. For the texts of these two narratives see Watriquet de Couvin, ed. Scheler.



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could be applied to them, ‘the sexually frustrated widow’, ‘the boastful bachelor’, ‘the impoverished bridegroom’, and ‘drunken wives’. Les trois Dames de Paris creates some of its humour by parodying Christian legends and events from the liturgical calendar,11 a characteristic feature of two other pious tales lacking any sophistic manipulation of logic. Saint Pierre et le Jongleur12 is a comic analogue to the Harrowing of Hell.13 It brings into conflict the elevated figure of the guardian of the keys of heaven and a low-life minstrel whose passion for gambling St Peter can exploit to reclaim lost souls. Le Vilain qui conquist Paradis par Plait14 similarly pits the title character against saints Peter, Paul, and Thomas in a series of debates from which the peasant emerges victorious by demonstrating that his own simple piety admits of no such breaches of faith or loyalty as those committed by his more glorious interlocutors. These pious legends introduce elements of mundane realism, but respect propriety by avoiding any sexuality or obscene diction. Such is emphatically not the case with the last exclusion among these pseudo-religious texts, Du Con qui fu fait a la Besche,15 a sexually obscene, etiological anecdote which attaches itself to the Christian story as a blasphemous contribution to creation mythology, with no logical dimension and no place in the fabliau canon. A third group of texts to be discarded from the fabliau corpus are those classified as jugements.16 Their distinguishing feature is a contest, or perhaps simply a rivalry, between three women competing for a prize, or demonstrating their supremacy in the scurrilousness of their accounts of dealings with the opposite sex. Only one of this group, Les trois Dames qui troverent l’Anel, merits inclusion as a fabliau. Both versions of this text comprise three third-person narratives which conform to the ‘ruses d’une femme’ type. The constitutive narratives have previously been analysed as fabliaux in their own right, but for practical purposes it seems best to retain Les trois Dames qui trouverent l’Anel as a ‘portmanteau’ fabliau rather than lose it from the fabliau inventory by listing its component narratives separately. Other examples feature first-person statements by the three women either lacking any narrative dimension altogether, or comprising exclusively accounts of personal sexual indiscretions having more in common with the tableau de moeurs described above than with any conventional fabliau plot. Le Jugement des Cons17 features three young women competing to be granted permission to marry by responding seriatim to their uncle’s invitation to concoct responses to his question whether the girl or her vagina is the elder. Those examples with a more fully evolved narrative structure are frequently fragmentary, and are hard to classify because much of the pertinent material has been lost 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Pearcy, ‘Realism and Religious Parody’. NRCF 1: 127–59; 347–57. See Owen, ‘The Element of Parody’. NRCF 5: 1–38; 373–83. NRCF 4: 13–21; 366. Pearcy, ‘William Dunbar’. NRCF 4: 23–33; 367.

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or expunged by moral zealots. Enough survives of Le Jugement,18 however, to register its clear association with the group, and Les trois Chanoinesses de Couloigne19 shows every sign of providing the framework necessary for a similar development. A scattering of essentially anecdotal texts skirt the margin between fabliau and non-fabliau so closely that acceptance or rejection ultimately reduces to some rather fine discriminations. About a tale such as Le Provost a l’Aumuche20 there is little dubiety, since the story of a seneschal who hides a piece of fat meat under his hood and is then embarrassed when melted fat starts to course down his cheeks is humorous only in a farcical manner, and lacks any of the wit informing better qualified fabliaux. The same is true of Le Prestre qui dist la Passion,21 although exclusion turns on a fine point in the narrative account of how the priest in question became confused over his text. Had he mistaken which text he was using when he conducted his Easter mass, the tale might have qualified as one wherein a false inference generated some foolish action, the priest’s inappropriate reading ‘Crucifige eum’. It appears, however, that the priest’s problems were created by nothing more than the physical misplacement of the straws which he was using as bookmarks, so this piece too must be assigned to the category of humorous anecdotes not qualifying as fabliaux. The final text in this category, Le Prestre pelé, recounts how a priest becomes bald when his younger mistress plucks his grey hairs, and his older mistress plucks the others. Discovered later than MR, it made no appearance in the inventory of Bédier, was admitted as a fabliau by Nykrog, but rejected by NRCF. It is excluded as being purely anecdotal, with no logical basis for its humour. The text in this category which just merits inclusion, and serves to fix the boundary between fabliau and farcical anecdote is Le Prestre qui menja Mores.22 The sole barrier to accepting this brief tale as a fabliau stems from the fact that the false inference and the foolish act are attributable to a non-human protagonist, the priest’s horse. But excluding the work on this basis would require excluding additionally, and for the same reason, Le Prestre et le Mouton.23 It seems preferable to recognise that fabliaux may have animal protagonists, but only if they are endowed with the human and specifically fabliau characteristic of possessing the capacity to misread circumstances so as to act foolishly upon some false inference. The priest’s horse in Le Prestre qui menja Mores becomes confused when the priest, standing on his back to reach some prize blackberries, inadvertently wonders aloud what would happen if he should say ‘Gee-up!’ The horse takes it as a deliberate command and gallops off, depositing his rider in the bramble patch. 18 19 20 21 22 23

NRCF 10: 49–55; 348–49. NRCF 10:; 83–96; 351–52. NRCF 4: 35–44; 368–69. NRCF 8: 247–53; 380–81. NRCF 8:. 247–53; 380–81. NRCF 8: 247–53; 380–81.

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This simple anecdote fits the fallaciae in dictione tale type wherein an expression acquires multiple significance on account of the circumstances surrounding its articulation. An ambiguous material sign causes confusion in Le Prestre et le Mouton. The physical motions of a priest making love to one of his parishioners on the floor of his kitchen are misread by her sheep as a challenge to combat, and the sheep responds by head-butting the priest and knocking him unconscious. The calamitous consequences of these false inferences can be categorised as foolish acts, but in these instances the more appropriate term might be the French bêtises. Since the unwitting object-actant in the episteme is in both instances a dumb beast, the narreme lacks any clear intervention by an authority figure to resolve the confusion, but this role is minimally satisfied by the villagers who release the trapped priest from the brambles in Le Prestre qui menja Mores, and by the priest’s mistress who survives unhurt the encounter in Le Prestre et le Mouton. The respective epistemes conform to patterns E ~[AA] and E ~[AB] respectively. Both narratives are retained in the fabliau inventory. Also retained are two narratives that exploit the confusion between ambiguous signs, but are rendered marginal because they deal with an opposition between dreaming and waking experiences. They function with less than what has hitherto been regarded as a mininmal actant count by redeploying characters to function in more than one actantial role. Le Sohait des Vez24 tells of a sexually frustrated wife whose husband, newly returned exhausted from some merchant venture, falls asleep in the marital bed without making love to his wife as she had hoped and expected. She falls asleep and dreams that she is present at a market where male genitals, described in graphic physical detail, are being offered for sale. She eventually happens on a sample that suits her taste, agrees a price with the seller, and confirms the bargain with a poigné, striking her fist against that of the merchant in a gesture of mutual accord. Unfortunately she acts out the ritual and gives her husband a resounding box on the ear. The husband as object-actant in the episteme is responsible for the foolish act in supposing initially that he is the victim of a deliberate assault. The sleeping wife plays the part of subject-actant in the episteme, and the waking wife that of subject-actant and authoritative figure who resolves the confusion in the narreme. The husband is sufficiently forgiving to compensate his wife for his earlier sexual negligence, and so as destinateur effects the exchange that brings the narreme to satisfactory closure. Reduction in the number of actants is even more pronounced in Le Moigne.25 This further example of the marché obscène may have been inspired by Jean Bodel’s Le Sohait des Vez, but differs in that the monk of the title is the dreamer, the market offers female rather than male genitals for sale, and the monk, who naturally sleeps alone, wakens himself on making the poigné by striking his fist against a cactus plant at his bedside. The monk has to act as both subject- and 24 25

NRCF 6: 259–72; 354–56. NRCF 10: 263–75; 376–78. Initially reported by Längfors, ‘Le Fabliau du Moine’.

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object-actant in the episteme, and as subject-actant and authoritative figure who resolves his own confusions in the narreme. The resultant paradigm, which has only one protagonist, is the narrative-syntax equivalent of the copula in grammatical syntax. A number of comic dits have found their way into the fabliau corpus, but are deficient in narrative interest, and lack the typical kind of logical structure. Les Chevaliers, les Clers et les Vilains is a brief, scatalogical version of ‘estates satire’, while Les Putains et les Lechëors,26 like Du Con qui fu fait a la Besche, is a cynical contribution to creation mythology describing God’s equivocal dispensation for the socially marginalised figures of the title. With them belongs Le Roi d’Angleterre et le Jongleur d’Ely, a secular version of the confrontation between humble and exalted figures similar to those which occur in the pious legends with fabliau affiliations. The narrative framework is minimal, and the text divides into two distinct segments, a series of punning responses by the minstrel to the king’s enquiries about his lifestyle, and a brief lecture by the former on the proper governance of the kingdom, in a slight evocation of the issues addressed by John Gower in Book VII of the Confessio Amantis, or by Hoccleve in The Regimen of Princes. Also excluded are a number of tales from fable collections. Clearly if The Matron of Ephesus is a fable rather than a fabliau, as was argued at length in the first chapter, then the same must be true of Marie’s La Femme qui fist pendre son Mari, which parallels its narrative development quite closely. Neither Marie’s Les trois Orements, nor Gautier le Leu’s Les Sohais has any overall logical structure, or logical peripety, such as occurs in Les quatre Sohais saint Martin, at its core. Finally in this group Le Prestre et le leu27 has nothing other than its independence from any synoptic framework to support its claim to be counted among the fabliaux. There are a handful of sui generis pieces which can be dealt with in isolation. Apart from the cynical misogyny of its title, Une seule Fame qui a son Cors servoit cent Chevaliers de tous Poins28 has no recognisably fabliau features. That the male protagonists are crusaders beseiged in some Asian fortress suggests romance, but, in an eccentric concession to realism, the only female figures available for the Christian knights’ sexual activities are two prostitutes of so depraved a life style that one of them betrays the garrison in an attempt to cover her murder of the other.29 It is difficult to decide where generically this strange piece belongs, but less difficult to conclude that it has no legitimate place among the fabliaux. 26 NRCF 6: 145–53; 335. A newly discovered version of this dit, from MS Nottingham, Univ. Library, Middleton L. M. 6, is edited in NRCF 10; 305–13; 383–85. 27 NRCF 8: 157–62; 364. 28 NRCF 9: 201–13; 306. 29 John of Garland gives a Latin prose version of the tale in illustration of tragedy in the Parisiana Poetria, and another version can be found in a Middle English romance, The Avowyng of Kyng Arthur.The relationship between these three texts was first pointed out by Kittredge, ‘The Avowing of Arthur’.

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It would be pleasing to exclude Jouglet30 on the same basis. The action is motivated by the lying admonitions of the eponymous minstrel to the prospective bridegroom he has been charged with instructing on marital issues. Told that he should fill his glove with the stalks and cores of pears which he has eaten, and should, as a matter of delicacy, refrain from defecating on his wedding day, the simpleton Robin is finally forced to seek relief for his tortured bowels. He achieves it, after consultation with his bride, by defecating over the minstrel’s bed, on his trousers, in the fireplace, in a water jug, and finally in the minstrel’s fiddle. Such humour as results stems from the minstrel’s unhappy defilement as he unexpectedly encounters the traces of Robin’s nocturnal activities. Scatalogical comedy of this kind is generally alien to the fabliaux, and although the story shares a crassly humorous dimension with Audigier, quite properly excluded from the fabliau canon, it contains none of the wit associated with the logical and semiotic concerns of typical fabliaux. The logical interest is limited to the initial exchange, and consists in the minstrel’s lie about eating pears and not defecating on his wedding day. The falsehood has apparently no support in contemporary social practice or current superstition, and seems to be an impromptu invention dictated by the bridegroom’s naïve stupidity and the malice of the minstrel to whose care he has been entrusted. Despite these reservations Jouglet has been retained in the fabliau inventory because rejection on the basis of inadequate conformity to the structural principles used as the criteria for selection in this study would mandate the exclusion of the structurally similar Le Bouchier d’Abeville.31 It too begins with a minimal exchange of the type E1: S ~[AB] when a butcher, returning without having made any purchase at a market, pursuades a surly and arrogant priest to lodge him for the night by offering to trade him a sheep he has stolen from the priest’s own flock. His lie is only slightly more embellished towards credibility than that of the minstrel in Jouglet: D’Oisemont vieing, au marchié fui; N’i acheté c’un seul mouton, Mes cil a molt cras le crepon! Sire, ennuit mes me hebergiez, Car bien en estes aesiez. Je ne sui aver ne eschars: Anuit iert mengie la chars De mon mouton, por qu’il vos plese, Car porté l’ai a grant mesese; Il est grant, si a char assez:

Nos en aron trestouz assez.32 30

NRCF 2: 185–214; 397–405. Le Bouchier d’Abeville, together with nine other of the more familiar fabliaux, may be found in Cuckolds, Clerics, & Countrymen, ed. Eichmann. 32 ‘I have come from the market at Oisemont, where I bought only one sheep, but one with 31

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From this point on there are no further epistemic logical exchanges. As in Jouglet, what follows is a series of repeat episodes. Just as the minstrel was serially embarrassed by his unexpected encounters with the bridegroom’s excrement, so the priest is mortified to discover that on the promise of the gift of the sheep’s pelt his guest has had his way sexually with the priest’s maid and her mistress the prêtresse, that he has then sold the pelt to the priest himself, and, to cap it all, that the skin was stripped from the pride of the priest’s own flock. Structurally there is little to distinguish the two narratives, and by comparison with the vast majority of texts forming the authentic fabliau canon both must be regarded as marginal constituents. But while Jouglet is sufficiently undistinguished that its loss from the fabliau inventory would be regretted by few, Le Bouchier d’Abeville is by common consent an outstanding example of fabliau artistry. Unlike Jouglet, which makes no pretension to engage any serious issue, Le Bouchier d’Abeville, together with Le Prestre et le Chevalier, are key texts in expounding the hospitality homologue discussed at the conclusion of the last chapter. Like its companion piece it counters avaricious commercial exploitation on the part of the host with instances of theft/rape by the guest, and posits an ideal of hospitality transcending both of these abuses. As the butcher says in response to the priest’s declaration that it would be dishonorable for him to lodge a lower-class lay person: ‘Nenil, sire, einz seroit aumosne / S’imés me prestiez l’ostel’.33 The author, Eustache d’Amiens, has been much lauded for his skill in characterisation, and there is an element of theatricality in the performance of all the characters that is reflected in the unusually high percentage of the text in dialogue form. The hard working and self-respecting butcher, and the indolent, grasping, and arrogant priest with whom he is forced to seek lodging are well developed, and there is a scene when the prêtresse and the household’s chambermaid dispute possession of the sheep’s pelt that might stand alone as a superb dramatic vignette. The narrative also provides splendid illustration of the controlled use of obscene diction to articulate the progress of the plot and to bring events to a climactic resolution.34 Since Le Bouchier d’Abeville and Jouglet share very much the same narrative structure, the favoured retention of the former dictates the reluctant retention of the latter. The last group of texts has been pended until now because it is numerous and generically heterogeneous, composed of tales conventionally regarded both as fables and as fabliaux. They are among the most volatile in their relationship to the fabliau inventories of editors and critics, and they appear and disappear as they appeal to some editorial or critical sense of generic identity, or are found in a really fat rump! Sir, just put me up for the night, and you will be happy that you did. I am not stingy or mean. Tonight we eat the flesh of my sheep, if that would please you, because I’ve had great difficulty carrying it. It’s big, and has a lot of meat on its bones. There will be enough for all of us’ (vv. 124–34). 33 ‘Not at all, sir, but rather an act of charity, if you were to offer me lodging for tonight’ (vv. 78–79). 34 For the last of these phenomena see Pearcy, ‘Modes of Signification’, pp. 186–88.

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violation of some criterion for inclusion. This is also the first group to produce an addition to the fabliau inventory as defined in this study. Since there are some valuable observations to be made about the group as a whole, it will be profitable to list the component pieces, which are: Le Pré tonduz, Dame Jouenne, two texts of Marie de France, La Contrarieuse and L’Home qui avoit Feme tencheresse, Le Vilain qui n’iert pas de son Hostel Sire, Fole Larguesce, Sire Hain et Dame Anieuse,35 and La Dame escoillee. Although an apparently mixed bag of fables, fabliaux, and portmanteau texts, they have numerous features in common, and all reflect in some way the transition from fables to fabliaux. The most significant factor distinguishing this heterogeneous assemblage of texts from the closely related group of ‘ruses d’une femme’ tales is that the male protagonist, the husband in most instances, emerges victorious from an encounter with his wife, or an associated female opponent. Typically the basis for dispute is the struggle for domestic authority. The nature of the conflict is made abundantly clear in the story Tentamina told by the sage Gentullus in the French version of Le Roman des Sept Sages,36 and in the advice given to her daughter by the virago wife in La Dame escoillee: Bele fille, levez la chiere! Vers vostre seignor soiez fiere; Pranez essample a vostre mere, Qui toz jors desdit vostre pere: Ainz ne dist riens ne desdeïst Ne ne conmanda c’on feïst.37

In nearly all instances the husband attempts to enforce his authority through brutally physical means, so that even in the story of La Contrarieuse, versions of which appear in Le Pré tonduz and Dame Jouenne, the wife’s triumph in the epistemic exchange has to be seen in the context of an encounter resulting in her grievous bodily injury, mutilation, or even death. She suffers precisely the same fate in Sire Hain et Dame Anieuse, La Dame escoillee, and L’Home qui avoit Femme tencheresse. While in ‘ruses d’une femme’ texts marital dominance is determined by the husband’s success or failure in controlling his wife’s extra-marital sexual activities, in the group of texts currently under scrutiny the bone of contention is the preparation of food. The most specific statement comes from the husband in Dame Jouenne:

35

NRCF 2: 1–26; 351–56. Speer, K, vv. 2479–2814, pp. 173–81 and C, vv. 1–151, pp. 239–42. 37 ‘My dear daughter, hold your head up high! Adopt a proud stance towards your husband. Take example from your mother, who always contradicts your father. He never says anything that I would not contradict, nor orders me to do anything that gets done’ (vv. 225–30). 36

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Riens ne di qu’elle ne desdie:

Se vueil poree, j’avrai pois; Toute rien me fait sus mon pois. Et se je vueil char de bacon, Lors met elle cuire un tacon De la plus dure vielle vache Qu’elle truisse ne qu’elle sache.38 The same concern with food, indeed with the same comestable items, reappears (vv. 14–19) in Sire Hain et Dame Anieuse. The quarrel leading to their eventual physical confrontation begins with a dispute about a meal which the husband requests should feature salt-water fish, but for which the wife provides freshwater fish, prior to jettisoning the lot in a tantrum. The preparation of food is also an issue in L’Home qui avoit Feme tencheresse. The husband wants his farm labourers to be brought food and drink where they are working in the fields, but his wife can be persuaded to agree only when the spokesman for the labourers implies that the provision of food and drink is contrary to the husband’s wishes.39 Finally, in La Dame escoillee, a husband mutilates his chef and beats his wife senseless because she has countermanded his orders about the herbs and spices to be used in the preparation of his evening meal, and the cook has rashly followed her instructions rather than those of his master. There is, finally, a recurrent formal property which links these texts with the traditions of fable literature, the appearance in promythium and epimythium of 38 ‘I cannot say anything but she contradicts me. If I want a dish of green vegetables, I will get peas. All this she does to annoy me. And if I want a rasher of bacon, then she will cook me a piece of the toughest old cow she can find or that she knows about’ (vv. 200–06). Text is in Längfors, ‘Le Dit de Dame Jouenne’. See also on this same topic vv. 114–25. The husband’s remark that his wife ‘cuit qu’el portera les braies’ [“thinks that she will wear the trousers”, v. 165] links the text to Sire Hain et Dame Anieuse, an association noted by Längfors (p. 101) on the basis of shared items of food. The link is closer than Längfors acknowledges, however. Correspondence between Dame Jouenne v. 202: ‘Toute rien me fait sus mon pois’, and Sire Hain et Dame Anieuse v. 16: ‘Et si estoit tout seur son pois’, concurrence in a non-essential detail, suggests a textual dependency. The wife on other occasions (see also vv. 46–51) confirms her allegiance with the adulterous wives of the ‘ruses d’une femme’ group (vv. 183–85): ‘Mès or devenrai ge putain / En despit de vous, dant vilain. / Or vous couvient estre soufrable’ [‘But from now on, Mr. Peasant, I shall, despite your opposition, become a whore. Now you will have to learn patience’]. 39 The idea of persuading an obstinate and contentious woman to act in one manner by urging on her the opposite course of action is so conventional in this group of fables and fabliaux that it is readily apparent that Charles Brucker has misunderstood the significance of events in Marie’s narrative. When the workers confide to the wife that her husband ‘pas nel voleit’, Brucker takes this as evidence of ‘la complicité secrète des paysans avec la femme, qui renforce la situation injuste de l’homme’. The conspiracy, of course, is between the master and the peasants, and is intended to win them the refreshment the wife would deny them if she supposed her husband in favour of awarding it. See Marie de France, ed. Brucker, Fable 95, La méchante Femme et son Mari, pp. 346–50.

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extended passages of moral commentary in the form of advice to husbands on how they are to conduct themselves in relation to their wives.40 The introduction of such materials was cited earlier as one of the features reflecting a return to typically fable qualities in the F-version of Auberee, and at that time comparison was made with the long introductory and concluding passages of instruction in La Dame escoillee. The anti-feminist sentiments are reiterated piecemeal throughout Le Vilain qui n’iert pas de son Hostel Sire and Dame Jouenne, but the closest analogue to the admonitions addressed to an audience of married men in the F-version of Auberee and in La Dame escoillee appears in the epimythium to Sire Hain et Dame Anieuse: Se voz fames mainent bufoi Deseur vous nul jor par male art, Que ne soiez pas si musart Que vous le souffrez longuement! Mes fetes ausi fetement Comme Hains fist de sa moillier, Qui ainc ne le vout adaingnier Fors tout le mains que ele pot, Dusques atant que il li ot Batu et les os et l’eschine!41

All seven of these texts, whether conventionally classified as fables or fabliaux, contain elements which associate them clearly, both through content and form, with an earlier fabular literary tradition. The idea of logical form can be applied to make the necessary generic distinctions, but the difficulties of precise definition associated with marginal or transitional texts affects the assurance with which even this logical criterion can be applied. Extensive use of admonitory tirades in promythium and epimythium are the major feature associating Philippe de Beaumanoir’s Fole Larguesce with works in the fable tradition,42 but there are other factors which suggest that it has no 40 This particular fable characteristic is well illustrated in the fable D’un Homme et de sa Femme from Isopet I-Avionnet mentioned in Chapter 2 as a version of The Matron of Ephesus (vv. 1–4): ‘Et si orra une matiere / Qui aus maris est bonne a dire’ [‘Listen to a piece of advice that is well worth telling husbands’]. The sentiments are reiterated in the epimythium which says of the man rescued by the widow’s ploy (vv. 77–80): ‘Femme seulle, se m’est a vis, / Deçoit et griefve mors et vis. / A paines a bon finement / Euvre de femme ou cilz livre ment’ [‘Only a woman, it seems to me, deceives and grieves both the living and the dead. Unless this book lies, it seldom happens that any project undertaken by a woman comes to a good end’]. 41 ‘If any day of the week your wives treacherously behave arrogantly towards you, don’t be such wimps as to put up with it indefinitely! Act as decisively as Hain did with his wife, who absolutely refused to pander to her despite all the efforts she could muster, until he had roundly beaten her both back and bones!’ (vv. 404–13). 42 Text in MR 6, pp. 53–67. The fable qualities of the story are evident in the extent and the tone of the monitory passages. The narrative begins with a thirty-four line tirade against profligacy, and ends by repeating the sentiments in a passage of twenty-four lines with heavy

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place in the fabliau corpus. Conflict in this story focuses on material rather than sexual concerns, and any dispute about authority emerges only in the management of the domestic economy. The husband, who makes a long and tedious journey to collect salt from the coast, resents his wife’s profligacy in distributing the product of his labours open-handedly to her neighbours and gossips. He teaches her a lesson by forcing her to assist him in transporting his salt back to the village for marketing. Physical abuse is minimal, but the imposition of a day of hard labour resolves the narreme for this fable, and fully accounts for the marital conflict without, however, generating any epistemic logical exchange.43 To this same category of independently circulating fables should be added Sire Hain et Dame Anieuse, a struggle for mastery of such unsophisticated simplicity that the plot features a knock-down, drag-out fight between husband and wife for possession, literally, of the husband’s trousers. The conflict is presented as an amusingly mock-heroic encounter, but the humour lacks any logical dimension. The use of personification allegory helps categorise the narrative as an independently circulating fable with conventional concerns about female domination, and typically anti-feminist sentiments. Le Vilain qui n’iert pas de son Hostel Sire manifests the same features as Fole Larguesce and Sire Hain et Dame Anieuse, but additionally lacks any significant narrative development. Both of the portmanteau texts, Le Pré tonduz and Dame Jouenne, contain too much non-fabliau material to qualify as fabliaux in their own right. Since, however, the definition of fabliaux being applied in this study does not exclude works appearing in larger compilations, and since both texts may be regarded as miniature fable collections paralleling Marie’s Fables by incorporating both fable and fabliau materials, each anthology requires a separate evaluation of its contents. Versions of La Contrarieuse from the Fables of Marie appear in both Le Pré tonduz and Dame Jouenne. They are clearly demarcated, complete narratives in octosyllabic French verse, and qualify consequently as fabliaux. Parallel versions of La Contrarieuse, and of the motif as it appears in Le Pré tonduz and Dame Jouenne, are provided as Appendix B to this study. The narrative conforms perfectly to the epistemic pattern E2: S [A+B]. A husband mistakenly supposes that in defence of her argument his wife has only two options, either to signify or religious overtones. Since Bédier and Nykrog included it in their fabliau inventories, the tale has been dropped by the editors of the NRCF. Nykrog remarked on the paucity of humour in the narrative, and there is certainly a total absence of any peripety or anagnorisis deriving from a logical source. The tale belongs with a poorly recognised group of independently circulating fables. 43 Helping to confirm the non-fabliau status of this narrative is the fact that it exploits the economic homologue referred to in the previous chapter, but does so in a fashion specifically more typical of fables than of fabliaux. There is no provision for any concept of larguesce in the plot, and conflict is strictly limited to husbandry versus prodigality, ‘fole larguesce’. The economic opposition between frugality and careless dispense precisely parallels the erotic opposition between married love and random promiscuity, but the female protagonist who champions prodigality is untypically routed in the encounter.

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to fail to signify her position verbally. He is confounded when, deprived of the power of speech, she maintains her position by signifying gesturally.44 Neither of the remaining two narratives in Le Pré tonduz merit inclusion as fabliaux. The tale of the charcoal which wanted to ignite the ocean but found itself extinguished on first contact is a typical fable, similar to that of the mountain which gave birth to a mouse, or the sun which wanted to marry. The account of a post-marital agreement aimed to control the problem of authority in marriage, but doomed to founder on the rock of feminine intransigence, resembles the materials informing all of Le Vilain qui n’iert pas de son Hostel Sire and the initial section of Dame Jouenne. All have minimal narrative content, and resemble tableaux de moeurs in providing ‘portraits’, but of troubled marriages rather than eccentric individuals. The last item from these two portmanteau texts qualifies as a fabliau, and merits the same treatment as the three versions of La Contrarieuse, but lacks any equivalent for Marie’s fabliau to which the text can be attached as a new version. Nykrog accepted Dame Jouenne as a fabliau compilation, but his view has not been given much credence, and little attention has consequently been paid to the constituent parts of the manuscript. The story in question, for which Les Fers alesnes ou Pertus may serve as a title, contains elements of importance in the decision to include as fabliaux the remaining two works in this group. It has not been re-edited since the manuscript of Dame Jouenne was first reported, so it will be profitable to reproduce here the Längfors edition. The narrative recounts how a hen-pecked husband revenges himself on his virago wife by placing three sharpened iron spikes in an inaccessible hole, and forbidding her from foraging therein lest she do herself some hurt. He then leaves the house. As he anticipated, his wife succumbs to the conviction that her husband has deliberately concealed something from her, examines the prohibited location, and injures her hand so that it bleeds. At this juncture the husband returns, and upbraids his wife for having wounded herself by disobeying his instructions.

Un preudons prist dame Jouenne Une mout orguilleusse dame,

44 In a Latin prose analogue known by the title Pediculosa a wife claims that her husband is lousy. When she proves intractable in maintaining this argument despite her husband’s denials, he throws her into the water and drowns her. However, even in extremis she stubbornly persists in her opinion, and on the point of drowning makes the gesture of cracking a flea between her thumb nails. The story appears as no. 221 in Crane, p. 92. The logical formula applies also to the climactic episode of the very different Le Chevalier qui fist parler les Cons. In order to win a bet, a hostess stuffs her vagina with cotton and defies her knight-guest to exercise his power to render that item articulate. Her action equates with that of the husbands who murder or mutilate their wives to prevent them communicating. Like the resourceful wives, however, the knight has an unsuspected alternative means of exacting information, as he is reminded by his squire playing the adjuvant role in the narreme. In the defection of the con he can appeal to the cul to talk. For the vexed question of the relationship between different versions of this fabliau, see Pearcy, ‘Anglo-Norman Fabliaux’.

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Et si tres despiteusse estoit 4 Que riens vaincre ne la pouoit; Tant que par aventure avint Que cel preudomme . . . [se pensoit]: … Par enging me couvient ouvrer, Car je vourai si arengier Trois fers d’alesne bien agus 212 Ens ou fons de ce pertus Et puis si li deffenderai Ou pertus ne boute son doi. Quant je li avrai fait deffense, 216 Sera ce pechié ne effense S’elle se blece et i boute? Honnis soit qui pechié en doute: ‘Jouenne, ne boutez ci rien 220 En cest pertus; je vous di bien Que celui qui riens boutera Ou pertuis, s’en repentira.’ ‘Se tu as tourné les talons 224 Ne lairoie pour deus galons De vin que je mon doi n’i boute, Que ma pensee si est toute A faire ce qu’il te desplaist.’ 228 ‘Or vous en souffrés, s’i vous plest. Je vois un poi hors de la ville. Harou! j’ai fait trop belle guille, Se ceste lasse se mehaingne.’ 232 ‘Hé! saint Jehan de la Champaigne, Or me sui je trop oubliee. Je m’en vois toute desliee Bouter mon doi en ce pertus, 236 Si essaierai quels vertus Mon chetif de mari i a.’ Mout roidement son doi bouta Ou pertus, dont se repenti, 240 Car en es pas ‘haÿ! haÿ!’ Quant se senti pointe, cria: ‘Douce dame, Ave Maria, Cel larron vilain m’a traïe! 244 Harou, harou! aÿe, aÿe! Je souloie estre si soutive. Mieus m’amasse morte que vive, Non pas pour mal, mais pour la honte, 248 Car il me tenra en son conte Que il m’ara prisse au bray. Par Nostre Dame de Cambray,



Qu’il m’en est grant honte avenue!

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252 Boi! harou! dont li est venue Ceste grant traïsson soutaine? Hé, lasse! comme mon doi sainne! Je cuit qu’il le m’estuet lïer, 256 Se je truis fueille d’alïer; Je croit qu’elle me seroit bonne.’ ‘Or sui je revenu, Jouenne, Comme preus et bien enseignié. 260 Et qu’est ce? L’en a ci saignié! Jouenne, ne vous dis je bien Ou pertus ne boutissiez rien, Et que cil qui riens bouteroit 264 Ou pertus s’en repentiroit? Tart est main a cul, pet est hors. Male joie et elle de son cors Qui mout bien ne le vous rendra. 268 Or nous verron qu’en avenra.’

The fabliau qualities of this little drama are readily apprehended. The episteme articulating the logical development is similar to that for Le Vescie a Prestre, a deliberate enticement on the part of the subject-actant for the object-actant to commit a logical fallacy and to draw a false inference. How precisely the false inference is to be read is open to two related but slightly different interpretations. The more sophisticated, perhaps, is that suggested by the wife’s remarks at vv. 236–7, which involves the consequens fallacy of assuming that prohibition implies a desire to discourage examination. Alternatively, as suggested by vv. 213–22, the husband may be banking on his wife’s compulsion to act contrary to his wishes, in which case the fallacy would involve assuming that prohibition implied opposition to behaviour which the husband was deliberately provoking.45 If the logical properties of Les Fers alesnes ou Pertus are unequivocal, its formal properties are more enigmatic. The story is told almost exclusively in dialogue form, and while vv. 238–41 break the pattern, and permit assimilating the tale to the ‘mixed’ form of narrative and dialogue typical of the fabliau genre, dialogue is unusually prominent in this treatment by comparison with the majority of fabliau texts. Of particular concern are the opening lines, which begin the story precipitately with the husband recounting to himself the details of his plot to entrap his wife. What is missing is the kind of brief, banal narrative introduction found at the beginning of Dame Jouenne as a whole (vv. 1–6), which have here been placed in italics as a prologue to the tale proper. The problem of textual incoherence would be solved by including the first 45 The independent status of this narrative is confirmed by its appearance in Wright, Latin Stories, No. 11. An analogue appears in Bromyard’s Summa Predicantium (Antwerp, 1614), s.v. conscientia, where the disobedience of a wife forbidden to climb a rotten ladder results in her breaking both legs.

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208 lines of Dame Jouenne as part of the narrative of Les Fers alesnes ou Pertus, assuming that the material thus incorporated was intended to invest the subjectand object-actants. But such a procedure would seriously distort the proportions of the tale, and would emphatically differentiate it from the brief 24-line version of Le Pré tonduz for which vv. 1–208 serve equally as a preface. It seems preferable to suppose that the long account of marital conflict in Dame Jouenne exists as an artefact in its own right, similar to the material in Le Vilain qui n’iert pas de son Hostel Sire. One benefit of recognising the fabliau status of Les Fers alesnes ou Pertus is the assistance it provides in assessing the claims to fabliau status of the two remaining works in this group, L’Home qui avoit Feme tencheresse and La Dame escoillee. Their association with the other fables and fabliaux described as transitional texts is clear. In both the husband succeeds in imposing his will on wife or mother-in-law, in both the struggle for mastery manifests itself in disputes about food, and La Dame escoillee begins and ends with long admonitory passages addressed to husbands on how they should conduct themselves in marriage. But problems arise in these two texts with the logical content which should ensure their place in the fabliau corpus. Both incorporate the motif whereby a husband tricks his wife into complying with his will by proposing a course of action which he can rely on her contrariness to countermand. The husband in L’Home qui avoit Femme tencheresse wins the refreshment he desires for his workers by this means, and the husband/father-in-law in La Dame escoillee arranges for his daughter to meet the count she is destined to marry by insisting to his wife that she should be confined to her own chambers during the count’s visit. But these are episodes tangential to the major logical development, which in both instances exploits the sophistic possibilities of amphibologia, a confusion between the literal and metaphorical significances of a statement. The phenomenon appears elsewhere in the fabliaux, but only in association with patterns (E) or (EE). Amphibologia figures differently in Marie’s fable and in La Dame escoillee, and assumes a form which is not restricted to fable or fabliau but appears also in romance.46 The husband in L’Home qui avoit Feme tencheresse intimidates his wife by an implied threat of physical violence so that she falls backwards into a river. He ensures that she will drown by directing would-be rescuers to search for her upstream, on the grounds that anyone so contrary by nature would be bound to go against the current. The narreme for the action here is straightforward enough, and would be identical to that for Sire Hain et Dame Anieuse and other narratives featuring a husband’s physical abuse of his wife. But the physical action in L’Home qui avoit Feme tencheresse accounts only for the moment when the wife falls into the water while retreating before her husband’s threatening behaviour. His trick to entice his wife into complying with his wishes by intimating that he wants her to follow the reverse course of action contributes directly to this outcome, but the episode is peripheral to the main action. Exploiting an amphib46

Pearcy, ‘Fabliau Intervention’, esp. pp. 72–76.

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ology to ensure his wife’s death by drowning also constitutes an episteme, but the immediate victims of the deceit are the would-be rescuers rather than the wife, who is the indirect victim of the intrigue. The narreme and the two epistemes generated by the narrative development are not compatible. Forcing his wife into the water, the core action of the story, associates L’Home qui avoit Feme tencheresse with Sire Hain et Dame Anieuse as a fable rather than a fabliau. The introduction of two logical episodes imparts a fabliau quality to the work, but if in the F-version of Auberee we witness a fabliau struggling to regain some features of fable form, in L’Home qui avoit Feme tencheresse the situation is reversed, with what was essentially a fable taking on the trappings of fabliau form. The same is true of La Dame escoillee. At the centre of the tale are episodes featuring a husband who imposes his will on his mutinous wife and mother-in-law by purely physical means, beating his wife senseless and mutilating his motherin-law. In the closest analogue, the tale Tentamina from the French version of Les Sept Sages,47 the husband punishes his wife by summoning a blood-letter, and insisting on her being bled so severely that she is on the point of death. This version of the story has no logical dimension, and there is no dubiety, consequently, about its fable status. But La Dame escoillee achieves the same intimidation through an elaborate charade with typical epistemic fabliau features. On the basis that his mother-in-law’s domineering behaviour indicates that she suffers from some innate ‘mannishness’ the count arranges a mock castration whereby the mutilated woman is presented with bull’s testicles, allegedly taken from her own body, as proof of the need for corrective surgery to normalise her condition. But who is deceived here? Not the woman and her daughter, surely, who are simply being made aware, albeit with some metaphorical veneer, that they are at the mercy of husbands who can impose their will by brute force without fear of reprisal or recrimination.48 As with L’Home qui avoit Feme tencheresse, an essentially fable plot has been dressed up with fabliau devices. Whatever humour is generated by the sophistry is inadequate to redress the bitterness and the violence of the anti-feminist senti47 The fable qualities of this version, some of which reappear in La Dame escoillee, include the climactic series of incidents whereby the husband manifests his intolerance of disobedience by his treatment of domestic animals, and his increasing frustration at his wife’s derelictions. As in the Latin comedy Lidia, which in addition to extracting a husband’s good tooth includes strangulation of his falcon and the plucking of five hairs from his beard, the wife attempts to establish her independence of her husband’s authority by cutting down his favorite tree, stabbing to death a prized greyhound, and ultimately wrecking his banquet table. These actions are undertaken at the prompting of her mother, who wants to establish beyond doubt that the husband’s pusillanimity will guarantee her daughter’s secure freedom of action. 48 For an edition and translation into modern French prose of this and several other fabliaux see Chevalerie et Grivoiserie, ed. and trans. Leclanche. On p. 12 Leclanche quotes the author to the effect that La Dame escoillee is primarily intended to serve as an example, and remarks that ‘il pourrait figurer dans un recueil de la tradition misogyne des Sept Sages de Rome’. It is somewhat disingenuous, however, not to acknowledge at the same time that the French version of this anthology does contain the closest non-fabliau analogue to the fabliau in question.

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ments inherent in the narrative. For the sake of comprehensiveness both L’Home qui avoit Feme tencheresse and La Dame escoillee have been incorporated in the fabliau inventory included in this book, but with the recognition that they are transitional texts which utilise some of the trappings of fabliau literature, but fail to achieve genuinely fabliau aesthetic effect.49 There is one further fabliau for which inclusion may be justified because its marginality is acknowledged and compensated for to the degree permitted by the nature of the events depicted. Les trois Meschines50 relates how three young women acquire a cosmetic aid that needs to be moistened for use. They elect one of their group to urinate on the powder. Unfortunately in straining to achieve this objective the girl in question breaks wind, and the powder is blown away. The logical structure of the episteme for Les trois Meschines is weakened by the fact that disruption to the universe of discourse is not only inadvertent but also attributable to biological exigency rather than logical misapprehension, as the disappointed guardian of the powder acknowledges (vv. 84–89), with insulting amplification, during the dispute provoked by the accident. Nevertheless, the two young women engaged in the project to dampen the powder clearly suppose that the universe of discourse (A+B) governing their endeavour is limited to the opposition between ‘urinating’ and ‘not urinating’. The unsuspected outcome whereby the powder is blown away reveals the fallacy in their thinking. The fablëor reflects his awareness of those elements that distance his tale from the conventions of the fabliau genre in the conduct of his narrative. Association with other examples of the (A+B) fallacy suggest involvement with some juridical or pseudo-juridical event, and the intervention of some outside agency to unravel the logical complexities. Neither occurs in Les trois Meschines, but there are gestures in the direction of both phenomena. After the mishap, the young women argue over who should be held responsible for reimbursing her fellows. One declares herself willing to submit to a legal ruling on the case: ‘S’en oserai bien droit atendre / Et en romanz et en latin!’51 Perhaps out of an atypical respect for the dictum de minimis non curat lex, the author does not convene a court, but turns the matter over to the audience for resolution in the form of a demande: ‘Seignors et dames qui savez / De droit, jugiez sanz delaier / Qui doit ceste poudre paier.’52 In the absence of any judicial ruling, the author’s appeal to the audience constitutes that audience as the subject-actant of the narreme, the 49 It was perhaps a mistake on the part of Lacy in his chapter on ‘Women in the Fabliaux’ to choose La Dame escoillee as a representative text, since the anti-feminist sentiment in this tale is egregiously strident by comparison with the corpus as a whole. See Reading Fabliaux, pp. 60–77. 50 NRCF 4: 217–26; 412–13. 51 ‘I would be more than willing to submit to a legal ruling, in both the vernacular and in Latin’ (vv. 96–97). For a reading of the text in strictly legal terms, see D. Collins, ‘Historia urinalis’. 52 ‘Ladies and gentlemen who know the law, judge without delay who ought to pay for that powder’ (vv. 124–26).

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two girls involved in the doomed attempt to moisten their cosmetic powder as the object-actant, and the message from subject as destinateur to object as destinataire would be a proverbial reminder that prudence is always necessary when engaged in actions that may have unforeseen consequences. The last two exclusions are of texts accepted as fabliaux by Montaiglon and Raynaud and by Bédier, dropped from the fabliau inventory of Nykrog, but restored by the editors of the NRCF. The two works in question, La Bourse pleine de Sens53 and La Housse partie,54 contain elements of sophistic logic, and are not without associated humour. But they are moral fables rather than fabliaux, and the distinction is traceable to the way logic figures in the plot in both instances. As with the two fables/fabliaux L’Home qui avoit Feme tencheresse and La Dame escoillee there is no clear compatibility between the narreme, which features a wife’s success in curbing her husband’s adultery, and a son’s success in exposing his father’s blinkered view of family loyalty, and the episteme which articulates the sophistic exchanges in these two fables. In both instances the sophistry involves some third party, the husband’s acquisitive concubine and the boy’s grandfather, and is devised and implemented for the purpose of teaching a moral lesson in fidelity or generosity. La Bourse pleine de Sens and La Housse partie are indistinguishable in this respect from a moral fable such as L’Home qui avoit demi Ami from the Disciplina Clericalis. A father persuades his son to seek help from his friends in concealing the alleged body of a victim he has murdered as a means of proving the degree of their commitment to the friendship. All three works are moral fables, the only difference between them being that the two accepted as fabliaux circulated independently of any synoptic framework. Exclusions on the basis of a failure to achieve fabliau form are generally applicable only to works already marginalised in prior editions or fabliau inventories. The actual publication history for each of the twenty-eight exclusions recommended is shown in Table 5.1.55 For MR and NRCF volume and initial page numbers are noted; for the critical studies of Bédier and Nykrog, the number of the work in their respective fabliau inventories. In addition to the story of Les Fers alesnes ou Pertus extracted from Dame Jouenne, two other tales from the Fables of Marie de France and from the Disciplina Clericalis qualify as fabliaux. Nykrog chose to ignore both, presumably because their non-sexual content concealed their association with other fabliaux. 53

NRCF 2: 107–49; 381–87. NRCF 3: 175–209; 430–32. 55 Schenck, Tales, pp. 68–69, excludes fourteen of the works listed here from her inventory of typical fabliaux on the basis of non-conformity to the structural model she proposes for the genre. The works excluded are La Bourse pleine de Sens, Les trois Chanoinesses de Couloigne, Les Chevaliers, les Clers et les Vilains, Du Con qui fu fait a la Besche, Dame Jouenne, Une seule Fame qui a son Cors servoit cent Chevaliers de tous Poins, La Housse partie, Fole Larguesce, Les Putains et les Lecheors, Le Roi d’Angleterre et le Jongleur d’Ely, Le Vallet aus douze Fames, Le Vallet qui d’Aise a Malaise se met, La Veuve, and Le Vilain qui n’iert pas de son Hostel Sire. 54

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Table 5.1: Publication history for excluded fabliaux Title La Bourse pleine de Sens Les trois Chanoinesses de Couloigne Les Chevaliers, les Clers et les Vilains Du Con qui fu fait a la Besche Dame Jouenne Les trois Dames de Paris La Femme qui fist pendre son Mari Une seule Fame qui a son Cors servoit cent   Chevaliers de tous Poins La Housse partie Le Jugement Le Jugement des Cons Fole Larguesce Les trois Orements Le Pré tondu Le Prestre et le Leu Le Prestre pelé Le Prestre qui dist la Passion Le Provost a l’Aumuche Les Putains et les Lecheors Le Roi d’Angleterre et le Jongleur d’Ely Saint Pierre et le Jongleur Sire Hain et Dame Anieuse Les Sohais Le Vallet aus douze Fames Le Vallet qui d’Aise a Malaise se met La Veuve Le Vilain qui conquist Paradis par Plait Le Vilain qui n’iert pas de son Hostel Sire

MR 3:67 3:137 (–) (–) (–) 3:145 (–)

Bédier 15 24 26 22 (–) 44 (–)

Nykrog (–) 22 32 36 45 51 68

NRCF 2: 107 10: 83 (–) 4: 13 (–) 10: 97 (–)

1:294 1:5 6:154 5:109 6:53 (–) 4:154 6:51 (–) 5:80 1:112 3:175 2:242 5:65 1:97 (–) 3:186 2:157 2:197 3:209 (–)

64 74 (–) 77 68 (–) 94 100 (–) 103 111 115 117 123 127 (–) 134 135 137 146 (–)

69 (–) 81 82 83 94 103 108 110 112 122 125 126 127 134 135 142 143 146 155 156

9: 201 3: 175 10: 49 4: 23 (–) (–) (–) 8: 157 (–) 8: 247 4: 35 6: 145 (–) 1: 127 2: 1 9: 135 4: 131 8: 319 (–) 5: 1 (–)

The tale from Marie de France, Le riche Humme e sa Fille, is a typical example of pattern E: S [AB], whereby the ignorance of both parties in an epistemic exchange leads to a foolish act. As in the opening sequence of Les Braies au Cordelier, the exchange between subject- and object-actants involves a material sign, and the role of the daughter, confined to the narreme, parallels that of the knight in La Vieille qui oint la Palme au Chevalier, or the courtier in La Male Honte. In the story from the Disciplina Clericalis a minstrel adds the bones from his own plate to those accumulated by a fellow diner, and then accuses his companion of gluttony. The victim of this prank responds by indicating his fellow’s empty plate, and pointing out that if he is a glutton the other minstrel is a monster who has eaten his meal bones and all. There are numerous parallels among the

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fabliaux for this particular logical development, but unlike the simple E: S [AB] structure of Le riche Humme e sa Fille, that of Les deus Menestreus is complex and will be dealt with in Chapter 7. With these twenty-eight exclusions and three additions the fabliau inventory compiled in accordance with a structural analysis based on logical exchanges is complete. It comprises 122 items, and differs no more dramatically from other attempts to define the corpus than those attempts differ from one another. The selection of texts is, however, for the first time based on clear criteria which intimately reflect narrative structure and account for a distinctive type of fabliau humour. Something needs to be said at this juncture about the selection of materials from the fable anthologies appropriated as fabliaux and included in the fabliau inventory. It has been necessary in the course of this investigation to make a distinction between narratives that belong to a literary tradition stretching back from the present day to at least as early as the second century bc in the vale of Kashmir, and those works which feature humour from the same source but form part of a group known as fabliaux confined to the francophone area of northern continental Europe and Great Britain within the limits of a slightly extended thirteenth century. Language and literary form (octosyllabic French verse) is the most obvious means for distinguishing the latter group, and provides easy identification as fabliaux for those works originally composed in Anglo-Norman or Continental northern French dialects. A problem arises with translation of works originally composed in languages other than French, and eventually achieving expression in the vernacular in the later Middle Ages. For our purposes the problem texts are the French verse translations of the Latin Disciplina Clericalis of Petrus Alphonsi. Those familiar with this text will recognise that it contains numerous tales which satisfy the linguistic, formal, and structural principles necessary for acceptance as fabliaux, but which belong rather to the literary continuum of ‘Milesian tales’ still circulating in contemporary society. The tales in question are La prode Femme bone cointise (A: 2239–2480; D: 1681–1826); L’Homme qui portoit grant Avoir (A: 2755–2960; D: 2011–2116); Le Vilain et les deux Bourgeois (A: 3114–3256; D: 2199–2266); Le Vallet qui ne mange pas Mel (D: 2287–2396); and Le Larron qui embraça le Rai de la Lune (A: 3819–3938; D: 2716–2808). Appearance of these works in French verse is aleatory. It is necessary to distinguish them from their companion pieces in the anthology which fit more comfortably into medieval French culture and which have consequently, following Per Nykrog, been incorporated into the fabliau canon in this study. The alien ancestry of the texts listed is frequently betrayed by such incidental details as the fact that the protagonists are on a pilgrimage to Mecca rather than to Rome, or that the precious object prompting the thief ’s intrigue is an exotic golden eagle rather than the mundane bolt of cloth stolen in Brifaut. Works containing such details would obviously not sit comfortably within a generic corpus conceived as the product of thirteenth-century francophone composition. Similar objections apply to the group of tales incorporated in the French

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version of The Seven Sages of Rome. Some of these are analogues of tales accepted as fabliaux from other sources, and they have occasionally been cited as providing insight into the nature of a narrative that has been the subject of detailed analysis. Several of the tales in this collection satisfy both the formal requirement that they appear in octosyllabic French verse, and that they exploit the humorous possibilities of logical confusion and false inference. However, they are all versions of tales appearing in the Disciplina Clericalis, of exempla appearing in religious texts, or of tales incorporated into the portmanteau fabliau Les trois Dames qui troverent l’Anel. There are no original compositions of the fabliau type, and no evidence, consequently, that we are dealing with the work of an author capable of perceiving beyond the limited understanding of the fabliau genre achieved by a remanieur. Where the story told by one of the philosophers defending the calumniated prince coincides with a fabliau narrative, the treatment in The Seven Sages of Rome is often much longer than the corresponding fabliau, and its excessive length is usually attributable to amplification with typically romance motifs. Such is emphatically the case with the narrative from The Seven Sages of Rome that includes the story of The substitute Bride appearing in one version of Les trois Dames qui troverent l’Anel. For these reasons versions from this source have not been added to the count of fabliaux, and no attempt has been made to incorporate them in appendices comparing versions from anthologies excluded in NRCF. Apart from the deletions and additions noted, some further anomalies with the inventories of Bédier and Nykrog are occasioned by opposing views on whether different versions of the same tale should be regarded as independent fabliau texts. The complete fabliau inventory which follows adopts the NRCF practice, perfectly in harmony with an editorial policy of printing diplomatic editions of all known fabliau materials, that a single fabliau designation should be given to all versions, even when there are substantive variants, of what can be identified as an individual tale type. There is consequently only one listing for each of the following texts reported in more than one version in Nykrog: Berengier au lonc Cul (NRCF 4: 245–77; 416–23); La Borgoise d’Orliens [and La Dame qui fist batre son Mari] (NRCF 3: 337–74; 459–65); Celui qui bota la Pierre (NRCF 6: 125–44; 332–34); Le Chevalier qui fist parler les Cons; Les trois Dames qui troverent l’Anel; Les trois Dames qui troverent un Vit; La Damoisele qui ne pooit oïr parler de foutre [and La Pucele qui abevra le Polain]; Cele qui fu foutue et desfoutue [incorporating La Grue and Le Heron] (NRCF 4: 151–87; 395–402); La Male Honte; La Nonete (NRCF 10: 33–47; 342–46); Le Prestre qui manja Mores; Le Sacristain [incorporating Le Segretain, Le Segretain Moine, and Le Soucretain] (NRCF 7: 1–189; 353–82); and Les Tresces [and La Dame qui fist entendant son Mari qu’il sonjoit] (NRCF 6: 207–58; 345–53). The number of fabliaux in the inventory is also reduced by the exclusion of texts that are too fragmentary for any decision on their logical structure to be reached. In addition to Le Jugement (NRCF 10: 49–55; 347–49) and Les trois Chanoinesses de Couloigne (NRCF 10: 83–96; 351–52), which the surviving framework would

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appear to indicate consist of indelicate reminiscences of sexual adventures without logical peripety or anagnorisis, the only texts affected are .W. (NRCF 8: 339–44; 396–97) and the newly discovered fragment Gonbaut (NRCF 10: 277–84; 379). Prior inventories have adequately accounted for the past history of publication of the fabliaux cited, and this material has not been reproduced, but numbers assigned in the NRCF are noted in parenthesis, since the numeration, rather than being alphabetical as in Bédier and Nykrog, follows an order based on the relative importance of manuscripts containing fabliau miscellanies. Where there has been some change in the bibliographical material, with the introduction of previously unrecognised texts, for example, or where new versions of such fabliaux as Le Cuvier or Le Vilain Asnier (NRCF 8: 207–14; 374–75) have recently been registered, these changes are duly documented.

6

Fabliaux Structures Part 1: Single Narreme Fabliaux Chapters 2 and 3 created an inventory of those fabliaux whose logical structure could be accounted for by one of the permutations derived from the four possibilities for actant distribution, (E), (EE), (E1) or (E2), and one of the three possibilities for logical fallacy, (AA), (AB), or (A+B). The twelve patterns produced by various combinations of these elements account for approximately half of extant fabliaux. They also account for all fabliau episodes, but the remaining fabliaux, rather than simply exploiting one of the twelve patterns to produce a complete narrative, join two or more epistemes or two or more narremes together to form a more complex structure. This chapter will deal with those fabliaux that combine two or more epistemes in a single narreme. The relationship between any two epistemes is determined by the factors mentioned in the preceding paragraph, the distribution of the actants and the nature of the logical fallacies. For two epistemes to be linked together to form a single, logically integrated narrative, at least one actant must appear in both epistemes, although not necessarily in the same actantial role. The distribution of the actants may follow any one of three possibilities: (i) The subject- and object-actants remain unchanged as between the first and second epistemes. (ii) The roles of the subject- and object-actants of the first episteme are reversed in the second episteme. (iii) One of the actants in the first episteme does not appear in the second episteme, and one of the actants in the second episteme has made no appearance in the first episteme.

For two epistemes to be linked contingently in terms of their logical fallacies, at least two of the logical terms appearing in the first episteme, the individual variant (x) and one of the class variants (A) or (B), must appear in the second episteme. The methodology should be appropriate to the ultimate aims of the study, which rather than giving a complete description of the logical and narrative structure of each individual fabliau, aims to demonstrate that every fabliau text should conform to a definitive type of conjointure. This involves combining an episteme wherein the adjuvant and opposant actants are invested according to the different responses of the subject- and object-actants to some logical ambi-

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guity, and a narreme wherein the subject- and object-actants are invested with the full range of social and moral concerns. A fairly rudimentary description of the logical structure therefore suffices to establish the major categories of episodes and to demonstrate how their combination creates more complex structures. In a group of fabliaux which combine patterns E1: S ~[AB] and E2: S ~[AB] the duper who is the subject-actant of the first episteme becomes the object-actant of the second, and the role of the victim is similarly reversed. The first episteme induces the victim to commit a logical fallacy exposed, together with the false inference generated, in the second episteme. The pattern frequently reveals some quality such as obduracy, greed, or hypocrisy that the victim would have chosen to keep hidden, and exposes the perpetrator to humiliation. The classic treatment of this theme is Jacques de Baisieux’s fabliau Le Vescie a Prestre. It recounts how a moribund village priest is pestered by Jacobin friars to make a donation to their order, even at the expense of rescinding some of the arrangements already made for the charitable dispensation of his goods. He promises, if they will commit to returning the next day to receive their gift in a small public ceremony, to give them ‘something for which he would not accept a thousand marks’. The Jacobins depart highly elated at the prospect of receiving a treasure. They have reached the invalid and erroneous conclusion that unwillingness to accept a thousand marks for something implies that its value equals or exceeds that amount. Their fallacy is exposed when, to their mortification, they discover that the priest’s bequest is actually his bladder. The distribution of the actants accords with stipulation (ii), and the logical variables (x), (A), and (B) are the same in both epistemes. The fully invested narreme contrasts the callous and acquisitive Jacobins with the benign and charitable priest, whose intention, as a good shepherd of his flock, is to dispose of his worldly goods to the benefit of the poor and needy of his parish. The material gift of the priest’s bladder takes place along the axis of communication in the narreme to bring the narrative to satisfactory closure, and the narreme must also register, as destinataires of the message revealing the Jacobins’ avarice, the presence at the presentation ceremony of the abbot, and the mayor and aldermen of the village. Les Fers alesnes ou Pertus conforms to the same logical pattern, and contrasts the long-suffering husband with his virago wife as Jacques de Baisieux’s fabliau contrasted the priest and the Jacobins. In Aristote et Alixandre the philosopher criticises his ward for spending too much time in amorous dalliance with his Indian mistress, and forbids him her  Aristote et Alixandre is discussed in two articles by Storost, ‘Zur Aristoteles-Sage’, and ‘Femme chevalchat Aristote’. In discussing the factors that led to the establishment of the fabliau inventory for the NRCF, Boogaard, ‘Le Nouveau Recueil Complet des Fabliaux’, n. 17, listed twenty-four texts to be rejected from MR. His decision as regards twenty of these works is unexceptionable, but open to question in the case of four others, Le Pré tondu, Le Prestre qui fu mis au Lardier, L’Espervier, and Aristote et Alixandre. Arguments for the retention in the fabliau canon of the first three of these are given in conjunction with discussion of their logical structure. Identification of Aristote et Alixandre as a lai, however, raises some specific issues.

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company. Peeved at the neglect she subsequently suffers, the girl tempts Aristotle into a ludicrous demonstration to a concealed Alexander that he has succumbed to her charms, and the philosopher permits an exultant young woman to saddle, bridle, and ride him around the garden. His folly in allowing himself to be deceived is made clear when Alexander appears to mock his master’s behaviour: ‘Maistre,’ dist li rois, ‘que volez? Ge voi bien que vos cheva[u]chiez. Conment? estes vos forsenez, Qui en tel point vos maintenez?’

Aristotle reasons falsely that requesting some épreuve d’amour implies a romantic attachment, but Alexander’s appearance shows the deduction to be erroneous. In a further development Aristotle protests that his concern was justified, since his young ward’s vulnerability to love’s enticements must be greater than that of an aged philosopher. This rhetorical rather than logically contingent development, however, does not derive directly from the premises of the core episteme. Aristotle’s protest does not affect the logical structure, or compromise the close parallel between his fallacious reasoning and that of the Jacobins in Le Vescie a Prestre or of the wife in Les Fers alesnes ou Pertus. Aristote et Alixandre differs from the first two examples of the type in that the subject-actant of the first episteme and the object-actant of the second are comprised of two individuals, Alexander and his Indian mistress working in collusion. Like the other narratives in this group, the story exposes some unflattering aspect of the victim’s personality, the hypocrisy of a character who opposes any amorous liaison on the part of his ward, but who is shown by a deceitful conspiracy to be vulnerable to the very offences he has condemned. The editors of the NRCF mistakenly chose to exclude Aristote et Alixandre from their fabliau inventory because its courtly style, and designation as a lai, placed it in a generic category distinct from that of fabliau. That Aristote et

 ‘ “Master,” said the king, “What are you up to? I can clearly see that some horseplay is involved. What’s the problem? Are you mad, that you are behaving in this way?” ’ (vv. 462–65).  Courtly tone in itself cannot be considered a barrier, since many narratives enjoying an accepted place within the fabliau canon exhibit it. Nykrog, Fabliaux, p. 74 remarks that ‘dans … [les contes comme Le Chevalier qui recovra l’Amour …, Aristote, Auberée, etc.] tout, langage, sentiments, actions, est presque strictement conforme aux exigences courtois’.  The critical factor in excluding Aristote et Alixandre is one of literary terminology according to Noomen, ‘Qu’est-ce qu’un Fabliau?’, pp. 430–31. ‘A l’intérieur de l’ensemble des genres narratifs courts, [le lai … est] un type bien constitué. Il est en particulier fort probable que dans la nomenclature médiévale, les termes de ‘lai’ et de ‘fabliau’ sont dans un rapport d’exclusion.’ This generic bifurcation is less clear-cut than Noomen suggests, however, and is complicated by the fact that generic labels often appear only in incipits and explicits. If these are accorded authority, then the ‘rapport d’exclusion’ between the terms lai and fabliau breaks down in the MS. B. N. fr. 1553 version of Auberee, which begins with the rubric Li lais

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Alixandre is indistinguishable structurally from the second episode of L’Evesque qui beneï le Con, a typical fabliau in both structure and style, argues for its inclusion, although hierarchical ordering of the properties invoked to determine genre is a vexed question. The designation lai in the title of Henri’s narrative has been taken as evidence that he composed his work on the pattern of a non-fabliau generic model, but Henri’s modifications to conventional fabliau style did not confuse his contemporaries as to the generic identity of his work, since three of the surviving six exemplars of Aristote et Alixandre appear in the great fabliau miscellanies responsible in large measure for establishing the definitive characteristics of the genre. The earliest critical assessment of the genre discussed Aristote et Alixandre as an exemplary fabliau, and its fabliau status remained unchallenged until the appearance of the NRCF. There is clearly a clerical cast to Aristote et Alixandre, unsurprisingly since Henri d’Andeli may have been a member of the entourage of Eudes Rigaud, archbishop of Rouen, and was closely linked to chancellor Philippe of the university

de dame aubree, but concludes with two references to the work as a fabliau (v. 530: ‘Par cest fabliel vous wel prouer,’ and v. 537: ‘Jchi nostre fabliaus define’). If incipits and explicits are denied authority, then claims for the lai-status of Aristote et Alixandre are considerably weakened. Rather than being barred because the terms ‘fabliau’ and ‘lai’ are mutually exclusive, Aristote et Alixandre and L’Espervier should be admitted because definitive features of the two genres exclude their classification as lais, which are conventionally Breton or Arthurian in their setting, and feature an ‘adventure’ where ‘l’élément merveilleux’ plays an important part. Fabliaux are generally vaguely medieval, or classical with some medieval colouration. They eschew magic in favour of mundane realism except for the few instances, such as Le Chevalier qui fist parler les Cons, where the typical subject matter of the lai is deliberately parodied. The narrative contours of lais illustrate the ennobling effects of courtly love doctrine if they are straightforwardly ideological, and the damaging consequences of adulterous liaisons if written from a more cynical perspective. The lais of Marie de France establish the criteria for the former group, while Le Chevalier a l’Epée, Le Lai du Cor, Le Mantel mautaillé, and Le Lai d’Ignaurès reflect those of the latter. Erotic fabliaux feature an amorous intrigue involving conspiracy and misrepresentation in a search for sensual gratification or material gain. Invalid logical inferences play an important, indeed essential part in the proceedings, a factor that helps explain why the author of the Sophistici elenchi fits perfectly into a fabliau, but would be an alien figure in any conceivable courtly lai. Minimal deviation in verse form can be discounted as significant in the rejection of Aristote et Alixandre, particularly in light of the similar exclusion of the equally courtly L’Espervier, which consistently respects the metrical conventions. Bédier, Fabliaux, p.35, and following him Nykrog, Fabliaux, p. 217, offer a perfectly reasonable explanation for the choice of the term lai by these poets, that they chose this designation to avoid the stigma attached to the designation fabliau by virtue of its association with scurrility.  The issue is discussed by Rychner, ‘Les fabliaux’, pp. 45–46. Rychner acknowledges the difficulty of deciding whether to accord ‘plus d’importance au fond qu’à la forme, au sujet qu’au style.’ Assumptions about genre determine the hierarchies, but equally assumptions about hierarchies determine the genre, so that arguments are unavoidably circular. Regarding Aristote et Alixandre as a fabliau automatically promotes the importance of structure above that of style, which in any event would seem to be in free variation among the fabliaux.  See Caylus, ‘Mémoire sur les Fabliaux’.

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of Paris, whom Henri lauded as ‘le meilleur clerc de France.’ This association manifests itself in numerous ways, one of which, in distinction from the majority of fablëors, is the author’s doctrinaire avoidance of indecorous speech. The need to justify such a departure from standard practice makes sense only if the author were aware that he was composing in a genre where the occurrence of obscene diction was commonplace. Clerical intent is also suggested by the author’s deliberate attempt to raise the level of literary artistry in treating materials generally considered popular and ephemeral. Henri’s break with the standard practice of the vast majority of fabliau authors is minimal, and consists of introducing into his narrative several brief lyric interludes, three rondeaux and some verses from a chanson de toile. Since most of the works employing this particular device were courtly romances, Henri’s intention was undoubtedly to appeal to a sophisticated audience whose appreciation of his work would thereby be enhanced.10 Le Pescheor de Pont seur Saine11 provides another example of the logical pattern of the fabliaux in this group. A fisherman’s wife adamantly insists that the sexual side of their marriage is the only repugnant aspect of what would otherwise be an ideal relationship. Suspicious that his wife is hypocritically assuming an attitude which she does not genuinely endorse, the husband has an opportunity to test the validity of her professed sentiments when presented one day in the course of his fishing with the body of a drowned priest. He severs the dead man’s penis, and on his return home casts it on the floor of his house, declaring that he personally has been the victim of a mutilation. The wife is horrified at this development, and exposing her true sentiments declares their marriage over. At this juncture, having provoked the reaction he sought, the husband reveals himself whole and sexually unimpaired, the wife accepts the new condition of honesty into which she has been forced by guile, and domestic bliss is restored. It is interesting to compare Le Pescheor de Pont seur Saine with a fabliau considered earlier among those with a single epistemic development, Le Fevre de Creeil. Both narratives deal with wives who pretend to experience revulsion at the very  Bédier’s remark, Fabliaux, p. 387, that Henri’s Bataille des Sept Arts was certainly written for ‘des prélats ou des chanoines très lettrés’ would apply equally to Aristote et Alixandre. The author’s clerical status helps explain the treatment of Aristotle in this fabliau according to Corbellari, ‘Aristote le bestourné’, pp. 161–85.  Lines 45–58 of Aristote et Alixandre assert the principle. They are quoted by Muscatine, The Old French Fabliaux, p. 387 in illustration of what Muscatine identifies as a newly emergent definition of decency. Muscatine’s view that obscenity was increasingly marginalised by evolving standards of propriety associated with courtly culture is reiterated in ‘The Fabliaux, courtly Culture’. Bloch, ‘Modest Maids’, argues to the contrary for the co-existence of the courtly and the obscene.  Delbouille, Aristote, pp. 21–29 dates Henri’s poem from 1225–1230, and argues therefore that it was one of the earliest narratives to use the technique of lyric insertion. During this period the rondeaux incorporated in Aristote et Alixandre were in vogue, and the archaic chanson de toile was still making an appearance in the earliest works using embedded lyrics of this kind. 10 Ladd, ‘Attitude toward Lyric’. 11 NRCF 4: 107–29; 383–89.

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idea of the physical aspects of sexual intercourse, as expressed by the wife in the latter instance: ‘ “Quar parlez a moi d’autre chose!” / Fet cele, cui samble qu’el hee / Ce dont ele est si embrasee’.12 Each is nevertheless exposed through some trick of her husband’s to be so lubriciously devoted to the activity that she cannot tolerate a marriage from which it is excluded, or resist the temptation to seek gratification of her desires in an adulterous liaison. The narremes for both fabliaux will therefore be closely parallel, but their epistemic development could hardly be more different. The logical element in Le Fevre de Creeil is skeletal, consisting simply in one minimally embellished lie. Interest in the tale depends on typically fabliau amplification, a thirty-line description of the genitals of the smith’s assistant Gautier, full of physical hyperbole and outrageous simile. By contrast, Le Pescheor de Pont seur Saine contains one of the most elaborate coups de théâtre in the fabliau canon. Le Fevre de Creeil ends with the husband beating his wife with a stick until he is too tired to continue, and concludes with a typically monitory epimythium: ‘Par cest example vueil moustrer / C’on doit ainçois le leu huer / Des bestes qu’il i soit venuz’.13 A complex of factors suggests a tale conceived in the spirit earlier associated with fable traditions. The story is presented as an ‘example’ to an audience apparently comprised exclusively of married men. Most importantly there is an implied assumption that women act in response to animalistic biological imperatives, to be controlled by a physically violent response. Le Pescheor de Pont seur Saine ends on a note of restored contentment with the wife tacitly acknowledging physical requirements not essentially different from those of the wife in Le Fevre de Creeil, but provoking from the author (vv. 197–214) an ironic acceptance rather than the paranoia of the latter text.14 Finally, fabliaux that combine patterns E1: S ~[AB] and E2: S ~[AB] to expose some defect concealed by the victim include La Dame qui se venja du Chevalier.15 The initial offence is created by the lover’s impudent question, ‘Madame, croitriez vos noiz?’16 posed at a sexually inopportune moment. The lady’s vengeance for this violation of courtly etiquette involves the full pattern of temptation to commit a fallacy followed by exposure to ridicule.17 Having invited the errant 12 ‘ “Please change the subject!” she said, pretending to hate what in fact she was so obsessed with’ (vv. 70–72). 13 ‘I want to show by this example that of the beasts who beat a path to one’s door one must thus drive away the wolf ’ (vv. 173–75). 14 Le Pescheor de Pont seur Saine is designated a fablel rather than an example, is clearly addressed to a mixed audience, and concludes on a much more liberal note than Le Fevre de Creil. The latter fabliau has some exuberant if rather crass humour, but lacks the quality of wit associated with a more complex logical development. The idea that Le Pescheor de Pont seur Saine expresses a liberal attitude towards sexuality is urged by Nykrog, ‘Obscene or Not Obscene’. 15 NRCF 7: 331–50; 410–11. 16 ‘Lady, are you cracking nuts?’ 17 Not all narratives which expose a hypocritical attitude require some prior temptation to commit a fallacy. For example, a prototypically hypocritical abbess in La Nonete condemns a

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lover into her bed while her husband is away hunting, she deliberately retains him there until her husband’s anticipated return. The lover wants to flee immediately, but she restrains him with a criticism indicating precisely where her machinations are headed: ‘Gesez tot coi, por moie amour: / N’en avrez pis que la peour!’18 She organises an elaborate coup de théâtre meant to convince her lover that she plans to expose him, offering him a drink as he cowers beside the bed: ‘Sire courtois, / Bevez et puis si croisiez nois!’19 She then sends her husband to fetch his sword, and promises on his return to show him who has spent more time between her thighs in the last week than he has. She finally defuses the tension by revealing that she has been talking about her nightdress. The epistemic formula resembles that for Le Vescie a Prestre, but the investment of actants differs significantly from Jacques de Baisieux’s fabliau. A group of friars rather than a single individual represent the O1 and S2 actants, but they respond identically to the revelation that the proposed gift is the priest’s bladder. In La Dame qui se venja du Chevalier O1 and S2 also comprise two people, the husband and the lover, but their reactions to the wife’s revelation are very different. The husband, essentially unaffected by the episode, regards it as a joke. The lover, by contrast, totally abashed and relieved to have escaped with his life, is smuggled out through the garden, aware that his initial folly has led to his exposure as a poltroon, and to the loss of his mistress’s affections. Humiliation of the pusillanimous lover is clearly the major motif in the episode, the fooling of the husband incidental except insofar as it helps the wife achieve her main objective, and facilitates the lover’s escape. The investment of actants differentiates, at the level of the narreme, fabliaux which may share the same epistemic structure, but deal with different subject matters and have a distinct basis for their humour. The same logical structure occurs in Guillaume au Faucon,20 which unlike Aristote et Alixandre takes the idea of the épreuve d’amour seriously. Although the pattern of enticement to commit and then to expose a fallacy is the same as in La Dame qui se venja du Chevalier, and similar characters of husband and lover are the victims of deception, the outcome is different. The wife’s threat to expose the ‘grant honte’ of Guillaume’s visit to her bedchamber during her husband’s absence is initially understood by both husband and lover to refer to an actual novice for brazenly flaunting her romantic attachments although guilty herself of conducting an illicit affair with the father confessor of the convent. She inadvertently dons her lover’s trousers as a headdress before a delegation of nuns, with fatal results for her pretence to be a strict disciplinarian opposed to louche behaviour. The pattern of unwitting abandonment and unwitting seizure of the telltale trousers, followed by the expected foolish act, is the same as that for Les Braies le Priestre, with the delegation of nuns assuming the part played by the peasant’s market companions in Jean de Condé’s fabliau. A brief version of the story from Renart le Contrefait is recorded by Raynaud, ‘La Nonnette’. 18 ‘If you love me lie quite still: nothing worse than being frightened will happen to you! (vv. 92–93). 19 ‘Sir Courteous, drink up and afterwards crack nuts!’ (vv. 144–45). 20 NRCF 8: 215–45; 376–79.

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sexual solicitation. However, when she mendaciously claims that it was in fact a request to be given the husband’s falcon, the husband is fooled into feeling relieved, while the lover realises the wife’s lie promises him some reward for his intrepid pursuit of her sexual favours. In Guillaume au Faucon the husband rather than the lover suffers a reversal of fortune, and his cheerful indifference at the outcome is attributable to ignorance of what has actually transpired. The lover’s better-informed understanding allows him an exultant escape from the episode. This separation of husband and lover in their reactions to the wife’s machinations initiates another logical exchange, this time conforming to pattern (EE). Once the sophistical association between the wife’s sexual favours and the falcon has been established, an association confirmed by the obscene pun on falcon and faux con, the wife and lover can talk about one as though they were talking about the other. When the wife urges the husband to honour the gift of the falcon, and announces that, ‘Deus besanz valent un mangon’,21 these statements have a meaning for her and Guillaume that is hidden from her husband. The ambiguity of her remark and its implications are subsequently spelled out by the author: Ce fu bien dit: deus moz a un, Que il en avroit deus por un. Et cil si ot ainz l’endemain Le faucon dont il ot tel faim, Et de la dame son deduit, Qu’il ama mielz que autre fruit.22

In Le Vescie a Prestre ambiguity is emphatically resolved when the priest reveals that the item for which he would not accept a large sum of money is his bladder. In Guillaume au Faucon ambiguity between gifts of a falcon and the wife’s sexual favours is allowed to remain unresolved, and makes possible the (EE) episteme with which this fabliau concludes. The narreme confirms that the husband’s actantial role as the victim of a conspiracy between the wife and her lover is identical to that of the knight in Cele qui se fist foutre, or of the father in La Damoisele qui ne pooit oïr parler de foutre. Two of a small group of fabliaux, Le Chevalier qui recovra l’Amor de sa Dame23 and Jean de Condé’s Le Pliçon feature the same cast of characters as Guillaume au Faucon, and conclude with similar brief (EE) epistemes that serve to unite wife and lover in their successful opposition to the husband. They differ in that the initial episode features an (E1) episteme with an elaborate coup de théâtre. 21

‘Two besants are worth one mangon’ (v. 607). ‘That was well said, two words for one, that the outcome would give him two for one. And that is what he gets before the next day, the falcon for which he was so hungry, and his pleasure of the lady, which he enjoyed more than other fruit’ (vv. 608–13). 23 NRCF 7: 239–53; 392–93. 22

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Le Chevalier qui recovra l’Amor de sa Dame, like Guillaume au Faucon, features an épreuve d’amour with serious implication. The duper is the lover rather than the wife, but the husband is again the victim. A knight seeking the love of a married lady is urged to make some demonstration of his martial prowess if he wishes to win her favours. He defeats her husband in a tournament, and is awarded an assignation, but worn out with his exertions he falls asleep waiting for his lady’s arrival. Outraged, she returns to her husband’s bed, and instructs a maid-in-waiting to dismiss the knight with the news that she never wishes to see him again. He is not easily dissuaded, however, but claiming to be the ghost of a knight slain in the tournament enters the marital bedroom with drawn sword, and begs the lady’s forgiveness for an offence which is prohibiting his soul from resting easy. The credulous husband urges his wife to do as requested, and she eventually forgives the petitioner in a brief, three-line passage: ‘ “Certes, or vos iert pardoné,” / Fait la dame, “dan chevalier: / Ne vos voil or plus traveillier!” ’24 Her statement constitutes an (EE) exchange parallel to that in Guillaume au Faucon, since it has significance for the knight not shared by the husband.25 In Le Pliçon a husband returns unexpectedly and surprises his wife in bed with her lover. She accuses him of discourteously spying on her activities, and asks him how he would have responded had he caught her with a man in her bed. He says he would have killed them both with his sword, but she says he is making no allowance for how she might have reacted. She therewith throws her nightdress over his head, encourages her hidden lover to make himself scarce, and laughingly pretends that abetting her lover to escape was merely make-believe: ‘ “Or est il,” fait elle, “escapés: / Huimais ne sera atrapés.” ’26 The wife’s words and actions have a different significance for the lover than for the husband, and while the device of temporarily blinding the husband is as crude as the action of the wife in La Femme qui charma son Mari, the lover’s presence adds a quality of wit to Jean de Condé’s fabliau only faintly present in the story from the Disciplina Clericalis.27 In each of the fabliaux in the preceding group consistency of the class ­variables 24 ‘ “Rest assured sir knight,” said the lady, “that now you will be forgiven. I don’t want to drag out your punishment!” ’ (vv. 237–39). 25 The motif of the épreuve d’amour crops up in a number of fabliaux, but in a different form in different circumstances. When the intent is to expose some vice to ridicule, the hypocrisy of Aristotle and the bishop in Aristote et Alixandre and L’Evesque qui beneï le Con, or the vulgarity of the squire in La Gageure, the lover is persuaded to commit some bizarre act in the presence of hidden observers. The lover is the intended victim, and no husband is involved. When the intent is for the lover to persuade a reluctant lady to grant him her sexual favours despite the opposition of her husband, the épreuve d’amour may take the form of an adamant refusal on the lover’s part to comply with his lady’s expressed wishes, to abandon a hunger strike in Guillaume au Faucon, or to obey instructions to avoid seeing her again in Le Chevalier qui recovra l’Amor de sa Dame. Initially the lover may be victimised by the lady’s intrigue, but the ultimate victim is her husband. 26 ‘ “Now he has escaped,” she said, “he will never be caught” ’ (vv. 100–1). 27 For the background to both these narratives see Söderhjelm, ‘Oculus – Linteus’.

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(A) and (B) guarantees logical contingency. This is also a feature of a second group of narratives that follow an episteme of type E1: S ~[AB] with one of type E: S [AB]. Some trick practiced in an initial episode creates the circumstances whereby a sign inadvertently given and misinterpreted gives rise to some foolish act. This combination is illustrated in two distinct but logically identical fabliaux, the anonymous Le Meunier et les deus Clers, and Jean Bodel’s Gombert et les deus Clers. The first story relates how two clerks apply to grind corn at the local mill. They are forced, by the miller’s successful trick to steal their horse and their corn, to spend the night at the miller’s house, where they resolve to revenge themselves on their host by seducing his wife and daughter. When one of the clerks leaves the bed they are sharing to make love to the daughter, his fellow devises a scheme to seduce the wife. When she gets up during the night to relieve herself, he switches a cradle from the foot of her bed to the foot of his own, and alerts her to the altered arrangement by tweaking the ear of her infant to make him cry out. Enticed into committing the consequens fallacy, the miller’s wife climbs into bed with the second clerk. Gombert et les deus Clers follows roughly the same pattern, although the lodging is casual and unmotivated, the husband gets up during the night, and the clerk who has shifted the cradle has to switch beds to join the wife. Both narratives begin, therefore, with the standard pattern for a consequens fallacy, the victims in each instance reasoning that the bed with a cradle at its foot is the bed they just left. Unfortunately, while the second clerk is still making merry with the wife, the first clerk returns from seducing the daughter. In Le Meunier et les deus Clers he approaches what he supposes to be the bed he abandoned, but discovering the cradle at its foot, and realising that it is occupied by a man and a woman, he concludes that his night’s activities have addled his brain, and makes for the other bed. In Gombert et les deus Clers he returns to his own bed, ignores the cradle at its foot, and seeing it occupied by the one person he assumes to be his fellow clerk, climbs in. In both instances, of course, he joins his host. The foolish act follows when he decides to chide his companion for his inactivity, and describes his own adventuring in sexually graphic detail. The exchange in Gombert et les deus Clers is as follows: ‘Par le cuer Dieu, je vien de foutre, Mes que ce fu la fille a l’oste! Sin ai pris deriere et encoste; Afeuré li ai son tonnel.’28

In the case of these two fabliaux the clerk responsible for the trick that deceives the miller or his wife creates the false sign that deceives his fellow clerk, although 28 ‘By God’s heart I’ve just come from fucking, with none other than the host’s daughter! I took her backwards and sideways. I broached her barrel!’ (vv. 152–55).

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these actions are deliberate in the first instance and unwitting in the second. The investment of the individual variable (x) and the two class variables (A) and (B) is unchanged in the second episteme. The distribution of actants, however, is in accordance with type (iii) not previously encountered, since one of the actants O1, the miller’s wife, makes no appearance in the second episteme, while the clerk who is actant O2 in the second episteme has made no appearance in the first. The fabliau nevertheless belongs unequivocally with those where the sequence of epistemes is logically contingent, and constitutes a single narreme. The pattern reflected in the two preceding fabliaux also characterises another group of analogous narratives comprising the fabliaux Les trois Boçus, Les quatre Prestres, and Estormi. Les trois Boçus records how the wife of a hunchback entertains three hunchback minstrels in contravention of her husband’s prohibition against admitting anyone to the house in his absence. Surprised by his unexpected return, she hides the three minstrels in the base of a bed, only to discover when attempting to release them after her husband’s departure that all three have suffocated. She persuades a passing odd-job man to carry the corpse of one hunchback in a sack to a nearby river, but when he returns to claim his fee she produces the second corpse, and accuses him of permitting the return of the first. Convinced that he is dealing with a revenant, the porter takes the second body, and subsequently the third, and disposes of them in the same way as the first. On returning from this last expedition, he accidentally encounters the woman’s hunchback husband, and supposing this is the dead minstrel returning for the third time, kills him.29 Les quatre Prestres tells approximately the same story in a brief, eighty-line account. Three dead priests killed by a woman’s husband replace the hunchback minstrels. They are successively thrown into a marl pit. Finally, awakened by the approach of a fourth priest who innocently planned to warm himself at his fire, the odd-job merchant charged with disposing of the bodies wrestles with what he supposes is the revenant dead priest, and they both fall to their deaths in the pit. Estormi, at six hundred and thirty lines, is by far the most elaborate version of the motif, but the basic plot remains the same, most of the amplification being attributable to an incompetently wordy style and an extended portrait of the character Estormi responsible for disposing of the corpses. As in Les quatre Prestres, the victims are again three guilty priests who lust after an impoverished wife, and the innocent victim of the usual misapprehension. The logical elements in the three narratives are very similar, the same victim committing the same fallacy in confusing, on the basis of accidental qualities (being a hunchback; wearing clerical robes) the substantial reality of several discrete dead bodies and one living person. 29 With reference to this tale Bédier, Fabliaux, p. 246, makes a most perceptive observation on fabliau structure: ‘Tout le conte parait imaginé pour cet épisode final, si imprévu, si logique pourtant. Cette forme, machinée comme une élégante combinaison d’échecs et qui nous procure le plaisir d’une équation finement résolue, est évidemment sortie d’un seul jet de l’esprit du premier inventeur.’

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The sequence of episodes is similar to that in Le Meunier et les deus Clers and Gombert et les deus Clers, the only difference being in the distribution of actants. In Les trois Boçus and its analogues the consistent role is played by the object- rather than the subject-actant. This difference may in part account for the very different tone of the two sets of foolish acts. That the arrogant ingenuity of the students in Le Meunier et les deus Clers and Gombert et les deus Clers should result in one of them recounting to his host his activities with his host’s daughter promotes a sense of poetic justice. Although the unintended confidence precipitates a free-for-all in which the aggrieved parent receives a sound beating, the humour of the foolish act is unimpaired. However, it is more difficult to accept as comic such events as the random murder, sometimes described in brutally lurid detail, of innocents who are the victims of a misconception. Closely allied with the preceding group of fabliaux, but featuring a combination of epistemes EE: S [AA] followed by E: ~[AA] rather than E1: ~[AB] followed by E: [AB] is the fabliau Celui qui bota la Pierre. A priest ‘threatens’ to fuck a wife if she persists in kicking a stone, and carries out the ‘punishment’ when she defies his interdiction. The exchange is clearly meant to obfuscate the distinction between imposed punishment and voluntary compliance, and conforms to the standard epistemic pattern featured in Cele qui se fist foutre or La Damoisele qui ne pooit oïr parler de foutre. However, confusion between punishment and voluntary collaboration here serves only as a ploy in a sexual negotiation meant to mitigate a wife’s guilt rather than circumvent the opposition of a blocking character. Instead of concluding with the triumph of the coconspirators, the sexual negotiation provokes a foolish act by an infant whose naivety leads him to suppose that punishment and voluntary acquiescence are discrete phenomena. He consequently warns his father not to touch the stone lest the priest deal with him as he did with his mother. One extant version of the fabliau ends inconclusively, but the other records how the husband harshly punishes his wife for the infidelity that his son has inadvertently exposed: Sa fame prist par les cheveus, Si la rue a terre et traïne; Le pié li met sor la poitrine, Si la bat et foule; si dist: ‘Ha, fame, ja Deus ne t’aïst, Ne ne consaut ne ne te voie!’30

At the conclusion of a successful (EE) episteme, the narreme would normally reflect the success of the protagonists in outwitting the character whose attitudes the ploy was meant to circumvent. In this instance, however, the usefulness of 30 ‘He grabbed his wife by her hair, threw her to the ground and dragged her around. He placed his foot on her chest, and beat and abused her, and said, “Woman, may God never help you, nor come to your assistance, nor have anything to do with you!” ’ (vv. 98–103).

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the equivocation is restricted to the adulterous couple. Rather than fostering the triumph of the errant pair over the actant imported into the narreme, the result more closely approximates that appropriate to the (E) pattern where an authority figure intervenes to restore order. That intervention is usually benign, but in this instance the husband restores order by punishing the wife for her deviant behaviour. The logical pattern whereby an assumption based on a consequens fallacy is sophistically disproved by some demonstration involving a further consequens fallacy occurs in several embryonic fabliaux already examined in Chapter 4, two by Marie de France and one from the Disciplina Clericalis. The same pattern recurs in a number of later fabliaux, also dealt with extensively in Chapter 4. This group differs from those treated above because only one of the class variables is carried forward to the second episteme. Typically an episteme of type E: S [AB] is followed by an episteme of type E2: S ~[AB]. This pattern is featured in L’Espervier.31 A married woman’s lover sends his servant to alert the lady to a planned visit. She, however, involves the servant in the preparation of her toilet, and overwhelmed by the lady’s beauty and the intimacy of the situation he rashly reveals his passion for her. She rejects his advances peremptorily, but in the course of their altercation the lover arrives, and the lady persuades the servant to conceal himself. The lover is in his turn interrupted by the appearance of the lady’s husband, who is naturally suspicious to discover a stranger in his house, and ready to draw the obvious conclusion that he has detected his wife in the conduct of an adulterous affair. However, she offers an alternative explanation for the stranger-knight’s presence. His servant disobeyed his instructions and released his hawk (espervier) with the result that the bird was lost. Furious with his servant, the knight pursued him to the lady’s house, where he had sought refuge. Taken in by this ruse the husband accepts the explanation. Its validity is apparently confirmed when the lady reveals the presence of the terrified servant. L’Espervier is excluded from the NRCF fabliau inventory on the same basis as Aristote et Alixandre. An incipit describes it as a lai, ‘C’est le lay de l’Espervier’, and this designation is repeated in an extended explicit where the reference can be considered contextual: Li lays de l’Espervier a non Qui trés bien fet à remembrer. Le conte en ai oï conter, Mès onques n’en oï la note En harpe fere ne en rote.32

31 This thoroughly courtly narrative was included in his fabliau inventory by Nykrog (61), but has been excluded by the editors of the NRCF. The text is taken from MR 5: 43–51. 32 ‘It is called The Lay of the Sparrow-hawk, which is well worth remembering. I heard its story related, but I never heard the tune played on a harp or fiddle.’

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This could be a significant reference, but its significance is diminished by the evident uncertainty of the poet about his own use of literary terminology. He twice refers to his poem as an ‘aventure’, a term that occurs frequently as a designation for fabliaux from both the courtly and less courtly ends of the stylistic scale. The author claims to have heard the poem recited, but seems to feel that if it were genuinely a lay he would have heard it chanted with musical accompaniment. As with Aristote et Alixandre, arguments for rejection from the fabliau canon, unconvincing in themselves, are rendered moot by the fact that structure is the transcendent criterion governing generic identification in the current study, and L’Espervier emphatically qualifies as a fabliau on that basis. Not only does it conform as regards its logical structure with a large group of associated fabliaux, but in surface texture it closely parallels another member of this group, L’Espée. All the examples of the E: S [AB] and E2: S ~[AB] pattern mentioned in this section involve a husband’s invalidly derived but well-founded suspicions about his wife’s infidelity, and her invalid and untrue proposal of some innocent explanation for the circumstances prompting him to question her loyalty. The logical pattern also appears in narratives with a different surface texture, as illustrated by Gauteron et Marion.33 Rather than discovering his wife in an act of infidelity, Gauteron is led to suspect by events on his marriage night that Marion was not a virgin, arguing invalidly that lack of evidence for the loss of virginity implies that virginity had already been lost. Penetration was so violent, however, that Marion inadvertently broke wind. She counters her husband’s accusation with the argument that her virginity would have been lost at initial intercourse, and therefore that something lost at initial intercourse was her virginity. Marion’s sophistical defence has an unforeseen consequence in that it prompts Gauteron to declare that no girl should guard her virginity too long lest it start to smell bad. Like Aristotle’s remarks at the conclusion of the narrative in which he figures, Gauteron’s statement is primarily a rhetorical reflection on the whole episode. Les Perdriz34 begins in a manner parallel to L’Oue au Chapelain when a gluttonous wife eats two partridges entrusted to her to prepare for her husband, herself, and the village priest. Challenged to produce the birds, she declares that they were stolen by the priest invited to partake of them. The fabliau therefore begins with the two epistemes characteristic of this group, E: S [AB] followed by E2: S ~[AB]. In this more complex narrative demonstration of the invalidity of the husband’s argument does not suffice to exculpate the wife. She must account for the disappearance of a material object, and like the clerk caught in similar circumstances in L’Oue au Chapelain must devise some authenticating evidence to support her lie. This she accomplishes by introducing two other exchanges of type E1: S ~[AB]. In the first she instructs her husband to sharpen his knife preparatory to carving the birds, and in the second warns the priest that her 33 34

NRCF 8: 127–32; 361. NRCF 4: 1–12; 365.

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husband is sharpening his knife preparatory to castrating his guest (vv. 83–89). The priest’s flight appears to confirm the wife’s claim that he is absconding with the partridges, and provides the embellishment necessary to make her lie seem convincing. Her machinations also generate a final E: S [AA] exchange between the fleeing priest and the pursuing husband. The priest supposes that the husband refers to his guest’s testicles, while the husband supposes that he is referring to the partridges: ‘Ainsi nes en porterez mie!’ Puis s’escrie a granz alenees: ‘Bien les en portez eschaufees, Ça les lerez se vous ataing!’35

The episteme sets the stage for the narreme that will register the wife’s triumph over her husband and the priest. She does not, naturally, intervene to resolve the confusion that the misunderstanding has promoted between them, but profits from it to confirm her exculpation from any charge of gluttony. A further group of logically contingent fabliaux retain only one of the class variables from the first episteme in the second and succeeding epistemes. They exploit the ‘biter bit’ motif, and achieve their reversal of fortune because some proposition advanced by the duper implies another proposition that can later be turned to the advantage of the initial victim. In L’Enfant qui fu remis au Soleil a wife presents a new-born infant to her husband returning after a two-year absence, and tells him that she conceived from swallowing a snowflake. Up to this point logical developments are identical to those in La Dame qui fist trois Tors. The husband’s argument involves the consequens fallacy that giving birth to a child implies prior sexual intercourse, while the wife counters this argument with a consequens fallacy of her own, that giving birth to a child may imply conceiving from a snowflake. The wife cannot manufacture any evidence to support her claim, but she invents a pseudo-romantic explanation of the circumstances surrounding her pregnancy. More importantly, as was pointed out in the Introduction, her preposterous account gains credibility from the virgin birth of Christ. The exchanges up to this point therefore conform to the standard pattern E: S [AB] followed by E2: S ~[AB]. Husbands in both fabliaux appear to accept their wives’ sophistical and invalid arguments, but the acceptance is genuine only in La Dame qui fist trois Tors. The sceptical husband in L’Enfant qui fu remis au Soleil pushes the logical development in a new direction by rejecting his wife’s account while pretending to accept it. Although he waits fifteen years to exact vengeance, he eventually does so by selling the woman’s illegitimate son into slavery, and accounting for his 35 ‘ “There’s no way you are going to make off with them like this!” Then he cried out in a loud voice: “You are well advised to make off with them while they are still warm. You’ll leave them here if I catch up with you” ’ (vv. 116–19).

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disappearance by claiming that crossing a high mountain at noon in the hot sun he melted. Demonstrating the invalidity of the assumption that absence from the house necessarily implies adultery requires a further proposition [AC], that absence from the house might also imply performance of some superstitious ritual at the parish church. This argument, although fallacious, is accepted by the husband and provokes no further development. The considerably more challenging proposition [AC] that conception of a child may result from swallowing a snowflake is open to exploitation in a manner not obviously available to the husband in La Dame qui fist trois Tors. Being conceived from swallowing a snowflake [AC] may imply susceptibility to melt if exposed to bright sunlight [AD]. As long as the wife persists in maintaining her explanation for her pregnancy she is debarred from arguing against the corollary that a son so conceived would melt in excessive heat. The logical structure of L’Enfant qui fu remis au Soleil reappears in Le Prestre crucefié,36 where the contrary-to-fact premise features a lecherous priest’s attempt to disguise himself as a carved wooden crucifix. The husband bases his vengeance on the contingent proposition that a wooden crucifix ought not to be carved complete with male genitalia. Le Prestre qui fu mis au Lardier [hereafter Le Prestre au Lardier] features an artisan husband, his wife, and a clerical lover, without doubt the most commonplace cast of characters in fabliau literature.37 The husband’s response to surprising a renegade priest with his wife and witnessing her attempt to cover her guilt by hiding him is also typical. Although aware that the priest is hidden in his food chest, the cobbler pretends to suppose it empty, tells his wife that he intends to sell it, and hauls it off towards the market. Fearful of exposure, the trapped priest appeals in Latin to his brother for assistance, and the cobbler subsequently charges this hapless family member the enormous sum of twenty pounds for a polyglot food chest. Although Le Prestre au Lardier begins in a manner similar to Le Cuvier, subsequent developments reflect the fact that uniquely the husband has witnessed the wife’s effort to conceal her guilt at entertaining a priest, and that he is fully alert to the lover’s presence in his chosen refuge. Consequently the narrative develops along lines similar to those in Le Prestre crucefié, with an empty food chest substituting for a wooden crucifix. The manoeuvring of the guilty couple to escape detection generates a further logical implication that the cobbler is able to exploit, that an empty food chest capable of speaking Latin can be sold at a highly inflated price. Like Aristote et Alixandre, Le Prestre au Lardier bears witness to its clerical 36

NRCF 4: 91–106; 380–82. Despite the typicality, and its acceptance by Bédier (99) and Nykrog (113), Le Prestre au Lardier was also excluded from the NRCF and the text quoted is taken from MR 2: 24–30. The NRCF editors’ reason for excluding Le Prestre au Lardier is evidently formal, this being the only fabliau text written in rhymed stanzas. 37

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origins. One factor linking the two narratives is the occurrence in both of passages in Latin. Aristote et Alixandre (v. 521) contains a quotation from the Disticha Catonis, ‘Turpe est doctori, cum culpa redarguit ipsum’.38 The audience is evidently expected to understand this sentiment, since no French translation is included, but its loss would in no way compromise their ability to follow the tale’s narrative development. The Latin in Le Prestre au Lardier, while of the simplest and most readily comprehensible kind, is spoken by the trapped priest with the express intention that it should not be understood by the assembled crowd of laymen: ‘Frater, pro Deo, me delibera;/ Reddam tam cito ce qu’il coustera.’39 If the spectators in the histoire are assumed to be ignorant of Latin, the audience for the récit would have difficulty following the details of the narrative unless they were better informed, and it is not surprising to find the author, like Henri, quoting a Latin dictum, ‘Ex oculo pueri noli tua facta tueri’, although he makes the concession of translating, ‘du petit ueil se fait bon guetier’.40 While less verbose than Henri on the evils of indecorous speech, the author of Le Prestre au Lardier also condemns obscene diction, and studiously avoids all indecent language in fulfilment of his opening statement that ‘Mos sans vilonnie vous veil recorder’.41 The break with standard fabliau practice is much more radical in Le Prestre au Lardier than in Aristote et Alixandre, but is probably attributable to a similar desire to display a clerical author’s technical virtuosity. The boldness of this fablëor’s approach probably accounts for the single surviving exemplar of his work being preserved in isolation from other fabliaux in an Old French chansonnier.42 As it appears in the printed editions, the form of Le Prestre au Lardier certainly looks egregious, twenty-two eight-line stanzas rhyming ababbccc, the first four lines containing five syllables and the last four ten. The poet himself refers to his work (v. 167) as ‘une chanson’, a designation in keeping with its stanzaic form. Bédier, Fabliaux, p. 32, took this statement at face value, calling it: ‘L’unique specimen d’une varié rare du genre: le fabliau chanté.’ There seems little likelihood, however, that a narrative extending over twenty-two eight-line stanzas was ever intended to be sung rather than read, and the complex lyric form probably reflects the author’s desire to display his rhetorical skills, undeterred by the inherent unsuitability of his subject matter for such treatment.43 38 39

‘It is a wicked preacher who preaches against his own vices.’ ‘Brother, for God’s sake deliver me; I shall pay as promptly as possible … whatever it

costs.’ 40

‘One does well to guard against being watched by children.’ ‘I want to use speech free of vulgarity when addressing you.’ 42 MS. Paris B. N. fr. 12483. See Raynaud, ‘Poème moralisé’, and the same author’s Bibliographie des Chansonniers français, vol. 1, pp. 49–50. 43 The usual verse form for fabliaux is the octosyllabic couplet. However, Dame Sirith, the only extant pre-Chaucerian English fabliau, is written in six-line tail-rhyme stanzas, a verse form popular for romance. The narrative is discussed by Hines, Fabliaux. The author of the Anglo-Norman version of Les quatre Sohais saint Martin incorporates in his epimythium materials from a poem in quatrains. The use of octosyllabic couplets is therefore not without 41

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Too much should not be made, furthermore, of formal peculiarities which may simply reflect the vagaries of scribal orthographics. If the presentation were better adapted to the narrative content, and the text reproduced as six-line decasyllabic stanzas rhyming aaabbb with internal rhyme in the first two lines, it would appear less anomalous. It is still remote from the octosyllabic couplets expected in fabliaux, but much closer to the stanza patterns popular as the narrative verse form for such contes moraux as Martin Hapart, Merlin Mellot, and Margue convertie, all of which appear in the same chansonnier manuscript as Le Prestre au Lardier. If Henri d’Andeli, addressing an audience of high-ranking and cultured clerics, wished to add literary sophistication to his fabliau by incorporating the device of lyric insertion associated with courtly romance, the author of Le Prestre au Lardier, whose clerical audience were probably much less exalted, sought instead to make his comic and faintly scurrilous story acceptable by casting it in a form approximating that familiar to them as the appropriate vehicle for secular but morally instructive exempla.44 Approximately the same narrative structure appears in Le Prestre teint, a close analogue to Le Prestre crucefié attributed to Gautier le Leu on the basis of a reference at the beginning of Connebert.45 Le Prestre teint is considerably longer than Le Prestre crucefié, however, and differs from it in surface texture. It alone features an entremetteuse employed by the priest to help him seduce a virtuous wife who colludes with her husband to rob the cleric of the large sum of money she has demanded in payment for her sexual favours. The frustrated lecher is enticed into hiding in a vat of dye, dragged out like a carved image to dry before a large fire, and finally forced to flee naked and stained when the husband proposes making the same amendment to a flawed sculpture as that actually executed by the husband in Le Prestre crucefié. In the latter narrative the husband surprises the priest in his house, and although the sophistically justified physical assault is directed against this intruder, his anger is focused on his adulterous wife. The logical pattern therefore begins with the same sequence, E: S [AB] / E2: S ~[AB] as that shown for L’Enfant qui fu remis au Soleil. The husband in Le Prestre teint, however, has no reason to suspect his wife of adultery, and she has no reason to attempt to conceal her would-be seducer. The E: S [AB] / E2: S ~[AB] sequence is therefore not applicable to this fabliau. Instead, because the priest is tricked by the wife’s advice into concealing himself in the vat used to stain wooden images, the first episteme exception, but is honoured in the continental French tradition with such fidelity that deviation in the case of Aristote et Alixandre and Le Prestre au Lardier certainly marks them as anomalous. 44 It is significant that the only known medieval European analogue to the story appears as exemplum 470 on the evils of adultery in the work of the cleric Etienne de Bourbon, ed. Lecoy de la Marche, p. 405. Relationship of the fabliau to the fable is examined by Berlioz, ‘Resumé et Amplification’. 45 The attribution has been disputed in two articles by Delbouille, ‘Problèmes d’Attribution’ and ‘Le Fabliau du “Prestre teint” ’.

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follows the simple pattern E1: S ~[AB]. What links this fabliau to Le Prestre crucefié, a clear analogue, is the proposition that [AB] implies [AC], that having assumed the characteristics of a carved wooden crucifix the priest might sophistically be treated as though his superficial appearance signified an amendable reality. The sudden and surprising reversal that characterises the narratives in this group also features in La Borgoise d’Orliens and its analogues. A husband, alerted by his niece that his wife has an assignation with a clerc escolier, disguises himself in clerical garb and presents himself at the postern gate where the rendezvous is scheduled to take place, in hopes of catching his wife in compromising circumstances. She penetrates his disguise, but pretends to believe that he is the amorous clerk of his masquerade in order to fake an inference that she can exploit to her advantage. If the person presenting himself at the prearranged meeting place were an importunate clerk, then a virtuous wife might be expected to deal with him harshly. On the basis, therefore, of the argument [AB] implies [AC], she instructs her household retainers to administer him a sound beating: ‘Par Deu, clerjastre, ne vos vaut! / Ja vos avron decepliné’.46 One final twist to the chain of events occurs when the husband, on the basis of his wife’s instructions to the household servants, assumes that she is a virtuous woman acting to protect the integrity of their marriage.47 The same logical structure appears in the closing events of the Anglo-Norman fabliau Un Chivalier et sa Dame et un Clerk,48 where the intrigue to deceive the husband follows an extensive courtship missing from the Continental version of the story.49 Fabliaux such as La Dame qui fist trois Tors clearly do not fit the ‘biter bit’ formula, since no offence is committed until the second episteme, and that offence goes unpunished. However, if there is an adversarial response to an initial attempt at deception, as happens for example in La Borgoise d’Orliens and the structurally similar Le Vilain au Buffet50 then the extensive ‘biter bit’ formula does apply. A miserable seneschal who objects to his master’s open-handedness assaults a peasant attending a free banquet by striking him on the cheek and advising him to sit on that buffet. The initial episteme conforms to the E1: S [AA] pattern, since the seneschal exploits a pun on buffet to suggest that a blow may provide the requested seating. Like the wife in La Borgoise d’Orliens, the peasant in Le Vilain au Buffet is aware of the sophistry being practised on him. Like her, however, he does not challenge the validity of the duper’s act, but pretends to 46 ‘By God, you poor excuse for a clerk, you’ll do no good here! We will soon have taught you a lesson’ (vv. 220–21). 47 This false assumption by the husband has given the conventional name to the story, Le Mari cocu, battu et content. 48 NRCF 10: 115–42; 358–59. 49 For a speculative account of the relationship between these versions see Pearcy, ‘An Anglo-Norman Prose Tale’. The Anglo-Norman version of the tale-type is analysed by Wailes, ‘The Unity of the Fabliau’. 50 NRCF 5: 283–311; 428–34.

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accept it at face value in order to create the conditions necessary for exacting his vengeance. He later strikes the seneschal a retaliatory blow on the excuse that he makes it a rule always to return whatever he has borrowed. In La Borgoise d’Orliens and Le Vilain au Buffet an initial attempt by the duper to trick his victim requires the establishment of some artificial circumstance. A woman’s husband masquerades as her clerical lover, and a seneschal pretends that, because they are each described by the same term, ‘blows’ and ‘seats’ share an interchangeable reality. These manoeuvres create a vulnerability which the intended victims are quick to exploit. A virtuous wife is entitled to order that an importunate lover be soundly beaten, and if a blow is reified as a seat, then the object thus created can be returned to the original donor once finished with. In other single-narreme fabliaux, however, the initiator of a potentially exploitive exchange does not create any contrary-to-fact circumstance, but rather evokes some plausible but erroneous relationship which his victim can ultimately turn to his advantage. Such is the situation in La Plantez.51 A sophistically valid contention in the duper’s original argument provides his victim with the means to turn the tables on his tormentor. A surly innkeeper is so clumsy in serving a Norman knight that he spills a quantity of his wine. The innkeeper responds to his client’s accusation of carelessness by claiming that spilling wine brings good luck. The knight subsequently profits from the innkeeper’s temporary absence to level the score. He releases the stopper on a barrel of wine, flooding the inn with its contents, and responds to the host’s outraged protests by contending that if spilling a little wine brought good luck, then spilling a vast quantity of wine must bring proportionately more. His argument assumes that the relationship between spilt wine and good luck conforms to a relationship (x ⊃ y) ⊃ (2x ⊃ 2y) that is valid in some circumstances but not in others.52 Le Vilain Asnier exhibits many of the same features as La Plantez, and conforms to approximately the same logical pattern, although it hardly fits the ‘biter bit’ motif. The bystander who offers a reward to see the donkey driver cured, and the character who undertakes to effect the cure and earn the recompense offered, participate in a faintly realised adversarial relationship. A donkey-driver faints when passing through the spice-merchants’ quarter of Montpellier. A passer-by claims to be able to cure whatever ails the donkey-driver, and a bourgeois onlooker offers to pay him twenty shillings if he can substantiate his boast. The initial episteme will record the onlooker’s reaction to the peasant’s loss of consciousness, a consequens fallacy based on the assumption that fainting is symptomatic of a serious ailment. The passer-by who volunteers to cure the afflicted peasant 51

NRCF 7: 203–13; 385. With reference to this fabliau, see Aristotle on the laws of the logic of relations in Topics, where it is stated: ‘If pleasure is good, then too a greater pleasure is a greater good, and if injustice is bad, then too a greater injustice is a greater evil.’ This is the principle perverted by the Norman knight when he applies it inappropriately to the relationship between spilling wine and having good luck. 52

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understands that the loss of consciousness is attributable to nothing more serious than the smell of the spices. Ambiguity attaches to the forkful of dung used to restore the stricken donkey-driver to consciousness. Assuming that the malady is serious, and the proposed cure bizarre, the person who offered the reward is understandably sceptical about its efficacy. That it works depends, like the knight’s argument in La Plantez, on a degree of sophistry. The idea that afflictions are cured by their opposite effect, high fever with an ice bath, malnutrition with a healthy diet, and so forth, does not automatically imply that the deleterious effects of perfume can be counteracted with a bad smell. Although it functions effectively in this fictional context, some deception attaches to the notion that a forkful of dung constitutes an effective panacea, and this element of sophistry allows for a distribution of actants that brings the narrative into conformity with others in this group. There is a minor shift in this arrangement, since the only proposal comes from the amateur physician, and achieves ambiguous status only insofar as one character fails to perceive the sophistical efficacy of the cure suggested by the other. As with the wager between the knight and his wife in La Gageure, the settlement of the account stands outside the epistemic structure and brings the narreme to satisfactory closure with a material exchange. In La Plantez and Le Vilain Asnier duper figures exploit a natural anomaly, that luck does not increase in ratio to the amount of wine spilled, or that it is only sophistically the case that an adverse reaction to something good can be counteracted with something bad. In Le Prestre qui abevete53 the duper artificially creates his own anomaly with an embellished lie that gains credence through subsequent events. Looking through the hole in a broken shutter at a couple who are innocently eating, he accuses them of impropriety for fornicating in circumstances where they might be observed. The peasant is tricked into assuming the validity of a claim that the hole in a shutter may promote an optical illusion. The priest has therefore created an ambiguity with regard to things seen through the hole in the shutter, either that it does or does not distort reality. When the peasant is invited to see for himself how this strange phenomenon works the priest changes places with him and proceeds to fornicate with the wife. Initially the peasant reacts straightforwardly to what he is witnessing, and assumes that what appears to be fornicating is really fornicating. The priest however can revert to what he supposedly demonstrated as to the magical powers of the hole in the shutter, that since it distorts reality then what appears to be fornicating is in reality eating. Typical of the ‘biter-bit’ pattern are those fabliaux in which some agreement, or some mutual understanding of a proposition, is initially exploited by one character and then countered by the reverse and equally sophistical interpretation of the other. The type is well illustrated in Le Prestre et le Chevalier by Miles d’Amiens. The connection between epistemes, controlled in the first instance by the duper and subsequently by his victim, is established by the agreement they 53

NRCF 8: 299–309; 390.

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negotiate to govern relationships between guest and host. The narrative features an unprovoked assault and a vengeful response, and precisely fits the ‘biter bit’ formula. An impoverished knight seeks lodging at a house where a rich and arrogant priest lives with two attractive women, his mistress and his niece. Persuaded that the knight’s impecunious state is temporary, and sensing an opportunity to turn the occasion to his profit, the priest reverses an earlier decision not to house the knight, and agrees to do so on the basis of an agreement governing the costs of lodging: ‘Fait li prestres, “Vous me donrés / De tous les mes dont vous serés / Servi cinc saus par convenanche” ’.54 The knight accepts these terms, but adds a further condition of his own to their agreement: ‘Bien me plaist et nient ne me poise,’ Fait li chevaliers, ‘mais c’au mains Me jurés comme capelains, Si me fiancherés vo foi, Comme prestres de boine foi, C’a mon talent servis serai De tous les mes que je savrai Que vous arés en vo baillie.’55

Initially the priest interprets the term mes in their agreement to signify each individual item of food and lodging in what becomes an extremely costly account:56 Although outraged by such treatment, the knight remains calm, allows himself to be ushered off to bed, and pretends sleep, but in fact plans how he can turn the tables on the priest and extricate himself from so huge a debt (vv. 418–29). He will summon the priest’s niece Gill to his bed to serve his pleasure, and then the priest’s mistress Avinée, and finally the priest himself. He will familiarise himself with the intimate physical details of all three. This plan complies with the agreement concluded the previous evening, but while the priest sophistically extended the significance of mes to include all the minutiae of hospitable service, the knight extends its significance to include sexual access to all members of the priest’s household, including the priest

54 ‘Said the priest, “You will give me, according to our agreement, five shillings for each item that you are served” ’ (vv. 214–22). 55 ‘ “That suits me fine and I have no objection whatever to it,” said the knight, “as long as you will at least swear to me as a chaplain, and pledge me sincerely like a priest of good faith, that according to my wishes I will be served with all the items which I know lie within your power to bestow” ’ (vv. 223–30). 56 Precisely the same complaint against exploitive hosts is made in the opening lines of the fabliau Le Prestre teint (vv. 17–22): ‘A l’entrer lor fet bele chiere, / A l’essir est d’autre maniere! / Bien set conter quant qu’il i met, / Neïs le sel qu’el pot remet, / Les auz, le verjus et la leigne: / Ne let rien qu’a conter remaigne’ [‘When one arrives they make a show of friendliness, but things change when one is about to leave. They are skilled at adding up everything they have provided, even the salt that has dissolved in the salt cellar, the eggs, the vinegar, and wood for the fire. They neglect nothing that might remain to be counted’].

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himself.57 The author makes no acknowledgement that his narrative conforms to the ‘biter bit’ formula, but in summoning his niece the priest admits that the terms of the agreement between himself and the knight have been manipulated to his disadvantage: ‘Je le cuidai avoir souspris, / Et il m’a engingniet et pris / Par couvenenche’.58 The knight finally accepts an offer of the complete annulment of his debt and a bonus gift of ten pounds to release the priest himself from the threat of a sexual assault. The same pattern appears in Jean Bodel’s Brunain, la Vache au Prestre. A clearly venal priest preaches that God will repay double whatever is given to the church in His name. In the proposition E1: S ~[AB] by which he operates, (x) represents a gift to the church, (A) represents the dictum that God rewards such gifts twofold, and (B) represents the class of rewards that are material and immediate. On such a basis the priest is enriched at the expense of those of his parishioners generous enough to make donations to his church, although he himself is aware that the true significance of what he preaches is that awards are spiritual and indefinitely futuristic. His attitude is encapsulated in his response to a peasant enticed into parting with his cow: ‘Amis, or as tu fet savoir,’ Fet li provoires – dans Constans, Qui a prendre bee toz tans – ‘Va t’en, bien a fet ton message. Quar fussent or tuit ausi sage Mi parroiscien comme vous estes: S’averoie plenté de bestes!’59

The priest tethers the peasant’s cow Blerain to his own cow Brunain, but Blerain has a strong homing instinct, and returns to the peasant’s house dragging the priest’s cow with her. The beast’s action appears to confirm the peasant’s understanding of class (B), that the significance of the priest’s dictum is material and immediate. He has been enriched to the value of one cow exactly as promised. The priest’s intention to exploit the formula sophistically for his own enrichment is answered by the peasant’s assumption, on the basis of Blerain’s return together

57 That the knight may be prepared to sodomise the priest, an extremely shocking possibility even in the context of a typical fabliau, is made even more outrageous by the fact that the author’s treatment of his materials often resembles that of such courtly genres as romance and lai. This is the view argued by Lacy, ‘A Priest’s worst (K)nightmare’. See also Chênerie, ‘ “Ces curieux Chevaliers tournoyeurs” ’. 58 ‘I thought to catch him by surprise, and he has tricked and outwitted me according to the agreement that we made’ (vv. 592–94). 59 ‘ “Friend, you have acted wisely,” said the priest – father Constans, who was always ready to enrich himself – “Off you go, you have accomplished your mission well! Would that all my parishioners were as wise as you are. Then I would have an abundance of farm animals!” ’ (vv. 30–36).

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with Brunain, that his understanding of what the priest sophistically implied was in fact correct:   E2: S ~[AB] [(x ⊃ A) and ~(x ⊃ B)] ↔ O [AB] [(x ⊃ A) ⊃ (x ⊃ B)]

The ‘biter bit’ formula is obliquely evoked by Jean Bodel in the closing line of his fabliau: ‘Tels cuide avancier qui recule!’60 There are a group of single-narreme fabliaux wherein the exchanges all conform to the E: S ~[AB] pattern, and follow one another logically, but where the individual and class variables change with each episteme, so that contingency is established only by way of the total circumstance created by successive episodes. Regarding these fabliau as single-narreme narratives requires that the relationship [(AB) implies (AC)] applied in the case of other fabliaux dealt with above be extended to cover a series of logical extensions of the same type [(AB) implies (AC) implies (AD) etc.]. Gautier le Leu’s Les deus Vilains61 fits this pattern. Typically the initial foolish act, rather than heralding the arrival of an authority figure, simply precipitates a second confused exchange and another foolish act, a sequence that may be repeated a number of times. Sent by his sick friend to find him something to eat during the night, a peasant returns with a bowl of cold soup, but being unfamiliar with the house where they are lodging he loses his way and ends up in his host’s bedroom. There the wife is sleeping at the edge of the bed with her bare backside exposed. Mistaking this ‘bearded’ phenomenon for his friend’s face, and assuming that his friend has passed out from hunger and fatigue, the peasant attempts to restore him with a kiss, thereby establishing the first E: S ~[AB] logical exchange, and committing the first foolish act. In the course of his ministrations the wife farts, and the peasant, with foolish act two, upbraids his friend for having a stinking breath, and needlessly blowing on soup he should know was cold. Exasperated by this irritating behaviour, the peasant strikes his friend in the ‘face’ with a ladle of soup. The startled wife turns round to her husband, who discovers the damp patch in her genital area and accuses her of having been unfaithful with their guests. The wife therefore acts the part of subject-actant in a series of three epistemes, each of which generates a foolish act, two by the peasant and the third by the woman’s husband. The same structure applies to Estula. Two impoverished brothers resolve to rob a rich neighbour of some cabbages and a sheep. Hearing suspicious noises, the neighbour’s son calls their dog, named Estula. The brother chasing the sheep responds as though this were a question addressed to him: ‘Oïl, voirement sui je ci!’62 thereby committing the first foolish act in accordance with pattern (E), although unusually the fallacy, as discussed earlier in Chapter 2, is that of accent (juncture), and the full formula will be of the type E: S ~[AA]. Hearing the 60 ‘Some people suppose themselves to be making progress when in fact they are going backwards!’ (v. 72). 61 NRCF 9: 169–81; 304. 62 ‘Yes, indeed, I am here!’ (v. 46).

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robber-brother’s response, the farmer supposes his dog is talking, and fearing that the beast may be the victim of demonic possession, despatches his son to fetch the local priest to perform an exorcism (foolish act two). Because he is barefoot, the priest, wearing his white surplice, is carried by the farmer’s son on his shoulders, which fools the brother cutting cabbages into supposing that the other brother is approaching with a sheep for slaughter. His words constitute the third foolish act: ‘Or tost,’ fait il, ‘gitiez lo jus! / Mes costiaux est toz esmoluz, / Jel fis ier modre a la forje: / Ja avra copee la gorje!’63 Hearing these words, and supposing that they refer to him, the priest leaps off the son’s neck and runs for his life (foolish act four). Both the investment of the logical variables and the distribution of actants change with each episode, and since, as in Les deus Vilains, the movement from exchange to exchange is governed by chance, there is no controlling intelligence, but clearly each episode is generated from that preceding in an intimately causative rather than merely cumulative way. Pattern E1: S [AB] / E2: S ~[AB] formed the basis of the first group of narratives discussed, where the intrigue served primarily to expose some hidden vice. It constitutes the core of the considerably more complex and episodic fabliau Auberee discussed at length in Chapter 4. The husband is enticed into supposing his wife guilty of adultery when the entremetteuse Auberée plants a young man’s cloak in her bedroom. His fallacy is exposed when Auberée reveals that the cloak has attached to it the needle and thimble used by a seamstress, and claims that she left it inadvertently during a social visit. The revelation itself involves a further deception in this instance, of course, since the cloak, while not left behind by a lover as at first suspected, was not abandoned accidentally by Auberée either, but planted deliberately to confuse the husband. Unlike the similar deception in La Dame qui fist trois Tors, which served to cast doubt on the validity of the husband’s assumption that absence from the house implied adultery, the deception in Auberee has the added aim of proving the husband’s assumption not only invalid but demonstrably mistaken. Rather than an impromptu response intended to deflect an accusation of impropriety, Auberée’s deception is the result of a pre-planned and sophisticated device to exonerate the wife completely from any suspicion of wrongdoing. That exposure is not the issue in Auberee is evident from the narrative development. Normally, as happens in Le Pescheor de Pont seur Saine, the soughtafter effect of exposure follows immediately confirmation of the success of the initial deception, when the truth behind some carefully orchestrated enticement to commit a fallacy is revealed. In Auberee the revelation is delayed, and occurs simply as another trick, part of the overall plot to manipulate the husband. Its place following the initial deception is taken by a series of narratively contingent

63 ‘ “Quickly now,” he said, “throw it down here! My knife has been ground to a very sharp edge. I had it on the grindstone at the smithy yesterday. I will soon have its throat cut!” ’ (vv. 103–5).

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events. Convinced that his wife has betrayed him, the husband ejects her from the house, whereupon, as Auberée had planned, she is waylaid and persuaded to seek refuge in the very location where she is vulnerable to a sexual assault. After her seduction, Auberée arranges an elaborate coup de théâtre meant to convince the husband that his wife has spent the night since her expulsion praying in the local church. She establishes the errant wife prostrate before a statue of the Virgin Mary, places crosses at her head, feet, and sides, tells her not to move before she returns, and assures her that all her problems will be resolved (vv. 457–64). As is usually the case with arrangements of this kind, the enticement to commit a consequens misapprehension is very clear. What complicates the formulaic description of the logical development is that the episode appears between, and separates, the initial enticement to commit a fallacy and the episode that makes pretence to disabuse the victim of his error. A final deception convinces the husband that his wife is the innocent victim of his own over-hasty and mistaken assumptions. The only logically contingent episodes are those linking the husband’s mistaken assumption that his discovery of the abandoned cloak implied an act of infidelity with the subsequent revelation by Auberée that the cloak contained a needle and thimble, and consequently could not have been accidentally left behind by his wife’s lover. The exchange whereby the husband is deceived by Auberée’s elaborate coup de théâtre in the church conforms to a straightforward E1: S ~[AB] pattern of development. That the subject-actant in all the E1: S ~[AB] exchanges and the objectactant in all E2: S ~[AB] exchanges is the entremetteuse Auberée, while the cuckolded husband fills the roles respectively of the object- and subject-actants, demonstrates that the same governing intelligence controls logical relationships throughout the narrative. The intrigue features only the entremetteuse and the deceived husband. The lover and the wife, although in narrative terms they are significant participants in the action, are nevertheless excluded from any active role in devising and executing the series of deceptions practised on the husband. Presenting them in these terms certainly helps protect the idea of fin amor that the authors of the standard version of the tale evidently intended to characterise their relationship, and, with reference to the discussion in Chapter 4, inhibits the extent to which any redactor can change the nature of his material. Similar in structure to Auberée is Les Tresces. Although the sequence of logical episodes is different, the two narratives share a number of significant features. In both, once the husband’s suspicions have been aroused, the wife leaves or is driven out of the house, and during her absence is involved in an amorous liaison with another man. Both stories conclude when the factors that provoked the husband’s initial suspicions are sophistically disproved, although the disproval in Les Tresces shares the impromptu quality of the wife’s response in La Dame qui fist trois Tors, and lacks the sophisticated ingenuity of Auberée’s device. This sequence links the only exchanges that are logically contingent. In both tales these exchanges are separated by events involving other exchanges not logically linked to those that frame the narrative. Similarities in the structure

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of the two works may be attributable to the fact that both are ultimately of neareastern origin. A husband in Les Tresces intercepts his wife’s lover entering their bedroom, or discovers him asleep beside his wife. He wrestles with this stranger, and imprisons him in a large tub, entrusting the retention of the intruder to his wife while he goes off to seek some illumination. The wife, however, allows the lover to escape, and substitutes a calf in the tub in his place. On his return the husband suspects his wife of collusion with the lover. He upbraids her, and she leaves to rejoin her fugitive suitor. She persuades a friend to assume her place in the marriage bed, but the husband wakes up, and supposing his wife has returned beats her savagely and cuts off her hair. She returns in tears to the wife, who goes back and slips silently into bed with her husband, having substituted for her friend’s hair the tail of her husband’s horse. When he awakes he is surprised to discover his wife, unbruised and unshorn, in bed beside him. She declares she has been there all night, and that nothing untoward has happened. When the husband seeks to verify his understanding of events by producing the shorn tresses, he discovers the horse’s tail. An elaborate coup de théâtre, by casting doubt on the reality of his assumption that he has beaten his wife and cut off her hair, creates the impression that throughout the night he has been the victim of delusions. After the coup de théâtre matters proceed as in the fabliaux of Marie de France. The husband is persuaded that thinking one has done something does not necessarily imply that one has done it, given the part played in life by delusions of one kind or another. The wife’s successful ploy to persuade her husband that he was mistaken in supposing that he had ill-treated his wife works also to persuade him that he was equally deluded in supposing that he had trapped a lover in his wife’s bed. The logically contingent exchanges that open and close the complex narratives in Auberee and Les Tresces have a causative relationship with the interim episodes whereby the entremetteuse and the wife machinate to embroil husbands in a web of deceit.64 The sequence E1: S ~[AB] / E2: S ~[AB] characterises the 64 Escape from the implications of discovery in sexually compromising circumstances by persuading a husband that he is the victim of some kind of illusion is commonplace in the fabliaux. There are recurrent references to this idea, and with the observation about the husband at the conclusion of Les Tresces (vv. 395–96): ‘Tant est dolenz et abosmez, / Que il cuide estre enfantosmez’ [‘He was very upset and depressed, in that he thought himself deluded’] may be compared the wife’s summary remarks to her husband in Le Chevalier a la Robe vermeille (vv. 273–74): ‘Il pert bien a vostre regart / Que vos estes enfantomez’ [‘It is very clear from the way you look that you are the victim of a delusion’]. Various manifestations of the occult appear frequently in fabliaux. They include superstition (La Dame qui fist trois Tors), the Christian supernatural (L’Oue au Chapelain), and multiple instances of epistemological confusion (Le Vilain qui od sa Fame vit aler son Dru), and so forth. The last of these issues is examined in an interesting article by Kohler, ‘Vision, Logic’. Kohler is concerned with those fabliaux wherein ‘vision becomes the ultimate source of deception rather than a safeguard against it.’ The works she examines in detail are Les Perdris and Le Prestre qui abevete, special instances of what I have referred to more generally as coups de théâtre.

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group of fabliaux that function to expose some shameful quality or hypocritical attitude and to subject it to ridicule. As evidenced by Auberee and Les Tresces, however, the sequence also occurs in other contexts where exposure is not the issue.

7

Fabliau Structures Part 2: Multiple Narreme Fabliaux Identifying multiple narreme fabliaux involves a number of different issues. Actant distribution is not radically different from that in single narreme narratives. In exceptional cases, as in Les trois Aveugles de Compiegne, the characters featured in the first episteme, the three blind men and the itinerant clerk, are different from those in the second episteme, the clerk and the innkeeper, and from those in the third episteme, the innkeeper and the village priest. Incidents of pattern (iii), where only one of the protagonists from the first episteme carries over to the second, are more prevalent than in single narreme fabliaux. Generally, however, multiple narreme narratives conform like their simpler counterparts to patterns (i) or (ii). The situation for the logical variables is recognisably different. In all instances of multiple narreme fabliaux and in only a select few single narreme fabliaux, the logical variables change completely between epistemes, and where this happens, in contrast to single narreme narratives, there is normally no narrative connection to draw the diverse episodes into a more intimate relationship with one another. Of greater significance in establishing narremic boundaries is the structure of individual episodes. Since patterns (E) and (EE) introduce a new character in the narreme, the appearance of such a figure indicates that a narremic boundary has been reached. Conversely if a character investing the role of authority figure or victim fails to appear, as happens for example in Les deus Vilains or Estula, no narremic boundary has been reached, and we are dealing with a single narreme fabliau. In addition to the appearance of authority figures or victims associated with patterns (E) and (EE), narremic boundaries may also be marked by some material exchange, since such exchanges are characteristic of narremes rather than epistemes. Finally, the composite nature of multiple narreme fabliaux may be indicated by the fact that one or more of their episodes appear independently of the others in another fabliau, or in an analogous conte or exemplum. In numerous fabliaux the idea of logical sequence breaks down, or becomes so oblique and complex as to render it unsusceptible to the sort of formulaic description employed in the analyses up to this point. Individual episodes are structured according to the same principles as those in logically contingent, single narreme 

NRCF 2: 151–84; 389–96.

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texts, and the source of a definitively characteristic fabliau humour remains the same, but it is necessary to acknowledge that the connections between episodes are in some instances rhetorical rather than logical. The main rhetorical link between episodes involves some kind of retribution, which occasionally appears alone but may be associated cumulatively with other episodes. The episodes in some multiple narreme fabliaux are related only cumulatively. A few fabliaux combine two episodes in so arbitrary a fashion that they could be dealt with in the separate section on episodic narratives, but those for the most part feature multiple episodes, and are distinguished by their excessive length, while the narratives in question combine only two episodes and are relatively brief. The disjunction between the two episodes of L’Evesque qui beneï le Con attests its composite nature. In the first episode, already dealt with in Chapter 3, a priest’s mistress circumvents a series of injunctions placed on her partner by a hypocritical bishop who has taken objection to their lifestyle. In the second episode the persecuted priest conspires with the bishop’s bourgeois mistress to witness from hiding the bishop perform a comic and humiliating épreuve d’amour, the blessing of her pudendum. The error of the bishop’s assumption that the lady’s request for a demonstration of affection was genuine is revealed when the hidden priest says ‘amen’ aloud at the conclusion of the mock ceremony. The discomfited bishop subsequently withdraws his injunctions. A slight element of narrative contingency unites the two episodes since the second removes the threat circumvented in the first. However, distribution of the actants accords only with pattern (iii). Although the bishop is the victim in both episodes, the role of the duper is played by the prêtresse in the first, and by the priest and the bishop’s mistress working in collusion in the second. Clearly the variables in the logical exchanges are totally different, and the exchanges themselves lack any neat parallelism. The overall narrative is episodic. The same combination of relatively unconnected episodes appears in Le Vilain Mire. To rid herself of a husband who is physically abusing her daily, a wife reports to emissaries seeking a master physician to cure the king’s daughter that her unskilled peasant husband is the man for the job. However, she warns them, he has the peculiarity of denying his expertise until he has been soundly beaten, at which time he will admit to his extraordinary abilities. The emissaries’ encounter with the husband appears to confirm the wife’s description. In another episode featuring a parallel deception, the peasant ‘cures’ the chronically sick by offering them a potion made from the ashes of the sickest among them. The logical manipulations in the two episodes are alike, the wife allegedly responding to the emissaries’ desire to find a physician, but in reality scheming to procure  Perception of the composite nature of L’Evesque qui beneï le Con is substantiated by the existence of analogues employing the same motifs, a farcical épreuve d’amour in Aristote et Alixandre, and a series of sophistical circumventions in an independently circulating Latin prose anecdote involving Abaelard and the French king which appears among the exempla from the Sermones feriales et communes, in Greven, no. 15, pp. 15–16.  NRCF 2: 309–47; 425–31.

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her husband a beating, and the husband allegedly devising a cure for the sick of the kingdom but in reality frightening them into a false acknowledgement of regained good health. However, the subject- and object-actants in the first episteme, the wife and the emissaries, are completely different from those in the second episteme, the husband and the invalids. The husband, who as the recipient of a beating is the destinataire actant in the first episteme, provides a fragile rhetorical link with the second episteme where he functions as subjectactant. Clearly the individual and class variables in the logical patterns of the two episodes have nothing in common. Significantly the comic motifs appear as the basis for independent humorous anecdotes in exempla collections, the wife’s lie to the king’s messengers in Crane, Sermones Vulgares no. 237, and the burning of the sick as no. 254 in the same anthology. The two episodes that comprise the plot of Le Prestre et la Dame also illustrate a purely cumulative linkage. The first episode features an invalid inference refuted by an equally suspect counter-argument, the husband’s assumption that an abandoned cloak indicates the presence of the wife’s lover being met by the priest’s claim that the cloak was left as a pledge for the return of the wicker basket in which he hid. The E: S [AB] / E2: S ~[AB] pattern in this episode complies with the requirements for logical contingency, although unusually it is the priest-lover rather than the wife who devises and carries out the intrigue. The episodic nature of this fabliau is partly discernible from the fact that the first episode has interesting connections with the motif of ‘the lover’s gift regained.’ The link is made by a short Latin poem, the Versus de molar piperis: Militis uxorem clamadis mercede subegit Clericus, et piperis clam tulit inde molam; Mane redit, referensque molam praesente marito Dixit, ‘Mantellum redde, reporto molam.’ ‘Redde,’ maritus ait; respondit foemina, ‘reddam; Amplius ad nostrum non molet ille molam.’

Le Prestre et la Dame does not share with the Versus de molar piperis the motif of the lover’s gift regained, since the reclaimed cape was not given to the wife as a gift, but accidentally abandoned in the priest’s haste to depart. Nevertheless, the two stories share the same cast of characters, a cuckolded husband, an adulterous wife, and a clerical lover. The reclaimed item is in both instances a cape. The husband intervenes to urge the wife to return the cape: ‘ “Dame, vos feïstes 

As identified by Spargo, ‘Chaucer’s Shipman’s Tale’. Quoted in Benson and Andersson, The Literary Context, pp. 275–337, and taken in turn from Wright, Essays, vol. 1, p. 167. Benson and Andersson offer the following translation: ‘A clerk seduced the wife of a nobleman for the price of his cloak, and secretly carried away her pepper mill. The next day he returned, bringing back the pepper mill, and in the husband’s presence he said, “Give me back my cloak; I bring back your pepper mill.” “Give it to him,” the husband said; the wife answered, “I will give it to him, but he will not grind again in our pepper mill.” ’ 

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outraige,” / Fait li borgois, “quant en preïstes / Son gaige ne le retenistes!” ’ This accessory trait confirms the interdependence of the two narratives. That the episode in Le Prestre et la Dame has so many typically fabliau features favours derivation of the Latin poem from the fabliau rather than the reverse. Introduction of the pepper mill invokes a traditional joke associating the grinding of corn (or pepper) with sexual intercourse. The possibility that the Latin poem derives from the fabliau is reinforced by the fact that a very plausible source for Le Prestre et la Dame exists in the surviving versions of Le Cuvier. In both narratives a lover is hidden from a returned husband, either in a wicker basket (corbeille) or a tub (cuve), the idea of borrowing attaches to both items, and, most importantly, the husband in Le Cuvier also intervenes to urge the wife to return the borrowed item. His intervention in the Anglo-Norman version more closely approximates that in Le Prestre et la Dame: ‘Li syre demaunde quei ele ust: / “Rendez li tost! Ne le retenez!” ’ Benson and Andersson are incorrect in supposing (p. 277), following Spargo, that Le Prestre et la Dame is ‘a literary adaptation of the basic tale’. Rather, in the form in which it appears in the Versus de molar piperis and in the Second Tale of the Eighth Day in Boccaccio’s Decameron, the story is more likely to have been adapted from the fabliau. The episode concludes with a two-way material exchange along the axis of communication, the priest surrendering the basket, but winning recovery of his cloak. The second episode, for which no close parallel has survived, records a bet made by the priest to the now inebriated husband that he can lift three people. Placing the husband on the bottom of the pile, he arranges the maid on top of him and the wife on top of both, but then exerts himself fornicating with the wife rather than attempting to fulfil his boast. The logical pattern in this instance is the straightforward E1: S ~[AB]. As in Cele qui se fist foutre or La Gageure, a wager and a material exchange having no connection with the first episode mark a narremic boundary. However, a tenuous link between epistemes is established by the second occurrence of an unusual antithetical movement on the axis of communication. The priest is obliged to award the cuckolded husband the wagered goose, but he sacrifices it happily for the opportunity to fornicate with the wife while the husband is helpless either to comprehend what is actually taking place or to intervene in the process. While the conflict in both episodes of Le Prestre et la Dame involves the same  ‘ “Wife, you would be acting improperly,” said the bourgeois husband, “if you should accept his deposit and hold on to it” ’ (vv. 78–80).  The significance of shared incidental details is affirmed by Bédier, Fabliaux, p. 188: ‘Il suffit que deux versions possèdent un seul trait accessoire … en commun pour être indissolublement associées.’  Rowland, ‘The Mill in Popular Metaphor’.  ‘The husband asks what she wants: “Return it immediately! Do not hold on to it” ’ (vv. 35–36). Text in Eighteen Anglo-Norman Fabliaux, p. 15. For a comparison of the two versions see Pearcy, ‘Le Cuvier’.

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actants in the same roles, the priest as subject-duper and the husband as objectvictim, the logical variables in the two episodes are entirely unconnected, and the narrative link between them is rhetorical and purely cumulative. Le Prestre et la Dame provides us with a truncated version of what happens in the emphatically more episodic Trubert, in the series of encounters between the eponymous hero and his victim the duke. A similar lack of structuring occurs in La Crote.10 In the first episode a husband asks his wife to guess whether he is clasping his penis or his testicles. He is in fact holding both, so that whichever choice his wife makes he can declare her mistaken.11 This initial episode is therefore composed of two epistemes, E1: S [AB] followed by E2: S ~[AB]. The husband is undoubtedly successful in this first episode, where the distribution of actants according to the (E1) and (E2) patterns of development is unequivocal. He is only ambivalently successful in the second, where after two unsuccessful attempts he correctly identifies the mystery object his wife has handed him, but only at the expense of chewing on a pellet of her faeces. The episode is best understood as an example of the pattern E2: S ~[A+B] as discussed in the last chapter, where the narreme must reflect the presence of an actant additional to those participating in the core episteme. The wife assumes that her husband will either identify or fail to identify the object she hands him, using the conventional faculties of sight and touch such as he employed in guessing incorrectly that he had received a pellet of paste or wax. She is outmanoeuvred when he correctly identifies the item using the faculty of taste. The defeat of the wife is acknowledged in a boundary-indicative material exchange when she readily admits to her husband’s superiority as a guesser, and happily pays up the penny’s worth of wine they have wagered on the outcome of the challenge. The humour of the exchange is elusive, however, if the husband’s triumph is unqualified, and his ploy not registered as a foolish act. Making this adjustment in perspective requires recognition that a secondary logical pattern (E) underlies the E2: S ~[A+B] episteme, and that the pellet of faeces functions as an ambiguous material sign. The husband argues foolishly that something identifiable by taste is something appropriate to put in one’s mouth. There is no intervention by an authority figure, and that actantial role must be supplied by the audience, who are uniquely qualified to appreciate the humour of the foolish act, the equivalent of the peasant spitting in his soup in Le Vilain de Farbu. The first and second episodes of Berengier au lonc Cul are also related cumulatively. The first episode conforms to a typical E1: S ~[AB] pattern. The cowardly vavassour expects his wife to reason falsely that a man whose shield exhibits signs of abuse has been fighting dangerous opponents. In truth he has attacked his own equipment to create a false impression. Although initially convinced by 10

NRCF 6: 25–32; 318. The fallacy depicted here was that known to the Middle Ages as secundum plures interrogationes ut unam [accepting multiple questions as one question], for which see Siger de Courtrai, ed. Wallerand, p. 89. 11

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this coup de théâtre, the wife’s suspicions are aroused when numerous sorties by her husband result in no physical injuries, and she decides to initiate the intrigue of her own that will expose him as a coward. The second episode features the typical pattern of enticement and exposure, the aim being to reveal critical pretensions to valour fallaciously established in the first episode. The wife disguises herself as a knight, follows her husband to the woods where he abuses his weapons, and challenges him to a joust. Her reciprocal coup de théâtre draws support not only from her disguise, but also from the traditional romance role of territorial defender exemplified by Esclados le Ros, protector of the magic fountain in Chrétien de Troyes’s Yvain: ‘Vassaus, vassaus, c’est grant folie / Que vos mon bois si decopez! / Mauvais sui se vos m’eschapez!’12 Faced with the alternative of engaging in armed combat or submitting to a ‘baiser honteux’, the coward knight chooses the latter course of action. Later, on his return home, he finds his wife brazenly entertaining a lover, but she dismisses his protests by threatening to appeal for protection to Berengier au lonc cul, the pseudonym she adopted on witnessing his reaction to kissing the backside of a woman he assumed to be a man. She thus reveals herself aware of the humiliating gesture to which he subjected himself, and indicates that his false claims to courageous knight-errantry have been exposed as a pitiful charade. Finally the same pattern of development which loosely connects two diverse episodes is featured in La Saineresse. In an initial E1: S ~[AB] exchange a disguised lecher fools a husband into believing that he is a female blood-letter come to keep an appointment with his wife. This is followed by an E1: S [AA] episode when the wife reacts to her husband’s ill-founded claim that he can protect the inviolability of his marriage against all threats. She fools him (vv. 75–96) by reporting her ‘treatment’ in equivocal terms which could refer to the fictional bleeding or to the fornication that actually took place. The husband is the victim on both occasions, but the duper role falls to the lecher in the first exchange where the variable (x) refers to the identity of the visitor, and to the wife in the second exchange where (x) refers to the activity in the bedroom. Between the two episodes both the distribution of actants and the composition of the logical fallacies change. The narrative comprises two distinct narremes linked in a purely cumulative manner. A number of fabliaux comprised of more than the two episodes featured in the preceding group combine some episodes on the basis of logical contingency and others as purely cumulative additions. Les Braies au Cordelier, a composite narrative of this kind, begins with a simple E1: S ~[AB] exchange when a wife who is anxious to entertain a clerical lover persuades her husband that the hour is late and that he should be on his way to market. Sent home by the fellows who are to accompany him later, the husband surprises the lover in his wife’s bed, 12 ‘Vassal, vassal, you are behaving very foolishly in thus chopping up my wood! I am to blame if you escape me!’ (vv. 194–97). The parallel with Yvain is noted by Busby, ‘Fabliau et Roman Breton’.

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and in the morning mistakenly dons the clerk’s hastily abandoned trousers. He discovers his error in the market place when he finds the clerk’s belongings rather than his own in the trousers. As with other evidence for infidelity, the revelation that another man’s trousers have been left in his bedroom convinces the husband that his wife is an adulteress. In typical E2: S ~[AB] fashion, however, the wife is able to divert suspicion by concocting a plausible explanation for this circumstantial evidence. The trousers, she maintains, were borrowed as a fertility talisman from the local Franciscans, an explanation confirmed by one of the brothers whom she has rehearsed prior to the expected cross-examination by her husband. While the first episteme creates the opportunity for the husband to surprise the lover in his bed, and on the following morning to appropriate his trousers, the link to the second episteme is rhetorical and cumulative. The second episteme similarly prepares the way for the husband’s suspicions of his wife and her ingenious exculpation. That the linkage between them is also cumulative rather than logically contingent, and that we are dealing with a separate narreme is deducible from the fact that the episode stands on its own as an independent fabliau in Jean de Condé’s Les Braies le Priestre. Finally, the husband’s invalid but true inference, and the wife’s invalid and untrue refutation, comprise two logically contingent epistemes that conventionally appear together in similar circumstances. A foolish act initiates the first episode in Le Prestre qui ot Mere a Force, discussed at some length in Chapter 2 as an example of the fallacy accentus. The mother of a priest who maintains a mistress in lavish style complains of neglect to the bishop. His threat to suspend the priest is misunderstood by the priest’s mother as a threat to hang him. The first foolish act follows when the old woman identifies as her errant son the first priest who accidentally stumbles onto the scene, and the bishop is fooled into supposing that her identification is genuine. He subsequently threatens to deprive the innocent priest of his benefice, to excommunicate him, and to suspend him from office, whereupon, faced with this barrage of punitive measures, the victim agrees to carry the old woman away with him. This third episteme exemplifies an (E) pattern exchange, since neither the bishop issuing the interdictions nor the priest who is threatened with punishment understands how the old lady’s error has created the false inferences. There is no intervention by an outside agency to resolve the confusion, and the linkage between epistemes, like the basis for the fallacy, associates Le Prestre qui ot Mere a Force with Estula. Unlike the foolish act at the end of the first episteme, however, which led the bishop to censure the innocent priest for neglecting his mother, the second foolish act, when the priest accepts the old lady into his charge, has the narremic boundary marker of a material exchange, since he rides off with her on his palfrey expecting that he will have to provide for all of her needs. On leaving the ecclesiastical court, the stranger priest and his newly acquired ward encounter the woman’s son on his way to answer his summons for filial neglect. In a scene analogous to that in L’Anel qui faisoit les Vis grans et roides,

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where payment for curing the monk’s condition was the ring responsible for creating it, the stranger priest agrees to pay forty pounds to the old woman’s real son to be released from the responsibility of caring for her. The episteme for this final episode follows pattern E1: S ~[AB]. That this is an independent narreme as suggested by the analogy is confirmed by the fact that the old woman’s real son is a new character not previously encountered in scenes involving the old woman and the bishop or the bishop and the stranger priest. None of the logical variables introduced in this final episteme has figured in any of the prior exchanges, and the forty-pound payment to the son to undertake what was already his responsibility constitutes a typical material exchange to bring this particular episode and the narrative as a whole to closure. In Le Meunier d’Arleux13 the ‘judgement of Solomon’ motif is attached to a logically contingent sequence of epistemes by means that are purely cumulative. It occurs as an amusing appendix to a narrative which otherwise closely resembles Le Meunier et les deus Clers. Both tales involve a miller, delay occasioned by his misleading practices necessitating an overnight stay at his house, a planned seduction, confusion over the identity of beds and their occupants, and the final humiliation of the rogue miller. Unable to grind her corn because of the miller’s prevarications, Maroie is forced to spend the night at the miller’s house, where she confides to the miller’s wife the miller’s plan to seduce her. To frustrate his intentions the wife arranges to swap beds with their reluctant guest. Meantime the miller Jacques, expecting to enjoy a sexual encounter with Maroie, promises to arrange for his assistant Mousé, for the price of a pig, to profit from their arrangements by taking over in the bed with Maroie once he has returned to his own. As a result, the miller copulates five times with his own wife on the assumption that his visitor occupies the bed assigned to her, and then despatches Mousé to repeat the performance. The wife supposes that the second claimant for her sexual favours is her husband returning at the end of a short break: ‘La dame croit, saciés de fi, / Que ce ne soit fors ses barons!’14 In fact her intrigue in swapping beds, like the clerk’s manoeuvres with the cradle in Le Meunier et les deus Clers, has inadvertently led to her own and Mousé’s confusion. After the girl’s departure the next day, when her husband returns leading the pig he has been given by Mousé, his wife upbraids him: Tost li a dit: ‘Ribaut puant! Qatorze ans ai o vous estet, Ains ne vous poc mais tel mener, Ne tant acoler ne basier, Servir a gré ne solacier Que ja i ffusse envaïe 13

NRCF 9: 215–36; 307–09. ‘The wife believed, make no doubt about it, that it was none other than her husband!’ (vv. 260–61). 14

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Deus fois en une nuit entiere: Por la mescine euc voir ennuit Dis fois u plus par grant deduit! Cele m’a fait ceste bontet, Cui vous cuidastes recovrer: En mon lit le cochai. En non Dé, Or avés vous cangié le dé!’15

It is a marvellous speech. In terms of the humour of the situation its implications are multiple. The miller realises, of course, that he has been responsible for his own cuckolding. The opportunistic Mousé realises that he has slept with the miller’s wife rather than with the young Maroie, and immediately demands the return of his pig. The wife realises that her night of pleasure was only half attributable to her husband, and that her machinations and those of her husband have led her into an act of adultery. But also impressive is the insight the speech conveys into the wife’s feelings, since her tirade is a mixture of irritation and disgust at her husband’s behaviour, and a poignant recognition of the absence of romance and passion from their marriage. Despite the coarseness of the circumstances that have provoked her outburst, her speech is infused with the vocabulary of courtly love, ‘deduit’, ‘servir a gré’, and ‘solacier’, and with euphemisms such as ‘envahir’ and ‘recovrer’. When the miller disputes the need to return the pig, Mousé appeals his case to the local court, and receives a judgement similar to those handed down in Le Preudome qui rescolt son Compere de noier and Le povre Mercier. The jurors’ decision that Jacques should either return the pig to Mousé or make the girl Maroie available for his sexual pleasure as originally promised effectively resolves the dispute in Mousé’s favour, since following the exposure of his part in the aborted intrigue Jacques has lost any capacity to control Maroie’s behaviour. The third episode is not logically linked to the first two, since neither the individual nor class variables are repeated. Connection between the first two epistemes and the third is primarily cumulative, although the subject of the pig has been introduced in the course of earlier events. The narreme will indicate that the court’s decision places it on the side of Mousé in the dispute: N: O4/O3 ~[A+B] → S3 (S2) [A+B]

In a typically comedic resolution the court purchases Mousé’s pig and consumes it as part of the festivities to celebrate the events over which they presided. The complex narrative of Boivin de Provins16 contains elements that are recog15 ‘She quickly assailed him: “You stinking rascal! I’ve been married to you for fourteen years and you’ve never been able to perform like that, not hug and kiss me so much, nor treat me so graciously nor give me so much pleasure. I was never approached sexually twice in one night. But for the young girl’s sake truly ten times or more in one night to satisfy your lust! She did me this favour, the girl you thought you were having, that I settled her in my bed. In God’s name, you’ve switched the dice now!” ’ (vv. 294–306). 16 NRCF 2: 77–105; 369–80.

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nisable from other contexts, but employed in this fabliau in ways that are difficult to describe diagrammatically. The story begins with a poor peasant convincing a whore by means of an E1: S ~[AB] intrigue that he is rich, but the victim of unhappy circumstances which have left him a widower, and caused him to lose touch with a favourite niece. The prostitute Mabile takes the bait, and, in another E1: S ~[AB] exchange, tries to pass herself off as the lost niece. Since she is unwittingly reacting to Boivin’s prior deception, he is aware of the sophistry of her stance, but by pretending to be convinced, a manoeuvre akin to that practiced by the husband in L’Enfant qui fu remis au Soleil, he is enabled to control subsequent developments. If Mabile is understood to be falsely claiming a kinship that does not exist, then Boivin can anticipate that she will initially treat him well prior to robbing him of what she mistakenly supposes is a large sum of money. He can confidently profit, therefore, when she entices him into her house, treats him to a sumptuous meal, and persuades him to have sex with another prostitute. However, expecting that the occasion is right for an attempt to steal his purse, he cuts the strings himself, knowing that Mabile’s colleague will be assumed to have carried out a pre-arranged plan, and that he will be thrown out of the house and his fake protests ignored. Some farcical knock-about follows when Mabile attacks the colleague she accuses of lying, and their respective pimps leap to their defence. Boivin reports what has happened to the local provost, who is so amused at the whole episode that he gives him a bonus of ten shillings. Connections between the various intrigues are complicated, but evidently Boivin fills the role of controlling intelligence throughout. Boivin de Provins begins with the most elaborate coup de théâtre in the fabliau corpus, extending from lines 5–83 and 98–123. It offers a comprehensive portrait of a peasant capable of acquiring a large sum of money but disreputable in appearance, lacking the intelligence to fully understand, or properly manage, his own finances without the help of others whose share of the profits he begrudges, and sentimentally maudlin about his dead wife and children and his lost niece. Certain fabliaux have been singled out for the brilliance of their characterisations, particularly Le Bouchier d’Abeville, although another ‘contentious hospitality’ fabliau, Le Prestre et le Chevalier, rivals its companion piece in this respect. These are straightforward portraits, however. What is interesting about the portrait of Boivin, or, on a smaller scale, of the young man pretending squeamishness in La Damoisele qui ne pooit oïr parler de foutre, is that the portraiture is a part of the intrigue, and therefore an essential element in fabliau structure. Both portraits are special instances of the coup de théâtre technique that occurs throughout the corpus in multiple contexts. As fictions within a fiction they have about them an air of theatricality which nevertheless, because the final effect is meant to deceive, must be fully convincing on a realistic level.17

17 The monologic element in Boivin’s portrait of a typical vilain is fully explored by Corbellari, ‘Boivin de Provins’.

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The two final fabliaux to be dealt with in this group are in one respect or another enigmatic. Les trois Aveugles de Compiegne is to a challenging degree cumulative in structure, since it features a series of epistemes which exhibit extreme shifts in actant distribution. In the first episteme a clerk encounters three blind men. Anxious to test the validity of their sightlessness he announces that he is giving them a bezant, but in an E1: S ~[AB] exchange actually donates nothing. He accompanies his victims back to Compiègne, where they run up a significant bill with an innkeeper who supposes them affluent. They cannot produce the bezant to pay for their hospitality, however, and are attacked by the irate innkeeper. At this point the clerk intervenes in a second episteme with an offer to add the ten-shilling indebtedness of the blind men to his own five-shilling account. This exchange involves only the clerk and the innkeeper, and the three blind beggars disappear from the narrative. The clerk establishes that his host would trust the local priest to pay the accumulated debt, and they go together to the church. There the clerk pretends to arrange repayment, but in fact gives the priest twelve pence rather than fifteen shillings, and instructs him to read a gospel passage over the head of an innkeeper he claims has at night been afflicted with some kind of mental seizure. This exchange is followed by a typical E: S ~[AA] pattern when the priest unwittingly addresses the innkeeper with an ambiguous remark: ‘Je le ferai / Tantost que je arai messe dite’.18 The priest refers to the reading of the gospel text to calm the troubled host, while the host supposes that he is referring to payment of the fifteen shillings debt. After the departure of the clerk, and conclusion of the mass, the priest summons the innkeeper to receive his spiritual help. In a scene reminiscent of what happens to the peasant doctor in Le Vilain Mire, the innkeeper’s annoyance at his treatment is taken as evidence of his troubled mind, and he is restrained by members of the congregation while the priest performs the duty he supposes he has been paid to execute. There occurs, consequently, another (E) pattern exchange, and a foolish act when the priest persists with his inappropriate exorcism. The innkeeper’s discomfiture may be seen as just punishment for his treatment of the blind beggars, but since they were both victims of the clerk’s gratuitous mischiefmaking the moral issues are clouded, no two epistemes are logically contingent, and the initial intellectual control by the clerk disappears with his departure prior to the exchanges between host and priest. Les trois Aveugles de Compeigne is without question an amusing fabliau which utilises a number of conventional fabliau motifs to achieve its humorous effects, but strings them together so loosely as to threaten the cohesiveness of the narrative as a whole. The problem with Cele qui fu foutue et desfoutue is the reverse, that the structure is so unified as to make identification of the individual epistemes difficult. Nevertheless the presence of an authoritarian figure who is twice made the victim of episodes involving two younger protagonists suggests that the narra18

‘I’ll do it as soon as I have conducted the mass’ (vv. 253–54).

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tive divides into two distinct narremes, and this suggestion is confirmed by two material exchanges arranged in a climactic order. A young woman whose father keeps her enclosed in a tower under the supervision of her nurse sees from her window a young man with a crane he has caught hunting. Her nurse having left to fetch a spoon, she asks to purchase it, and is told the price would be a foutre. Not knowing, or pretending not to know what that is, she invites the young man up to her room to search for the item of barter. He seduces her, but leaves the bird in exchange for the payment made. Whether the girl, who is described by the author (v. 74) as ‘et sote et nice’ [‘foolish and naïve’] is deceived and seduced by the young man, or whether she is a willing collaborator in the events described is left unresolved. However, there are some structural objections to the former view. As noted elsewhere, it seems to be conventional in fabliau narratives that seduction bordering on rape is usually followed by some acknowledgement that the seducer ultimately marries his victim. This situation occurs when the seduced girl is physically assaulted, so naïve as to be unaware that she is being abused, or sufficiently aware of what has happened to complain about her treatment. No such outcome is registered in Cele qui fu foutue et desfoutue. Furthermore, if the girl is an unwilling victim the nurse is left in limbo, since her only role would be that of a fellow sufferer. In fact, when she returns and sees the bird, asks her ward how it got there, and is given details of the agreement made between the girl and the vendor, her reaction would seem to imply that she regarded the exchange as mutually negotiated. The episteme would register a reciprocal exchange between protagonists, the young man giving the girl his game bird and the girl granting him her sexual favours. This would confirm the episode’s status as a separate narreme, and would allow the nurse a role parallel to that of the knight in Cele qui se fist foutre, or the farmer/father in La Damoisele qui ne pooit oïr parler de foutre. While the nurse is away for a second time seeking a knife to gut the crane, the young man returns, and the girl, apparently upset that her nurse has reacted so badly on learning of the first deal that she struck, or so satisfied with the initial exchange that she desires a repetition, compounds matters by arranging to hand back the bird if the young man returns her foutre. On this occasion, since the suggestion comes from the young girl herself, seduction is ruled out, although we are still at liberty to choose whether collaboration is attributable to extreme naivety or more sophisticated voluntary acquiescence. A further factor makes the second exchange possible, that in parallel with what occurs in Le Vilain au Buffet the young man’s sophistry reifies the foutre so that it too can be made part of a material exchange. If the second episteme is therefore an exact duplicate of the first, the second narreme is different by virtue of the material exchange, which in the first instance was reciprocal but in the second unilateral, since the young man receives both his game bird and the young girl’s sexual favours. The nurse’s reaction to this further discovery repeats her reaction to the first, and she functions in the same victim role in the second narreme. There is an inherent ambiguity in this fabliau as in others such as L’Esquiriel

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where the girl’s psychological response to the events described is left unclear. In Cele qui fu foutue et desfoutue this ambiguity extends to the structure, which could be seen either as two epistemes of type (EE) incorporated in two narremes featuring the nurse as victim of a conspiracy, or two epistemes of type (E1) incorporated in narremes featuring the vaslet as successful seducer and the nurse and the girl as fellow victims of his intrigues. The full flavour of the tale is perhaps best realised if both possibilities play an equal part in any response to its aesthetic appeal.19 No such problems in determining narremic boundaries occur in the final group of fabliaux in this section that have a primarily rhetorical coherence based on retribution for an offence committed within the contours of the narrative. Fabliaux constructed according to this principle frequently reinforce the relationship between episodes by making them strictly parallel in terms of the logical fallacies brought into play, even though there may be no consistency between the logical variables invoked. An early example of the type, entitled Les deus Menestreus, appears in the Disciplina Clericalis.20 The action is initiated by a purely physical event when one of two minstrels invited to eat at the king’s court surreptitiously transfers the bones from his own plate to that of his fellow diner. The minstrel responsible for this deception then charges his companion with gluttony (vv. 9–12). Rather than challenging this accusation, however, the accused minstrel responds by drawing another equally damning conclusion. The denuded plate of the minstrel responsible for the unprovoked attacked is interpreted to imply that he has monstrous eating habits: ‘Sire,’ fet il, ‘jeo ay fet a dreit, Fet ay sicum l’em fere deit: La char manjay, les os lessay; De rens, ceo quit, mespris n’i ay. Mes cil lecheres le ad fet ben, Il ad fet ausi cum le chen: La char e les os ensement Tot ad manjé communement!’21

In the first episteme the individual variant (x) represents the second minstrel’s plate, and the class variants (A) and (B) represent a plate with too many bones and gluttony respectively. In the second episteme (x) represents the first minstrel’s plate, and the class variants represent an empty plate and monstrous 19 The NRCF rightly treats as a single tale-type two independent fabliaux that had previously been treated separately as La Grue and Le Heron. 20 Text in Eighteen Anglo-Norman Fabliaux, No. 10, pp. 14–15. 21 ‘ “Sire,” he said, “I have acted properly, I have acted the way one should. I ate the meat and left the bones. In no way, believe me, have I acted improperly. But this rascal certainly has done. He has acted the way dogs do. He has eaten meat and bones both, the whole thing together” ’ (vv. 15–22).

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eating habits. All three logical variants are different, but (x) and (A) are similarly dictated by the action of transferring bones from one plate to another, the actants fit the reversal pattern (ii), and the two epistemes reflect the parallelism typical of the narratives in this group. The penultimate line of the fabliau acknowledges its association with the ‘biter-bit’ motif (v. 23): ‘Ly lecheres fu desjouglé’ [‘The rogue was outwitted’]. The same retributive pattern, reinforced with the same strict parallelism, is featured in Rutebeuf ’s Charlot le Juif.22 The minstrel Charlot is sent to the bridegroom’s cousin, Guillaume le Panetier, to be reimbursed for his services at a marriage ceremony. He is promised: ‘teil choze. . ./ Qui m’a coutei plus de cent souz’.23 He is given a hare’s skin, on the grounds that the donor rode his best horse to death chasing the animal, and realises that he has been cheated: ‘ “Hom n’en avroit pas samedi,”/ Fait Charlos, “autant au marchié!” ’24 Thereafter Charlot defecates in the hare’s pelt, and traps his victim with the same sophistry as that by which he had himself been victimised. ‘Biau sire,’ he says, ‘Se ci a riens si le preneiz’.25 The nobleman infers that Charlot had found something of value in the hare’s skin (vv. 120–23), perhaps an item belonging to his wife, and reacts accordingly: ‘ “Je ne t’ai donei que la pel.”/ Lors a boutei sa main dedens’.26 Searching in the skin to discover what might be there he defiles himself, and Charlot’s vengeance is achieved. The ‘biter bit’ nature of the narrative is acknowledged in a brief final summary by Rutebeuf: ‘Rutebués dit, bien m’en sovient: / “Qui barat quiert, baraz li vient”.’27 Since the logical pattern at the heart of the episteme in Le Vescie a Prestre constitutes a complete narreme, the identical logical pattern in both episodes of Charlot le Juif does too. But the effect of reversing the distribution of actants as between the first and second episodes of Charlot le Juif clearly changes the moral and aesthetic orientation of the narrative. Both the priest and Guillaume are dupers, but the priest assumes that role only after extreme provocation by the grasping Jacobins, while Guillaume is gratuitously unkind in attempting to cheat the innocent Charlot, whose past services have entitled him to better treatment. The problem of a moral disparity in the narremes

22

NRCF 9: 251–61; 312–13. ‘Something which cost me more than a hundred shillings’ (vv. 85–87). 24 ‘ “One would have trouble,” said Charlot, “raising that much on it at Saturday’s market!” ’ (vv. 98–99). The first episode in Charlot le Juif is analogous to tale no. 23 in Hazlitt, Mery Tales, entitled ‘Kynge Lowes of France and the Husbandman’. His wife persuades her husband Conon to carry a gift of radishes to the restored king Louis XI. He eats all but one, which the king nevertheless accepts graciously as an item of great value, rewarding Conon with a thousand crowns. A courtier who has witnessed this generous act gives the king a horse in hope of a similar return, but is rewarded with the withered radish, that the king claims cost him a large sum. 25 ‘If there is something inside, do you want it back?’(vv.116–17). 26 ‘ “I gave you only the skin.” Then he thrust his hand inside.’ 27 ‘Rutebeuf says, as I remember well: “Whoever seeks to practice trickery, trickery finds him out” ’ (vv. 131–32). 23

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for the two fabliaux is obviated by the second episteme in Charlot le Juif, which produces a climactic narreme in which Charlot triumphs over his tormentor. Charlot le Juif has a close counterpart in Le Sentier batu,28 where the governing principle is established by the rules of a game called ‘le roy qui ne ment’29 played by a group of courtly ladies and knights. One of the ladies elected to play the part of the ‘queen’ poses to a knight with little facial hair what the author terms a ‘demande desguisee’.30 The knight is enticed into supposing that the question is straightforward, ‘S’onques eüstes nul enfant’,31 but when he confirms that he is indeed childless, his response is used as the basis for an insulting analogy impugning his masculinity: ‘Sire, point ne vous en mescroy, Et si croy que ne sui pas seule, Car il pert assez a l’esteule Que bon n’est mie li espis.’32

When it comes to the knight’s turn to pose the questions, however, he employs the same device to turn the tables on his interlocutor. Faced with the question: ‘A point de poil en vo poinille?’33 the young lady indignantly denies the implication, which allows the knight to revenge himself for the gratuitous insult he received earlier: ‘Bien vous en croy, quar en sentier / Qui est batus ne croist point d’erbe’.34 That, like Charlot, the knight is able to employ the same device as his assailant to strike back against an unprovoked attack confirms the ‘biter bit’ pattern of both fabliaux, but the author of Le Sentier batu acknowledges this structural feature in a promythium considerably more extensive than the brief statement at the end of Rutebeuf ’s tale: Folie est d’autrui ramprosner, Ne gens de chose araisouner Dont il ont anuy et vergoigne. On porroit de ceste besoigne Souvent moustrer prueve en maint quas. Mauvés fet juer de voir gas, Car on dist, et c’est chose vraie, 28

NRCF 10: 71–81; 350. ‘The king who does not lie.’ 30 ‘A trick question’ (v. 82). 31 ‘Have you ever had any children?’ 32 ‘Sir, I have no difficulty whatsoever believing what you say, and I suspect I am not alone in holding this opinion, for it is very clear from the straw that the grain is absolutely no good’ (vv. 48–51). 33 ‘Do you have any hair on your mound of Venus?’ (v. 72). 34 ‘I believe you implicitly, because grass does not grow on a well-trodden path’ (vv. 78– 79). 29

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Que bonne atent qui bonne paie. Cui on ramposne ou on ledenge, Quant il en voit lieu, il s’en venge. Et tel d’autrui moquier s’atourne, Que sus lui meïsme retourne.35

The transition formula between the two epistemes in each episode is the same as that proposed for Le Vescie a Prestre. Linkage between the two episodes depends upon the revenge motive, and is purely narrative. The same structure, but in a somewhat looser format, appears in Les deus Changeors.36 One of two banker friends marries, but the other falls in love with the bride and succeeds in seducing her. One day he summons the lady to his room, insists that she strip naked, and then hides all her clothes. He subsequently sends for her husband, and, under pretence that he wants to demonstrate his good fortune in having found himself a beautiful mistress, manipulates the bed covers so as to reveal all her charms, but without exposing her face or revealing her identity. The husband is tricked into falsely inferring that the woman he is being asked to admire is the unknown mistress of his fellow banker, when in fact she is his own wife. Out of ignorance he admits (vv. 100–9) that he is envious of his friend’s good fortune. The wife is not tricked into supposing that her lover intends to reveal her identity. His actions imply rather that he intends to terrify her with his reckless brinkmanship. She responds by creating a parallel situation which intensifies the suspense and in turn terrifies the lover. She invites him to bathe with her at her home, hides his clothes, and keeps him hidden in the tub when her husband returns. She whispers to her husband that she is entertaining an ugly and fastidious female neighbour on whom she would like to play a prank by having him pretend to join her in the tub. He strips and places one foot in the bath before his wife calls on him to desist. The lover is ignorant of these manoeuvres, and in his evident fear of discovery the wife has her revenge. The issue between the main protagonists is one of courage rather than mental acuity, as the wife’s remarks to her lover confirm after her husband’s departure: ‘ “Vassal,” fete ele,

35 ‘It is foolish to mock other people, or to engage them in an argument they may find annoying and distasteful. One can find proof of the validity of this dictum in many instances. It is a bad move to make fun of what is real, for it is said, and it’s the truth, that good comes to those who treat others well. Those whom one mocks or criticises will return the favour when an opportunity presents itself, and those who spend their time mocking others will find their aggression turning back on themselves’ (vv. 1–12). Admonitory proverbs, which abound in the fabliaux, reflect the genre’s association with its wisdom-literature background. They are recorded in Morawski, Proverbes français, Singer, Sprichwörter, and Schulze-Busacker, ‘Proverbes et Expressions proverbiales’. 36 NRCF 5: 267–82; 426–27.

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“tel eschange / Doit l’en fere au musart prové: / Or vous ai je bien esprové / A coart et a recreant!” ’37 As in the first episode, only the husband is enticed into a false inference, believing that his wife’s companion in the tub is a female neighbour rather than her erstwhile lover. The husband is the victim in both epistemes, but the duper is the lover in the first episode and the wife in the second. Their sequence reflects a ‘biter-bit’ pattern constituted on grounds of physical aggression rather than logical intrigue. The tale provides a good illustration of the gap that may exist between the epistemes that provide the logical interest and the narrative link between episodes that gives the narrative shape and coherence. While every effort has been made to group fabliaux into discrete categories on the basis of the epistemes which they incorporate, very few narratives exhibit precisely the same structure, and there are nearly as many categories as there are individual tales. One observation worth making, however, is that diversity increases as the genre develops, and it is among the fabliaux occurring in fable collections that the highest degree of conformity is to be found, as earlier discussion of the narratives which exhibit the ‘ruse d’une femme’ motif confirms. Among later works it is the inventiveness of authors in deploying a limited number of epistemic patterns to generate an impressive variety of different texts that catches the attention, and contributes to the fascination of the corpus as a whole. One group of stories, closely related to other fabliaux in the manuscript tradition, qualify as fabliaux by incorporating at least one episode involving a false inference, but also display a range of narrative events frequently more concerned with boisterously physical actions than with the logical basis of mainstream fabliau development. These tales are typical fabliaux in terms of their content, but are emphatically aberrational in terms of their structure, which approximates the narrative model of Le Roman de Renart more than it does the constituent members of the fable-fabliau literary tradition. We term these ‘episodic fabliaux’. Aloul38 illustrates many of the characteristics of the group as a whole. The story begins with a seduction precisely parallel to that recounted in a conventional fabliau, Le Maignien qui foti la Dame: ‘Dame,’ dist il, ‘ce cuit je bien, Quar par matin fet bon lever. Mes l’en se doit desjeüner D’une herbe que je bien connois. Vez le la, pres que je n’i vois; Corte est et grosse la racine,

37 ‘ “Vassal,” she said, “that’s the kind of reciprocation that one ought to inflict on a proven idiot. Now I have thoroughly exposed you as a cowardly traitor!” ’ (vv. 264–67). 38 NRCF 3: 1–44; 407–11.

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Mes mout est bone medecine: N’estuet meillor a cors de fame.’39

Where the action of Le Maignien qui foti la Dame is urban, the initial scene in Aloul is rural. It begins with a conventional May-morning descriptio loci, and introduces the protagonists in an open-air setting, separated only by a stile. When the wife invites the priest to climb over, he enters her garden in a manner more reminiscent of a fox than of other philanderers in the fabliaux. Later, in response to the wife’s invitation to join her in bed, he insinuates himself into the bourgeois household, where his approach to Aloul’s bedroom becomes even more egregiously vulpine: De toutes pars bien le compisse. Or avoit el mez une lisse Qui faisoit grant noise et grant brait. Et li prestres el n’en a fait: La charniere va compissier, Quar n’a cure de son noisier.40

The narrative unfolds in a way that resembles individual branches of the beast epic more than a typical fabliau, and the priest behaves like an intruder fox. He engages in a series of physical encounters, initially with Aloul himself when he tries to copulate with the wife who is sharing his bed, and subsequently with several of the domestic servants. A maid named Hersent plays a prominent part in the proceedings, and offers another link with Le Roman de Renart. Her name, however, has less generic significance than her role as scheming servant. Such figures, familiar from the comédie latine, are not unknown in conventional fabliaux, but they play a proportionately much augmented role in episodic narratives, where the maidservant in Aloul has her counterpart in Bourghet (Le Prestre comporté41), Galestrot (Constant du Hamel42), and Aude (Trubert). Hersent has an impromptu sexual encounter with the priest when she mistakes him in the dark for one of the farm animals, and there are knock-down battles with the boldest and brawniest of the herdsmen. Aloul’s wife and the maidservant eventually conspire to effect the priest’s escape, but only after he has narrowly avoided castration in an appearance of the common motif whereby one of his pursuers is sent to cut a rasher of bacon from among the flitches where the priest has concealed 39 ‘ “Lady,” he said, “I really believe this to be true, for it is good to get up early in the morning. But one should breakfast on a herb that I’m familiar with. Look, there it is, I can almost see it myself. The root is short and thick, but it really is a wonderful panacea, there is none better for a woman’s body” ’ (vv. 74–84). 40 ‘He urinates all over every part. Now there was a bitch in the house that made a great fuss and barked loudly. And the priest acted no differently, but proceeded to piss on the door jamb, for he was not bothered by her fussing’ (vv. 207–12). 41 NRCF 9: 1–66; 281–89. 42 NRCF 1: 29–126; 319–45.

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himself. In the group of tales typified by Aloul the generically definitive logical fallacy is often subordinate to other more physically oriented behaviour, and may command little of the fabliau-author’s skills as a raconteur. If the influence of Le Roman de Renart on the evolution of the structure of episodic fabliaux is tenuous, that of the early fabliau Trubert is less disputable.43 Trubert is a compendium of fabliau motifs. Among the multifarious events reported in the course of the main character’s exploits are episodes reminiscent of numerous fabliaux. Disguise involving cross-dressing and female impersonation figures prominently throughout the plot, and often initiates scenes of sexual violence and humiliation. The main character, Trubert, like the priest in Aloul, has a penchant for urinating on his victims or their possessions. He displays many of the features associated with the typical picaro, but his exploits are directed against hapless individuals rather than ridiculing any specific social group. What Aloul and Trubert have in common is an episodic plot held together by the serial exploits of a single character, the renegade priest in Aloul and the eponymous hero of Trubert. A structure that is to a greater or lesser degree iterative contributes to defining the group of tales under examination. Thus Aloul features a series of skirmishes, flights, concealments and exposures as the priest first insinuates himself into, and then attempts to escape from Aloul’s house. Trubert is held together by a series of frequently sadistic pranks practised by the vagrant hero on his primary victim, the duke. The dead body of a murdered priest, and efforts by numerous characters to disembarrass themselves of its presence, provides the linking device in Le Prestre comporté, Le Sacristain,44 and Le Chapelain,45 and, as with Aloul, they introduce scenes dependent for their humour on confusion between the body of a fugitive or dead priest and a side of bacon. Typical is the scene in Le Sacristain: Il respont: ‘No bacons a botes, Et si a bras et mains et ganbes!’ ‘Par les eus Diu,’ fait il, ‘tu ganbles!’ ‘A, conpains, ce n’est mie fable: Nous avons por bacon diable, Grant et hideus et contrefait. Si m’aït Dius, ci a mal plait!’46 43 For similarities in form, see Foulet, ‘Le Poème de Richeut’. There are interesting comments on Trubert in Fabliaux érotiques, ed. Rossi and Straub. 44 Vitz, ‘Desire and Causality’. The author offers an actantial analysis of Le Segretain Moine (Le Sacristain II in NRCF 7: 153–73; 356–76), but choosing an episodic fabliau is perverse, since they are in many respects anomalous, particularly in respect of a structure that defies neat analysis in accordance with the Greimasian schema. 45 NRCF 6: 77–99; 327–28. 46 ‘He replied, “Our side of bacon has boots, and it also has arms and hands and legs.” “By the eyes of God,” he said, “you must be joking!” “Ah, mate, I’m not making this up. In place of our side of bacon we’ve got a devil, huge, and ugly, and deformed. So help me God, this is a bad situation!” ’ (Le Sacristain I, vv. 350–56).

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In Barat et Haimet47 efforts to protect, steal, and recover a bacon flitch provide the narrative thread,48 while in Constant du Hamel the structuring device is based on repeated triads. Three minor officials (priest, provost, and forester) petition a virtuous wife for her sexual favours. They are lured seriatim to her house, persuaded to climb naked into a barrel filled with feathers, forced to witness Constant, with his wife’s approval, rape their respective wives or concubines, and finally, in a scene which typifies the farcical element apparent in a number of episodic fabliaux, turned loose to be savaged by dogs.49 There is a similarly slapstick quality about the final scenes in Le Prestre comporté and Le Sacristain, which feature a dead priest strapped to the back of a horse, furnished with shield and lance, and released to create mayhem through the town. The episodic nature of these narratives is further evidenced by the contextual summary of the action provided in Le Prestre comporté (vv. 1124–39).50 As might be expected from narratives replete with so many incremental elements, one of the features common to episodic fabliaux is their increased length by comparison with standard examples of the genre. Variation within the group is so extreme, however, that length cannot readily be correlated with other structural features. The fragmentary Le Chapelain, and the complete Barat et Haimet, count approximately five hundred lines, only slightly in excess of the fabliau average, but Le Prestre comporté approaches twelve hundred lines, and Trubert registers nearly three thousand. In addition to such common features as an iterative structure and the promotion of humour dependent on violent and farcical episodes, episodic fabliaux share some characteristics not universally present throughout the fabliau corpus. In Le Sacristain and Constant du Hamel virtuous wives conspire with their husbands to cheat importunate clerics and petty officials of money which they offer in the hope that the wife will prostitute herself.51 The wife is abashed when her husband is responsible for the death of her unwelcome suitors, but collaborates with him to ensure that they exculpate themselves from any threat of retribution. In Le Prestre comporté the wife is guilty of adultery, her priest lover is murdered by her husband without her knowledge, and she is victimised by suspicion of 47

NRCF 2: 27–75; 357–67. Mole, ‘Du Bacon et de la Femme’. Mole explores the implications of identifying ham and woman, or theft and rape. Association of bacon and sex is certainly conventional in the fabliaux. 49 Variants connected with the scene of the attack by dogs on the priest are examined by Burrows, ‘Constant du Hamel’. The interdependence of language and power in this and one other fabliau is explored by Cobby, ‘Langage du Pouvoir’. The narrator’s language, Cobby argues, echoes the careful choice of discourse shown by the protagonists. 50 For a similar summary of episodic action see, for example, Trubert, vv. 2125–36 and 2899–2904. 51 The reappearance of this feature among the comparatively small number of episodic narratives is descriptively significant, but it occurs also in some works from the standard corpus, specifically Le Prestre teint and the related Estormi and Les quatre Prestres. Of these the first two also exhibit the excessive length characteristic of episodic narratives, while Les quatre Prestres gives every impression of being a derivative epigone. 48

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complicity in his death. In all three instances, however, the husband escapes the consequences of his act, and the distribution of actants, although not without parallel in the fabliau corpus as a whole, is unusual in its alignment of husband, wife, and lover. Among the episodic fabliaux there are few instances of verbal humour, or of humour dependent on (AA) or (A+B) fallacies. By contrast, fallacies based on (AB) patterns abound, and the dramatic nature of episodic fabliaux accounts for disguises, and other elaborate coups de théâtre, playing a significant part in narrative development. The body of the dead priest in Le Prestre comporté and Le Sacristain is not only tied to the back of a horse for a fake chevauchée, but also arranged on a toilet seat with a torchon of straw in his hand as part of the complex plot to avoid complicity in his death. Trubert disguises himself as carpenter, physician, and knight to deceive the duke Garnier, and adopts even more bizarre devices to persuade king Golias that he can function as the king’s new bride Florie. Episodic fabliaux exploit the humorous possibilities of fabliau motifs to string together a series of farcical dramatic adventures, but the humour is superficial by comparison with that of fabliaux such as those examined in the following chapter which best exemplify the more profound significances suggested by the relationship with logic.

8

Fabliau Aesthetic The major aesthetic qualities of fabliaux have been lauded in most of the critical assessments of the canon. Despite his general distaste for the genre, and his unease with a number of its distinctive characteristics, Joseph Bédier, the first modern critic to submit the total corpus to serious investigation, recognised that fabliaux manifest many admirable qualities, particularly the ability shown by fablëors to organise the often labyrinthine intrigues of their brief narratives with admirable economy and clarity. His views have been echoed by generations of commentators following his critical lead. The fabliaux have been praised particularly for their naturalistic style, and for their interesting portraits. Characterisation in the fabliaux assumes many different forms. The remanieur of version I of Le Chevalier qui fist parler les Cons amplifies his account with a long description of a pretty young maid-in-waiting, a classic descriptio and effictio that provides the remanieur an opportunity to display his rhetorical skills, and his familiarity with the conventions of a more prestigious literary tradition than that to which he has devoted his own talents. But the description is quite extraneous to the plot of this fabliau, and its subject without any significant actantial role in the narrative. There are instances in certain fabliaux where a fictional character creates a false but persuasively credible identity for himself as part of a planned deception, a coup de théâtre involving more than an assumed disguise. These theatrical characterisations are clearly integral to the overall development of the plot. Finally, there are authorial portraits that are inseparable from the intrigue. This would obviously be the case in Le Couvoiteus et l’Envieus, but these stock allegorical figures receive little elaboration within the fabliau text. In a fabliau such as La vieille Truande, however, the same function is served by completely naturalistic descriptions of the major protagonists. Of this kind is the portrait of the old debauchee, in the tradition of grotesque portraiture illustrated by Chrétien de Troyes’s rustic herdsman in Yvain, or the ugly hag in the anonymous Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell. The portrait contrasts strikingly with that of the  See particularly Muscatine, Chaucer. Muscatine notes the diligence with which mundane details are recorded by authors who elaborate on the props essential to the development of the comic intrigue, but seldom venture into descriptions extraneous to the narrative development.  La vieille Truande, vv. 50–57: ‘Un ongement ot fait de dokes, / De vif argent et de viés oint, / Dont son visage et ses mains oint / Por le solel qu’il ne l’escaude. / Mais ce n’estoit mie

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elegant and fashion-conscious young baceler, who: ‘Biaus estoit et cortois et sages’. Details of age, sex, and appearance play a major part in characterising the nature of the conflict between these protagonists. A typically fabliau resolution acknowledges the pre-eminent reality of physical aversion over concerns about such abstractions as pride in lineage, and since the old crone emerges triumphant from the encounter with the young man, his fastidiousness, like that of the character Absalom in Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale, is a debilitating trait in the rough and tumble of the fabliau world. There would be little profit in reiterating what have become the critical clichés of fabliau scholarship, but some insights remain to be drawn from the understanding of fabliau structure attempted in this study. This chapter will examine in detail two infrequently anthologised fabliaux, La Dame qui Aveine demandoit pour Morel sa Provende avoir [hereafter La Dame qui Aveine demandoit] and Le Chevalier qui fist sa Fame confesse, fabliaux that between them illustrate two essential aesthetic qualities of the genre. The two fabliaux in question, although very different in their surface texture, are alike in being structurally among the more complexly elegant examples of fabliau narratives. As such they register their distinctive aesthetic characteristics clearly and forcefully, but they also incorporate these most general qualities in specific contexts that actualise their significance for particular aspects of the intellectual life of the late Middle Ages. All fabliaux incorporate some opposition between logical contradictories, and some shift in truth values when the character endorsing one logical stance triumphs over an opponent endorsing a contradictory assumption. All fabliau narratives consequently feature a moment of peripiteia (reversal of fortune) and anagnorisis (discovery) when the victims of an intrigue suffer the reversal of fortune that makes them victims, and realise that their misfortune is attributable to some mistaken understanding of the circumstances governing their relationship to the dupers. When both the protagonists in the episteme are unaware bele Aude, / Ains estoit laide et contrefaite! / Mais encor s’adoube et afaite, / Por çou k’encore veut siecler’ [‘She had prepared an ointment from dock leaves, from quicksilver and stale animal fat, which she smeared over her face and her hands so that they would not overheat in the sun. But she was by no means the lovely Aude, but was rather ugly and malformed! She still adorned herself and attempted to make herself smart, however, because she still wanted to be in the swim of things’].  ‘Was handsome, courtly, and wise’ (v. 21).  For a perspicacious view of the narrative art of the Old French fabliaux, see Hart, ‘The Reeve’s Tale’; and the same author’s ‘The Narrative Art of the Old French Fabliaux’.  NRCF 9: 183–99; 305. The analogue Porcelet is identical to La Dame qui aveine demandoit structurally, but very different from it stylistically. This stylistic difference is perceptible in the fanciful names assigned to the wife’s sexual appetite, ‘Blackie’ (morel = ‘black’) and ‘little Piggy’. Reference to Porcelet in the following discussion is made only for comparison with its longer counterpart.  Appropriating terms from classical discussion of comedy does not facilitate extensive and detailed analyses of comic plots, since materials for such an initiative are very scant. The key principle that can be extrapolated from the unfortunately obscure and fragmentary



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that their logical assumptions are at odds with accepted reality (pattern E), or both are deliberately exploiting a similar discrepancy (pattern EE), the moment of peripety and anagnorisis is muted, and occurs only in the narreme, either between the misguided participants in the episteme and a better-informed character who intervenes to correct their misapprehension, or between the exploitive sophisticates of the episteme and the naïve victim of their sophistry. If the victim of the narreme in pattern (EE) is a representative figure like the knight in Cele qui se fist foutre, the peripety and anagnorisis may have wide-ranging social and moral implications, but in pattern (E) the misapprehension from which some outside figure disabuses the victims is frequently unique and trivial. Both La Dame qui Aveine demandoit and Le Chevalier qui fist sa Fame confesse conform to pattern (E2). The dispute is between two characters ranged on opposite sides of a profoundly significant debate, and in each narrative the characters ultimately triumphant in the narreme act to frustrate an attempt by the other characters in the episteme to resolve in their favour an issue of the utmost importance to both parties. In pattern (E2) the intrigue stems from some fundamental difference in character and attitude between the protagonists, and the logical exchange exists to articulate this opposition. In pattern (E), by contrast, the investment of the actants is dictated by the nature of the logical exchange. At issue in La Dame qui Aveine demandoit is sexual compatibility, and a married couple’s need to negotiate a level of sexual activity satisfactory to both partners. The wider implications of this issue and the importance of the conflict for fabliau aesthetic in general result from the fact that initial attempts by the husband and wife to resolve their problems require recourse to an artificial, fanciful, and sentimental attitude towards married love. The failure of this scheme prompts the husband to reassert control by shifting the focus of the devices for containment to the realistic, mundane, and pragmatic. The narrative features numerous logical patterns already familiar from earlier chapters. It begins with an arrangement similar to that devised by the protagonists in Celui qui bota la Pierre, whereby negotiations prior to the sex act itself Tractatus Coislinianus is the suggestion that comedy moves from pistis (opinion or illusion) to gnosis (fact or reality). This suggestion may be supplemented by abstracting from Aristotle’s scattered comments on comedy the idea that the moment of shift from pistis to gnosis constitutes the comic equivalent of peripety, and is accompanied by anagnorisis, terms he used in the Poetics to analyse the structure of tragedy. The significance of the Tractatus Coislinianus and its relationship to Aristotle’s views on comedy are examined by Cooper, Theory of Comedy. A number of fabliaux mark the point of peripety and anagnorisis with a shift in diction, from abstract euphemisms to concrete obscenities. This shift reflects an assumption that the substitution of politically correct metaphors for vulgar practices attempts to hide the truth, while outspoken obscenity acknowledges an unpalatable reality. This phenomenon is investigated by Pearcy, ‘Modes of Signification’, pp. 163–96 [esp. pp. 181–87]. The shift from a euphemistic formula, ‘Faites Moriaus ait de l’avainne’ [‘Give Blackie his oats’] to the husband’s remark after shitting in the bed (vv. 309–10): ‘Des or au bran t’esteut tenir, / Car l’avainne as faite fenir’ [‘From now on you will have to make do with bran, because you have used up all the oats’] is a shift of precisely parallel significance.

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are conducted through a complex of euphemistic substitutions. There is, however, an essential difference. The characters in Celui qui bota la Pierre aim primarily to negotiate an illicit sexual union which both parties desire but neither party wishes to address directly. In La Dame qui Aveine demandoit the protagonists are married, there are no external, social or moral barriers to their love-making, and the husband’s arrangement whereby the wife petitions him for sex by requesting oats for Morel is aimed at moderating his wife’s sexual demands. While the sexual activity in Celui qui bota la Pierre is socially subversive, in La Dame qui Aveine demandoit it takes place in strict conformity with medieval doctrine on payment of the marriage debt as discussed, for example, by Thomas Aquinas. There is also a reversal similar to that occurring in Le Vilain au Buffet. Confusion between literal and metaphorical significances is exploited by the victimised party to turn the tables on the person responsible for creating what the victim perceives as an unfair and intolerable situation. Overwhelmed by repeated requests for sex from his importunate wife, requests which have deprived him of rest, reduced him to skin and bones, and generally impaired his health, the husband responds to the latest demand for oats by defecating in his wife’s lap, and declaring that, the supply of oats being exhausted, she must henceforth content herself with bran. Conceivably the outrageous vulgarity of his action has kept this excellent fabliau out of the public domain, but its significance needs to be carefully and sympathetically evaluated. The Middle Ages were far less squeamish about bodily functions than is contemporary society, and while the husband’s act certainly destroys the fragile aura of romance that both partners to the marriage had struggled to maintain, it does so for the purpose of refocusing sexual relations on a more mundane but realistic basis. The wife learns that in the conduct of her  In his discussion of the marriage debt Thomas Aquinas makes a number of observations relevant to events in the fabliau. A husband is not obliged to pay the marriage debt unless specifically requested to do so (vir non teneatur reddere debitum uxori non petenti), the basis for the husband’s first ploy to limit his wife’s sexual demands. However, even if she is inhibited by shame from explicitly requesting sex, the husband is obliged to pay the debt if his wife indicates her desire by some sign (quando scilicet vir percipet per aliqua signa quod uxor vellet sibi debitum reddi, sed propter verecundiam tacet … tamen vir tenetur reddere), a qualification that quickly renders his ploy inefficacious. Finally, however, if the wife’s importunities exceed what is consistent with the husband’s welfare, her request constitutes an unjust requirement that the husband is not obliged to honour (si ultra exigit, non est petitio debiti, sed iniusta exactio, et propter hoc vir non tenetur ei satisfacere), a notion that goes partway to justifying his brutal rejection. The Latin text in Aquinas, ed. Caramello, vol. 3, p. 216. There is an English translation in The Summa Theologica, vol. 19, pp. 312–15.  The contrast between flour from the kernel of corn and inferior bran from the threshedoff husks is conventional. It appears, for example, in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Prologue, vv. 477–78, which read specifically: ‘The flour is goon; ther is namoore to telle; / The bren, as I best kan, now moste I selle.’ See Chaucer, ed. Benson, p. 111. In La Dame qui Aveine demandoit the metaphorical implications are extended because in Old French the word bran could mean the husks of corn, as in English, but could also carry the slang significance of excrement.



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marriage she must not pursue her own selfish desires while ignoring the burden they place on her husband, however willing he might be to protect the notion of sexual compatibility. When the husband shits in the marital bed, his gesture must be distinguished from the scatology evident in the far inferior Jouglet. Its effect is primarily significatory, and the significance is dependent on the carefully constructed narrative context. In the analogous Porcelet10 the husband responds to similar circumstances by farting in his wife’s lap. He might be viewed as moderating the vulgarity of the husband in La Dame qui Aveine demandoit, but in some respects his action is more gratuitously offensive, since it does not derive metaphorically from the context created by the married couple’s arrangements to control the frequency of their sexual encounters. The husband in La Dame qui Aveine demandoit aims to redress an imbalance created by the mutual desire of the married couple to organise their love-life according to the most unrealistically fanciful standards of romantic fiction: Tristans, tant cum fu en cest monde, N’anma autant Ysouc la blonde Cum cil dui amant s’entrenmerent Et foy et honnor se porterent. Mout bel menoient lor deduit Priveement et jor et nuit. Et quant venoit a cel solas Qu’i se tenoient bras a bras Ou lit ou estoient couchié, Et l’un pres de l’autre aprouchié, Adonc menoient lor revel Entr’aus; et tant bien et tant bel, Par amistiez et par delit, Ja ne queissent issir du lit. Car cele selonc sa nature Si amoit mout l’envoiseüre, Et le solas et le deduit Qu’ele en avoit chascunne nuit, Et pour ce mout mieus l’en servoit.11  The illustration by Jehan de Grise, from a fourteenth-century Flemish manuscript of the Romance of Alexander, used as the cover illustration for Bloch, Scandal, confirms the significatory nature of the event. A male cleric is shown defecating before a mortified female figure. Since the monk looks around to register the effect of his obscenely scatological gesture, we are not witnessing an accidental encounter by the nun with a situation that the monk would have chosen to keep private. The illustration makes no sense, that is to say, unless it refers to circumstances analogous to those depicted in La Dame qui Aveine demandoit. 10 NRCF 6: 185–91; 343. 11 ‘Tristan, as long as he lived in this world, did not love the fair-haired Isolde as passionately as these two lovers loved one another, and treated one another faithfully and honourably. They conducted their love relationship most successfully in privacy both day and night. And

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If ‘by nature’ the wife is happy with this arrangement, the husband is less so, not because his spirit is unwilling, but because his flesh is too weak to meet the requirements placed on it. Although he struggles to comply with a socially and religiously approved regimen of sexual activity, he finds himself increasingly threatened by a physical incompatibility that he cannot overcome. At this stage, however, the young couple’s fantasy existence prohibits any honest confrontation with their difficulties. The husband will not risk shattering the illusion of marital bliss they have created, and he initially tries to resolve his problem by faking a device to control the demands made upon him. On the excuse that he does not wish to burden a wife who may be temporarily indisposed with importunate sexual demands, he suggests that she should be made responsible for initiating sexual activity by using the formula, ‘faites Moriaus ait de l’avainne’ [‘feed Morel his oats’] whenever she feels prompted. The husband for his part promises that such a request will never go unheeded. His hope that embarrassment will moderate the frequency of his wife’s overtures appears wellfounded when she declares she would rather cut her throat than appeal to him in those terms. After a couple of days of inactivity, however, she accuses him of having a mistress, entices him into making love to her, and then uses his formula to pressure him into further sexual intercourse. Her prudery once overcome, she makes the same demand unremittingly, and the husband recognises that his efforts to assert control over their love-life have backfired. The situation returns us to the traditional fabliau dispute over authority in marriage, and it is no surprise that the author concludes his text with an appeal to an audience of married men to beware the pitfalls attendant on too casually creating false expectations: A vous di qu’iestes mariez: Par cest conte vous chastiez! Faites a mesure et a point, Quant verrez lieu et tens et point.12

The husband’s rash promise always to respond positively to his wife’s requests has initially given her total authority over their domestic situation, and subsequent developments reflect his efforts to regain control. When the dispute between married couples is over the issue of marital fidelity, the triumph of one party or the other is absolute. Either the husband enforces his will in protecting when that joyful moment arrived when they held each other in their arms as they lay in their bed, and one of them cuddled up close to the other, then between them they enjoyed their time of pleasure. And everything passed off so well and so happily in friendship and in joy that they never wanted to leave their bed. For in response to her natural instincts she very much enjoyed the fun of love-making, the pleasure and the amusement that she derived from it every night, and for that reason he was the more willing to provide it’ (vv. 29–47). 12 ‘I say to those of you who are married that you should take warning from this story. Conduct your affairs with moderation and in accordance with what is adequate, as place, time, and occasion dictate’ (vv. 331–34).



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the inviolability of his marriage by the exercise of brute force, as in Le Fevre de Creeil, or the wife is successful in creating a situation where she is free to engage a penchant for random promiscuity without fear of intervention, as in Berengier au lonc Cul. In La Dame qui Aveine demandoit the result of the husband’s desperately vile act of defecating in his wife’s lap is to restore a balance, to effect a compromise. His threat to respond similarly to any further requests for oats for Blackie reinstates his absolute authority, but only in accordance with an artificial system that both parties are thereafter content to abandon. Love-making in the future will be confined, he suggests, to feast days, a reasonably generous offer given the frequency of such occasions in the Catholic culture of medieval France. Evidence has already been given of the wife’s ability to seduce her husband, however, and his stance is probably to be regarded as no more than a bargaining position. The false and dangerous absolutism resulting from the adoption of a formula to control sexual activity yields place to the more natural rhythm of marital dialectic.13 In a fabliau such as La Dame qui Aveine demandoit the move from pistis to gnosis is marked as a shift from an abstract, incorporeal, and consequently ­inoffensive euphemistic formula to a concrete, material, and shocking obscenity. The shock value is created by the contrast between the protagonists’ efforts to control their sexual situation by the use of a formula that protects the sentimental idea of compatibility and marital bliss, and the sudden descent into vulgarity when the husband realises that this effort will founder on the rock of his wife’s intransigence. The final outcome, as reflected in the narreme, endorses the triumph of the concrete over the abstract, of the real over the illusory, and of the natural, animalistic side of human nature over the exquisitely refined sophistication of some aspects of late medieval culture. These two polarities are always actively opposed in the fabliaux, and the resolution of the conflict may go in either direction. In pattern (E) reality ultimately triumphs over illusion, but the narratives which incorporate this pattern are risées wherein the illusion results from some comparatively trivial quidproquo, and the conflict lacks any social implication.14 In pattern (EE) the reverse is always the case, but in narratives which incorporate this pattern the triumph of illusion over reality has profound social significance. Thus in a fabliau such as La Damoisele qui ne pooit oïr parler de foutre a rather sordid seduction assumes the trap-

13 The idea that ‘balance’ between the conflicting claims of flesh and spirit is an essential element in the resolution of conflict in comic tales such as La Dame qui Aveine demandoit is persuasively argued by Brewer in the introduction to his anthology, Medieval Comic Tales, pp. xvff: ‘The most obvious general example of the juxtaposition of incongruities in all races and periods is that between, on the one side, human spiritual, intellectual, moral and social aspirations and necessities, and on the other, the wilfulness or recalcitrance of our equally human physical nature, the grossness, greed and selfishness of our craving bodies.’ 14 Different categories of laughter, and medieval opinions on the salutary effects of hearing or reading humorous narratives are explored in Olson, Literature.

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pings of high romance, while in Le Testament de l’Asne ecclesiastic corruption is cosmetically disguised as routinely acceptable practice for officers of the church. In patterns (E1) and (E2) partisan support for one position or the other is pivotal in defining and resolving the issues that divide the protagonists. In the tradition represented by the fabliaux incorporated into the fable collections of Marie de France and Petrus Alfonsi, the wife is the one to emerge as the dominant figure by virtue of her superior ability to manipulate reality in working to achieve her often nefarious objectives. She consequently appears as a morally equivocal figure, admired for her ingenious ability to lie, cheat, and otherwise deceive those who censor her conduct, but condemned as a threat to social order and stability. No such equivocation attaches to the husbands responsible for recognising and combating their wives’ attempts to manipulate reality for their own selfish ends. In such fabliaux as L’Enfant qui fu remis au Soleil, Le Prestre crucefié, or La Dame qui Aveine demandoit husbands champion an ultimately triumphant reality that establishes itself in opposition to the artificial and illusory world created by their wives’ machinations. In La Dame qui Aveine demandoit logic mediates the fundamental fabliau conflict between the real and the illusory, but in Le Chevalier qui fist sa Fame confesse the efficacy of logic itself to interpret and control events is called into question. Syllogistic logic as it was understood by the Middle Ages, and as it formed the basis for scholastic investigation in a wide variety of fields, works only with the help of such concepts as ‘all’ and ‘none.’ It has a limited capacity to deal with the multiple facets of human experience, which rarely involve those absolutes underpinning logical systems, but must operate instead with a bewildering variety of exceptions, real or imagined, to any strictly formulated proposition. The limitations of logical deduction are well illustrated in Le Chevalier qui fist sa Fame confesse, which begins in a context that ought to guarantee the absolute truth of any statement, a wife’s deathbed confession to a priest, but concludes in total confusion and the realisation that final truth is unknowable. A woman who supposes herself on the point of death wants to make a final confession to a local monk with a great reputation for sanctity, and asks her husband to fetch him to her bedside. The husband agrees, but on his way resolves to test the truth of his wife’s reputation for virtue. By substituting himself for the monk, he hopes to hear at first hand the true nature of his wife’s past life. He borrows the monk’s robes and his horse, and returning home keeps his head well hidden in the monk’s hood. He profits from the general obscurity of the house and his wife’s physical disorientation to fool her into believing that he is the sought-after priest. Ignorant of the true identity of her confessor, the wife admits to having casual sexual relations with her servants and a five-year affair with her husband’s nephew. She unexpectedly recovers, however, and finding her husband unusually cold towards her, and critical of her unblemished reputation, realises that it was to her husband in disguise that she confessed her offences. That realisation provides her the means to extricate herself from her unhappy situation, for she claims to have recognised him from the start, and to have invented her



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account of sexual misdemeanours. Her ploy is successful in allaying his suspicions, and he accepts her account as the truth. The logical twists and turns in this fabliau are tortuous. The initial postulate is that a confession made to a priest on one’s deathbed is necessarily true. But the validity of that proposition in the context of the fabliau narrative is suspect, since in fact the confession is made to the woman’s husband in disguise. It may however be valid to argue that if the wife supposes that her confession is made to a priest on her deathbed then it is still necessarily true. But that argument moves the debate from the material to the psychological arena. Whether the wife genuinely supposes that she is confessing to a priest is not accessible to investigation. Determining the truth inevitably rests with the text of the confession itself, and that text is ambiguated by the complexity of the circumstances in which the confession is delivered. The wife’s revelations concerning the conduct of her life are certainly scandalous: C’estoie je, qui los avoie, Mes mout mavese fame estoie, Quar a mes garçons me livroie Et avoeques moi les couchoie, Et d’aus fesoie mon talent: Moie coupe, je m’en repent.15

The wife follows this admission with the general statement that women as a sex are incapable of reserving their love to their husbands alone, no matter how handsome and noble they might be. Women are compelled to seek love outside of marriage by the exigency of desires they cannot admit, for fear that their evilminded husbands will consider them no better than prostitutes. The husband in his role as father confessor endorses this sentiment, and urges her to continue if she has more to add: ‘Sire,’ dist ele, ‘oïl assez, Dont li miens cors est mout grevez Et la moie ame en grant freor; Que le neveu de mon seignor, Tant l’amoie en mon corage, Ce m’estoit vis que c’estoit rage! Et sachiez bien que je morusse, Se mon plesir de lui n’eüsse. Tant fis que je o lui pechai, Et que cinc anz, je cuit, l’amai: Or m’en repent vers Dieu, aïe!’16 15 ‘I am the one who enjoyed a spotless reputation, but in truth I was a very wicked woman, for I made myself available to my servants and let them sleep with me and enjoyed myself with them. The guilt is mine, and I repent it’ (vv. 127–32). 16 ‘ “Sir,” she said, “yes, very much so, for which my body suffers much anguish and my soul is very fearful. For in my heart I so loved my husband’s nephew that I thought it would

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The disguised husband certainly supposes that he is listening to a true account of the amorous adventures of a depraved woman, but it would be impossible to prove the validity of that assumption from the text of the confession itself. When the wife later asserts that she recognised her husband in disguise from the start, and that her account was an invention intended to shock him, and to punish him for his underhanded effort to inveigle the truth by deception, her claim gains credibility from the very outrageousness of her confession. It has the hallmarks of the traditional comic scene where a wife or girlfriend, pestered by husband or lover to reveal something of her past sexual activity, admits to having had intercourse with the boy next door, two friends of her father, a local rock band, and the members of the town’s rugby team! In such a scenario there is, of course, no mystery as to the identity of the interlocutor, and the woman’s account is eventually exposed as an invention by the incredible enormity of the depravity to which she lays claim. Sympathy in such a situation rests entirely with the woman, who is assumed guiltless of the offences she attributes to herself, and fully entitled to punish husband or boyfriend for attempting to probe areas he has no entitlement to investigate. Le Chevalier qui fist sa Fame confesse conforms to this pattern in some respects and differs from it in some others. The audience is made privy to the fact that the sick wife does not recognise her husband: ‘De son seignor ne connut mie’17 and they consequently have an unequivocal understanding, denied to the husband, that her confession is true. The audience also knows, however, that the so-called priest is an impostor, a fact initially hidden from the wife, so they have some sympathy for her situation and some distrust of the circumstances whereby the confession is elicited. Once the husband has yielded to the temptation to test his wife through trickery, he hears what he deserves to hear, and to that extent whether he is told an unpalatable truth or an ingenious lie becomes irrelevant. The ambiguity that attaches to the truth of the wife’s confession is imposed retrospectively once she claims to have recognised her husband on his first appearance disguised as a priest. But the disguise provides the potential for such an ambiguity, and affects the statements made by both the husband and the wife. It is impossible on the second reading that this narrative seems to demand not to view the husband’s speeches from two very different perspectives.18 His response

drive me crazy! And you should know it for a fact that I would have died had I not taken my pleasure with him. I arranged to sin with him, and, I believe, loved him for five years. Now, before God, I repent of what I did, so help me!” ’ (vv. 163–73). 17 ‘She did not recognise her husband at all’ (v. 115). 18 The extent to which fabliaux were meant to be heard recited by a minstrel in a public performance, or read privately in manuscript, is a question probably not susceptible to any final solution. Oral delivery would obviously pertain to those anecdotes with fabliau associations incorporated as exempla into medieval sermons. The full potential of the short, dramatic narratives that characterise those early fabliaux with fable analogues could well be realised through oral delivery; however, the later, psychologically more complex examples of the genre, such as Le Chevalier qui fist sa Fame confesse, would repay a more leisurely reading or re-reading.



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to his wife’s first admission that she has fornicated with the household servants cynically adopts a stance of moral outrage: ‘Dame,’ dist il, ‘pechié avez. Dites avant, se vous savez! Mes bien vous deüssiez tenir, Dame, s’il vous fust a plesir, A vostre espous, qui mout vaut mieus, Ce m’est avis, par mes deus ieus, Que li garçons: mout me merveil!’19

As the speech of a genuine father confessor solicitous for the welfare of the soul of a penitent this might be acceptable. As the speech of a husband in disguise it seems impertinent, patronising and self-serving, and his responses to the further revelations that he encourages his wife to make are equally galling. Nothing in Le Chevalier qui fist sa Fame confesse is quite what it appears, and the narrative exhibits a pervasive ambiguity. The obsession to acquire absolute knowledge has precipitated the husband into a disturbing paradox of uncertainty from which there is no escape. He has dared to disturb the universe with his hubristic supposition that he can uncover the truth, and he is punished by discovering that, for the particular issue on which he wanted reassurance, the truth is unknowable. The narrative creates an intractable ambiguity because the wife’s confession can be repudiated, and the very enormity of her sexual transgressions makes plausible her later claim that they were invented to shock. But the author, or the remanieur if we are to assume a slightly botched reworking, is not consistently faithful to the most subtle implications of his text. After confessing to a number of sexual indiscretions, the wife moves on to express a different aspect of her marital derelictions: Ne ja ostel n’ert a honor Dont la dame se fet seignor. Et fames ceste coustume ont, Et volentiers toz jors le font Qu’eles aient la seignorie Sor lor seignors; por c’est honie Mainte meson qu’est sanz mesure, Et fame avoire par nature.20 19 ‘ “Lady,” he said, “you have sinned. “Tell on, if you know more! But you certainly ought to have remained faithful to your husband, lady, if it had pleased you to do so, who in my opinion is worth much more, strike me blind if I’m wrong, than the servants. I am really astounded!” ’ (vv. 137–43). 20 ‘No household where the wife assumes her husband’s role is ever held worthy to be honoured. And women have the habit, and will always willingly exercise it, that they would hold authority over their lords. For this reason many a household that lacks proper discipline, and where the wife shows her natural true colours, is put to shame’ (vv. 201–08).

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It does no violence to the verisimilitude of the story that a wife guilty of asserting mastery would confess this fault as a sin to her confessor. But by comparison with the segment on sexual offences quoted earlier, the wife’s admission is artistically inept. Adultery is necessarily clandestine. If it has not been detected, then plausibly no evidence remains that it took place, and once admitted it can be as readily repudiated. Only the original confession itself needs to be accounted for. By contrast, admitting a previously unrecognised dominance in marriage would be neither believed nor understood unless there were some long-standing pattern of behaviour which could be retrospectively interpreted so as to confirm the assertion, and that evidence would remain even if the assertion were subsequently denied. Unlike the confession of adultery, confession of dominance is not retractable, and that makes it incongruous in the context of this tale. The husband should be expected to challenge, on the grounds that certain of her statements are incompatible with any such purpose, his wife’s claim that her mock confession was intended to punish him for his suspicious duplicity. That he fails to do so undermines the logical rigour and weakens the narrative coherence of the story. The author or remanieur has been tempted into including in his condemnation of women an indictment of what numerous early texts associated with the fable tradition regarded as an especially sensitive issue.21 The unmediated voice of the author intervenes at this point, to the inevitable disruption of the integrity of his literary artefact. In The Scandal of the Fabliaux, R. Howard Bloch argued that the ‘scandal’ at the heart of the fabliau genre was a failure of representation, a recognition that language was inadequate to capture the reality of events. Consequently the genre as a whole portrayed a situation tending inevitably towards linguistic aporia. There is something essential to fabliau ethos in this argument, but its execution in Bloch’s account often seems strained and wayward, and the texts selected to demonstrate its validity – Le Roi d’Angleterre et le Jongleur d’Ely, Le Mantel mautaillé, for example – are often marginal to the accepted fabliau corpus, and indeed do not figure in NRCF. A parallel but more pertinent thesis, which also captures some essential quality of fabliau ethos but does so in relationship to the core texts of the canon, would argue that the scandal at the heart of the genre involved a descent into logical rather than linguistic aporia. The Derridian concept of différance is equally applicable to both concepts, but what is elusive in linguistic aporia, the ability of the verbal signifier to capture the reality of the signified, is replaced in logical aporia by the failure of logical propositions to register truth. As the reality of representation slips away in the endless process of infinite regression whereby one signifier is replaced by another without any possibility of arriving at a final 21 La Dame escoillee, for example, states (vv. 461–62): ‘Feme ne fait vilté graignor / Que de vill tenir son seignor!’ [‘A woman commits no greater crime than to hold her husband in contempt!’]. As noted, however, this is an egregiously anti-feminist text, very different in overall spirit to Le Chevalier qui fist sa Fame confesse.



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coincidence of signifier and signified, so in logical aporia the truth of any proposition comes to be seen as dependent on the truth of the premises that constitute it, and the truth of those premises is in turn dependent on other propositions, and so on ad infinitum.22 It would be difficult to overestimate the profound subversiveness attached to the distrust of syllogistic reasoning in the later Middle Ages. Aristotle reigned supreme as ‘the philosopher’ on the strength of his contribution to this area of human endeavour, and his writings on logic formed the basis for the intellectual movement known as scholasticism. Although there were diverse currents in the attitudes towards preferred approaches to the apprehension of truth, and such champions of reason as Abaelard were counterbalanced by such adherents to faith as Bernard of Clairvaux, it was nevertheless the age which produced logical proofs for the existence of God, and the great intellectual project of the leading theologian of the period, Thomas Aquinas, was to reconcile the teachings of Aristotle with the truths of the Bible. Fulminations by the Church authorities against what was regarded as the scurrility of popular comic tales and jests are well documented, and there is certainly some truth in the common assumption that the bawdy nature of a large part of the minstrel’s repertoire was the focus for these objections. But the majority of the texts in the fabliau corpus go beyond the insurgent’s desire to ruffle the feathers of the overly complacent, and to shock the sensibilities of the too-easily outraged, clear as such an intention may be in many instances. In its totality the fabliau canon reflects a mindset, intellectual but firmly rooted in everyday reality, sympathetic to the human condition but sceptical as to human perfectibility, and above all distrustful of metaphysical absolutes, whether of faith or of reason.

22

The issues are explored by Avni, The Resistance of Reference, especially pp. 1–16.

Conclusion This study was initially undertaken with the single objective of devising a structural definition of fabliaux sufficiently general to embrace all extant examples of the genre, and sufficiently precise to permit a reasoned discrimination between narratives with a legitimate claim to inclusion in the canon and others that ought by definition to be excluded. This purpose has remained central, although in the course of its development the study has diverged into related areas such as fabliau origins and evolution. The system proposed, whereby fabliaux are conceived as combining a logically derived episteme with a Greimasian-model narreme, adequately accounts for the vast majority of texts that have featured in complete editions or in the fabliau inventories of critics concerned to identify all the relevant texts. Other proposals for establishing generic boundaries are open to objection on a variety of bases. Bédier’s definition of the fabliaux as ‘des contes à rire en vers’ has proved remarkably durable, and is still acceptable as the most valid general description of the core group of narratives that constitute the fabliau canon. But at the periphery of this group every element in the definition proves problematical. The verse form almost universally employed by fabliau authors is the octosyllabic couplet, but uniquely in the case of Le Prestre au Lardier even the concept vers is disputable. Since Bédier’s time the lack of narrative interest in Les Chevaliers, les Clers et les Vilains, Les Putains et les Lechëors, or Le Roi d’Angleterre et le Jongleur d’Ely has led to a general realisation that they are comic dits and should be banished from the fabliau corpus, but there are other groups such as the tableau de moeurs or the jugement for which the concept conte is also of dubious relevance. Finally the implication of ‘à rire’ is inescapably imprecise, and open to a variety of different interpretations. Total absence of humour in Fole Larguesce is an adequate reason for excluding it from the fabliau corpus, but while general agreement might be achievable on the humorous effect of a distinctive type of fabliau narrative, the source of humour in numerous others such as Le Con qui fu fait a la Besche, Une seule Fame qui a son Cors servoit cent Chevaliers de tous Poins, or Le Prestre et le Leu is difficult to determine and even harder to define. Attempts at a more precise definition than that proposed by Bédier have collapsed in the face of fabliau heterogeneity. To take just the one issue of style, every shade of difference between the obscenely vulgar (Le Maignien qui foti la Dame) and the refined courtly (Le Chevalier qui recovra l’Amor de sa Dame) is

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represented among works with a secure place in the fabliau canon, and there are several instances of narratives that promiscuously integrate both styles within the confines of a single text (Le Chevalier qui fist parler les Cons). To exclude on the basis of an egregiously ‘high’ style such fabliaux as Aristote et Alixandre or L’Espervier, while admitting such clear but emphatically ‘low’ style analogues as L’Evesque qui benëi le Con or the stylistically neutral L’Espee does little to inspire confidence in the principles of selection. Nor is the validity of the procedure enhanced by the fact that the two works cited above which programmatically or incidentally eschew all vulgarity are referred to as lais. Medieval literary terminology has played a key role in establishing for some modern editors or critics a core group of fabliaux contextually identified as such by fablëors or remanieurs, but the pretension that this is an objective criterion which bestows legitimacy on the process of selection is illusory. Medieval practice reflects a high degree of uncertainty about the generic labelling of texts. A large number of narratives having clearly little or no connection with the core group are identified as fabliaux by their authors, and an even larger number of serious contenders for inclusion in the fabliau corpus feature a wide variety of different labels other than fabliau to identify their generic affiliations. These terminologically marginal texts are rejected or accepted on the basis of the degree to which they conform to elements in the core group thought of as definitively typical. But what criterion of selection is really being invoked here? Not that of literary terminology, certainly, because the process itself bears witness to its inadequacy. Not that of style either, which may be called upon arbitrarily to resolve the status of a very few individual texts, but which has no applicability as a clearly defined generic touchstone across a large and varied corpus with stylistic traits ranging from the most exquisitely courtly to the most outrageously vulgar, and featuring for the most part narratives bordering on the ‘low’ side of a pervasive stylistic neutrality. In truth those responsible for compiling comprehensive editions or formulating complete inventories of fabliaux depend on the recognition of motifs from the core group of texts that recur in otherwise unattached narratives lacking any clear generic identification. In essence, that is to say, the procedure is structural. No attempt is made to organise the motifs in question into a rationalised system, to define their nature or to account for relations between them. The process, despite a cosmetic veneer of scientific objectivity, is fundamentally subjective and ­arbitrary. It has escaped censure because the insights and instincts of sensitive and intelligent scholars with a deep and long-standing involvement in their subject are for the most part reliable, but unless their procedures are clearly and comprehensively articulated no meaningful discussion of problem areas is possible, and no progress towards the resolution of issues on which opinions vary is feasible. Requiring compliance with a definitive structural model to authenticate fabliau identity does result in some regrettable casualties. Chief among these are

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Saint Pierre et le Jongleur and Le Vilain qui conquist Paradis par Plait. Gently humorous, sentimental, and pious without being pietistic, these texts represent for some readers the acceptable face of the Middle Ages. For example Thomas D. Cooke, The Old French and Chaucerian Fabliaux, speaks warmly of these two texts (‘Conclusion,’ pp. 198–99) as the best examples that exist of fabliau humour, although neither exhibits the kind of ‘comic climax’ that is purportedly the unifying structural principle of his study. Neither is contextually identified as a fabliau, but they are nevertheless among those most frequently included in fabliau anthologies, or in critical discussion of fabliau characteristics. Fabliaux, however, they are not. They resemble one another more closely than they do the majority of fabliau texts, and their proper place is with similar secular but pious tales such as Le Jongleur de Notre Dame. Their deviation from conventional fabliau form and their isolation from the fable-fabliau literary tradition which associates mainstream fabliau narratives betray their alien status. A tentative understanding of this literary tradition is furthered by the decision, following the lead set by Per Nykrog, to accept as fabliaux those narratives appearing in fable collections which conform structurally to the theoretical fabliau model. In addition to the problems arising from the lack of any clear definition of the genre, and consequently of any clearly defined fabliau corpus, there are problems of chronology and of the relationship between texts. Among the fabliaux that have survived independently of any synoptic framework, there are a few that can be confidently assigned to an early period on the basis of internal evidence, and a few whose approximate date of composition can be inferred from historical evidence about the lives of their authors. But for the vast majority of anonymous texts the most that can be ascertained from linguistic evidence is that they were probably composed either in the first or second half of the thirteenth century. We are left, consequently, with a comparatively undifferentiated assemblage of texts lumped together on the basis of generic identity but with little sense of chronology and consequently little sense of any internal relationships between them. This is an unfortunate but not necessarily irremediable situation, and an area in which further research could make profitable contributions. Chronological structuring can begin with the fact that fabliaux appearing in fable collections are necessarily early, and help to establish a point of departure for later derivations. Furthermore, the fact that one French verse translation of the Disciplina Clericalis is in Anglo-Norman, and that Marie de France composed her collection of Fables in England, draws attention to the neglected prominence of Insular materials on fabliau evolution. Les Braies au Cordelier is demonstrably indebted to some early version of the tale which appears at a later date in Jean de Condé’s Les Braies le Priestre, modified with passages imported from some version of Auberee. Le Moigne is surely nothing other than an imaginative reworking of Jean Bodel’s Le Sohait des Vez. There is additionally good reason to suppose that the first episode of Le Prestre et la Dame is indebted to a version of Le Cuvier. From such minor and admittedly tentative connections, a better picture than can

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currently be formulated about the shape of fabliau evolution and development begins to emerge. A contributive study must make some significant statement about the topic addressed with which readers may agree or disagree on the basis of the evidence advanced to support the author’s contentions. There should, however, be a further contribution if these contentions prove acceptable, that they should provide an empirically valid basis for future scholarship on the subject. In the case of the fabliaux it is to be hoped that formulation of a defensible fabliau canon, and progress towards an understanding of how and under what circumstances the genre evolved, might be correlated with issues of fabliau chronology, authorship, and intertextuality.

VARIA APPENDIX  A Le Cuvier Le Cuvier Texte critique in NRCF 5: 141–44. Text in Eighteen Anglo-Norman From MS Paris Bibl. Nat. fr. 837. Fabliaux, p. 15, vv. 1–55. Chascuns se veut mes entremetre De biaus contes en rime metre, Mes je m’en sui si entremis   4 Que j’en ai un en rime mis D’un marcheant, qui par la terre Li sire en sun bosoin alat Aloit marcheandise querre: E dist ke mult i demurra. En sa meson lessoit sa fame,   8 Qui de son ostel estoit dame. Il gaaignoit a grant mesaise, Et ele estoit et bien et aise Quant il ert alez gaaignier, 12 Et ele se fesoit baingnier La dame maunde sun ami: Avoec un clerc de grant franchise, 4 Baigner le vout, puis esbanir. Ou ele avoit s’entente mise. A sa veisinë envëa, Sa cuve a baigner apromta. Un jor se baingnoient andeus, Enz en la meisun le baina: 8 Le us de la sale ben ferma. 16 Si lor en vint uns mout granz deuls, Et tele paor que le mestre Por nul avoir n’i vousist estre; Quar, si comme il s’entretenoient 20 Et ensamble se deduisoient, Et li borgois si s’en repere Li sires fu cuntremaundé, De Provins, ou il ot afere, A l’oustel tost est repeiré; Si s’en entre dedenz sa cort. Il hurte a le us, haut ad crïé. 24 Et la baiasse tost acort A sa dame, que li clers tient: De son seignor ne li sovient! ‘Dame,’ dist ele, ‘or vous empire! 28 Quar vez ici, par Dieu, mon sire, O lui trois marcheanz ensamble.’

216 APPENDICES La dame l’ot, de paor tramble. Ele et li clers sanz atargier 32 Sont andui sailli du cuvier; Ele sailli hors toute nue: Au plus tost qu’el pot s’est vestue. La dame, qui n’estoit pas fole, 36 L’eve gete desouz la sole De la chambre, si qu’el s’en cort Desouz la sole en mi la cort. El n’ot le clerc ou esloingnier, 12 La cuve unt il tost reversé, 40 Si le muça souz le cuvier. Li chapelein desuz muscé. Et li borgois descent a pié, Le us unt overt, e entrë einz Dont ele n’ot pas son cuer lié Qu’il est venuz a cele foiz. 44 ‘Sire,’ dist ele, ‘bien veignois Et vous et vostre compaignie!’ Li sires ou estraunge genz. Dist ele, mes ne vousist mie Que il fust venuz a cele eure! 48 Cil, qui n’ot cure de demeure, 16 La quisine fet il haster: Ainz s’en veut raler en besoingne, Orëendreites vout manger. A sa main une nape empoingne Qui a la perce estoit pendue, 52 Si l’a sor la cuve estendue. Les autres marcheans apele; Il unt lavé e sunt asis; A sa fame dist: ‘Ma suer bele, Mult ben fet servir ses amis. Or ça,’ fet il, ‘la soupe en vin, 56 Quar nous volons metre au chemin!’ Et quant cele ot parler de l’erre, Au plus tost qu’el pot li va querre Quanques il veut delivrement: 60 Mout haoit le demorement! Mes il ne tenoit de mengier Au clerc qui ert souz le cuvier, Qui ne menoit pas trop grant feste 64 Qu’il li manjuent sus la teste. Et li borgois eüst corouz, Se il seüst le clerc desouz. Et ele estoit mal assenee, 68 Qu’ele avoit la cuve empruntee Le jor devant a sa voisine. Cele a apelé sa meschine, Et li commande que grant erre 72 Alast leenz sa cuve querre: Fere l’en estuet sa besoingne. Mes ele ne sot pas l’essoingne Ne le clerc qui desouz sejorne. 76 Et la chamberiere s’en torne, 20 Ataunt i vint une meschine, Au mieus que pot fist son message. Devaunt la dame sei encline:

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‘Mun seignur vint ore a l’ostel, Sun bain comaunda aprester. 24 Pur sa cuve sui jeo venue; Plest vus ke jeo hors la remue?’ ‘Vostre dame n’est mie sage,’ Dist la dame: ‘Ne vus nu freez, Fet cele, qui li dist briefment: Ne ja la mein ne i meterez! 80 ‘Ralez li dire vistement Que, par mon chief, trop se mesfet: Je n’ai pas de son cuvier fet!’ 28 Va t’en tauntost, jeo le enverai Si tost cum fere le porai!’ Cele se turne, a l’ostel vient. Sa dame demaunde: ‘Ne le as tu nient? 32 Arere cur, si tu ne le as; Jeo memes vendrai pas pur pas.’ Cele returne, tauntost curut. Li borgois l’ot, n’en fu pas liez: Li syre demaunde quei ele ust: 84 ‘Dame,’ fet il, ‘quar li bailliez 36 ‘Rendez li tost! Ne le retenez!’ Son cuvier, et si en fera, Et puis si le vous prestera.’ Cele les mains au cuvier tient La dame fu mult esmaiez: 88 Et dist: ‘Ne savez qu’il covient ‘Ça vien,’ dist ele, ‘od mei parlez, Aus dames, ne qu’il estuet fere: E je te dirai ke en friez: Ci avez perdu un bon tere, Quar, par mon chief, que que j’entende, 92 J’en avrai fet ainz que le rende!’ Puis a dit a la chamberiere: ‘Ralez vous en, amie chiere, 40 Arere va tant tost curaunt, Et si dites a vostre dame Ta dame dit ke jeo li maunt 96 Qu’ele n’est pas si sage fame, Ke ne demurge, a Deu ne place, Par mon chief, com je voudroie estre: Ne set pas quel besoing puet estre!’ Desque el bosoin de dame sace.’ Cele s’en est tost revenue, 100 Et quant sa dame l’a veüe: ‘Qu’est ce,’ fet ele, ‘tu n’en as mie?’ ‘Non dame, par le fil Marie, Ainz dist bien c’onques ne seüstes 104 Qu’est besoing, n’onques ne l’eüstes; Quar, se tres bien le seüssiez Ja hasté ne li eüssiez.’ Quant cele se fu apenssee: 44 Kaunt sa veisine oï le aveit, 108 ‘Lasse,’ fet ele, ‘trop sui hastee, Par mon chief, si ai fet que fole! Le mestre le tient de l’escole: Or porroit ore moult bien estre 112 Qu’ele a desouz mucié le mestre.’ Oiez de qoi s’est porveüe: Dunc purpense sei mult estreit. Un ribaut vit en mi la rue,

218 APPENDICES Qui de sa robe estoit despris. 116 ‘Veus gaaignier,’ dist ele, ‘amis?’ ‘Oïl dame, n’en doutez mie!’ ‘Va donc,’ dist ele, ‘tost, si crie Le feu enz en mi cele rue, 120 Et de bien crier t’esvertue: L’en le tendra tout a folie Et a grande ribauderie. Puis t’en revien par ma meson: 124 De ta paie ferai le don.’ ‘Dame,’ dist il, ‘point ne m’esmaie, Quar j’avrai bien de vous ma paie.’ En mi la voie a pris son leu, 128 A haute voiz crie le feu De quanqu’il pot a longue alaine, Ausi com la vile en fust plaine. En sa quisine tost ala, E la mesun pus aluma: 48 Le hu mult haut ad fet lever Pur la dame desencumbrer. Et quant li marcheant l’oïrent Le cri i vint, il levent sus, 132 Trestuit ensamble au cri saillirent; La table tresseilerent tuz 52 Ne remist en le hostel un sul Fors la dame e sun lechëur. Et li ribaus d’iluec s’en part, Si s’en fui de l’autre part. Mout se tienent a mal bailli, 136 Quant au ribaut orent failli, Et dient tuit: ‘Il estoit yvre!’ Et la borgoise se delivre Du clerc: maintenant l’en envoie, La cuve en oste, e il s’en vet; 140 Et li clers si aqueut sa voie, Qui n’ot cure de plus atendre. Or puet cele son cuvier rendre, Qui mout a esté esfraee. Desore n’en unt il nul pleit. 144 Ainsi s’est cele delivree, Qui mout savoit de la chevance, Quar apris l’avoit de s’enfance: S’ele n’eüst besoing eü, 148 Ele n’eüst jamés seü Le grant besoing de sa voisine. 150 Tout ainsi cis fabliaus define.

The relationship between these two texts is fully investigated in Roy J. Pearcy, ‘A Neglected Anglo-Norman Version of Le Cuvier (London, British Library Harley 527)’, Mediaeval Studies 58 (1996): 243–72.

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APPENDIX  B   A: La Contrarieuse   B: Le Pré tondu   C: Dame Jouenne Text in Eighteen Anglo-Norman Text in MR 4: 156–57. Text in Rom. 45 (1918–19):   Fabliaux, p. 8. vv. 1–36    vv. 73–102   99–107. vv. 1–6 ; 269–92 Un vilein ot femmë espuse Si vos recont d’un païsant: Un preudons prist dame Jouenne, Que mut esteit cuntrarïuse Fame prist bele et avenant; Une mout orguilleusse dame, Riches estoit, de grant lignaje, 76 Mais mout estoit de fel coraje, Car si trés felonesse estoit Et si tres despiteusse estoit Que nus vaintre ne la pooit. 4 Que riens vaincre ne la pouoit; Un jur furent ensemble alé .i. jor s’alerent deporter 4 Pur eus deduire par un pré. 80 Par une prée por joer; Tant que par aventure avint Li vileins a sa femme dit Li prodom a parlé premiers: Que cel preudomme li dist: … ‘Jouenne, lesson ceste noisse. Quë unc mes de ses oilz ne vit Il y a de quoi plus me poisse: Nul pré fauké si üelment. ‘Voir, mout est cist prez bien De nostre pré qui n’est fauchié,         fauchiez.’ 272 Qui est tout en tour deschaucié; Dant Guillaume a fauchié le sien. 8 El li respunt hastivement: La fame li a respondu: – Aussi saches tu bel et bien ‘Ainz fu d’unes forces 84 ‘N’est pas fauchiez, ainz est Que fauchié n’est pas, mès        trenchez!’           tondu.’            tondu.’ 276 Et il a tantost respondu: Et cil en jure saint Jehan ‘Qui n’i metroit tout son enhan, Dist li vileins:’Einz est fauchez!’ Ne fu pas tonduz en un an. Ne seroit tondu en un an.’ ‘Einz est,’ fet la femme,’tunduz!’ Et ele en jure saint Omer Et celle si a Dieu juré 88 Qu’il fu tonduz et bertodez. 280 Que il fu tondu et tousé. Nel m’otrïeroit pour Paris Que il ne fust tondu touz dis. Qant li preudom s’oï desdire, 12 Dunc s’est li vileins irascuz: Sachiez que mout en a grant ire; ‘Tu es,’ fet il,’fole pruvee: Ceste herbe fu od falcs copee, Mes tu ies si engresse e fole 16 Que avant veus mettre ta parole, La meie veus fere remeindre; Par engresté me vols ateindre.’ Li vileins l’ad aval getee 20 Si li ad la lange copee. Puis demande que a vis li fu, E que ele en aveit entendu, Si li prez fu od falcs fauchez 24 U si od forces fust trenchez. Il la prent et bien la bati 284 Et trop durement la laidi; .lx. cous de livreison 92 Li a donez en un randon. De piez, de poins li donna tant A la terre est cheüe pamée Que desus lui se va lassant; Et ne dist mot d’une loée; La vielle, quant ne pot parler, Là ne pot ele mot soner; Et quant el ne pot mes parler

220 APPENDICES Od ses deiz li prist a mustrer 96 Convint c’à ses doiz à motrer 288 A deus dois commance a moustrer Que forces l’aveient trenché Qu’il est bertodez et tonduz. ‘Il fu tondu, tondu fu il.’ 28 E que falcs ne l’ot pas seié. Mout fu li prodom esparduz; Sa main lieve, si s’est seigniez, 100 Mout s’est durement merveilliez; Adont i ot un grant ouil; Bien voit que ja ne la vaintra: Trait soi arriere et l’esgarda A deiables la commanda. 292 Et au deable la commanda. Par cest essample veut mustrer – Bien le peot hum suvent pruver – Si fols parole une folie 32 E autre vient que sens li die, Ne l’en creit pas, einz s’en aïre; La u il set que l’en est pire Veut sa mençunge mettre avant; Nul nel fereit de ceo taisant.

Comparison of the three texts indicates clearly that they are versions of the same tale, the same narrative elements being treated in the same style and at approximately the same length. It is also clear that versions B and C resemble one another more closely than either resembles A, but there are points of connection between A and BC to indicate that all three texts are interrelated. Versions B and C depict the husband physically abusing his wife, but not mutilating her as in version A by Marie, and neither B nor C includes any equivalent of Marie’s eight-line epimythium. Connections between B and C are observable at B:77–78 – C:3–4; B:85–88 – C:277–80; and B:102 – C:292, where both texts differ from A. The first of these parallels is perhaps the most important, because the verses which appear as an integral part of the story in B are separated by some 250 lines from the narrative in C. The parallel observable at A:3–4 and B:79–80, lines without any equivalent in C, suggests a more immediate connection between A and B than between A and C. Line 287 in C is closer to line 25 in A than is the corresponding line in B, although in this instance the variants are minimal, and it is conceivable that the remanieur of C accidentally recreated the wording of A. The tale was extremely popular, and there may well have existed other versions, now lost, in octosyllabic French verse, in addition to the numerous extant versions in Latin prose which served as exempla in sermon literature, and which would assist in determining relationships between surviving versions in French verse.

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APPENDIX  C    Le Vilain asnier Le Vilain asnier   Texte critique in NRCF 8: 213–14. MS. 173, Bibliothèque Municipale, From MS Paris Bibl. Nat. fr. 19152.   Le Mans Il avint ja a Monpellier Soviegne vos del fol vilain C’un vilein estoit costumier Ki waegnier deüst son pain, De fiens chargier et amasser 4 A deus asnes terre fumer. Un jor ot ses asnes chargiez; Maintenant ne s’est atargiez, E il vint rendre le musage El borc entra, ses asnes maine 4 A un estal lez un passage 8 Devant lui chaçoit a grant paine: Souvent li estuet dire: ‘Hez!’ Tant a fait que il est entrez Dedenz la rue as espiciers. U om especies remuoit 12 Li vallet batent les mortiers. E laituaires confisoit ? Et quant il les espices sent, Quant li vilains d’un laituarie Qui li donast cent mars d’argent, 8 Tres precios senti le flaire, Ne marchast il avant un pas, 16 Ainz chiet pasmez isnelepas Ne.l puet sofrir, vint al pasmer. Autresi com se il fust morz. Iluec fu granz li desconforz Des genz, qui dient: ‘Dieus, merci! 20 Vez de cest home qu’est morz ci!’ Et ne sevent dire por quoi. Ne le savoient dont blasmer, Quar om cuidoit que par destroit 12 De mal chaïst, si com om voit. Et li asne esturent tuit quoi Enmi la rue volentiers, 24 Quar l’asne n’est pas costumiers D’aler, se l’en nes semonoit. Un preudome qu’iluec estoit, Mais par conseil d’on bien sage omme Qui en la rue avoit esté, Fu aperchuz, cho.n est la somme: 28 Cele part vient s’a demandé As genz que entor lui veoit: ‘Seignor,’ fait il, ‘se nul voloit A faire garir cest preudom, 32 Gel gariroie por du son.’ Maintenant li dit un borgois: ‘Garissiez le tot de menois: Vint sous avrez de mes deniers.’ 36 Et cil respont: ‘Mout volantiers!’ Donc prant la forche qu’il portoit, A quoi il ses asnes chaçoit; Du fien a pris une palee, Porter le fist sor un femier 40 Si li a au nes aportee. 16 Bien ort, cui om trova premier.

222 APPENDICES Quant cil sent du fiens la flairor Et perdi des herbes l’odor, Les elz oevre, s’est sus sailliz, 44 Et dist que il est toz gariz: La fu guariz par la pueur Cil ki pasmez ert por l’odeur. Mout en est liez et joie en a, Et dit par iluec ne vendra Ja mais, se aillors puet passer. 48 Et por ce vos vueil ge monstrer Que cil fait et sens et mesure Qui d’orgueil se desennature: 51 Ne se doit nus desnaturer!

A version of Le Vilain Asnier appears attached to the conclusion of Le Cantique des Cantiques in MS. 173 of the Bibliothèque Municipale of Le Mans. The text is in The Song of Songs: A Twelfth-Century French Version, ed. Cedric E. Pickford (London, 1974). Its context precluded it from inclusion in NRCF, but I am grateful to Professor Willem Noomen, the co-editor of that invaluable edition, for drawing its existence to my attention. Although extending to only eighteen lines, the same length as Le Prestre et le Mouton, the text does not simply refer to Le Vilain Asnier, but offers a complete version of the story. It consequently merits consideration as an exemplar, and is treated like the versions of Le Cuvier as they appear in Appendix A. The Le Mans version of Le Vilain Asnier has already figured in discussion of fabliau participation as exempla in the allegorical literature of the late Middle Ages (Jauss, Grundriss, vol. 1, pp. 154–5). It also has implications for other matters of interest to fabliau scholarship. The twelfthcentury date for the Le Mans manuscript indicates that this version of Le Vilain Asnier is early enough that it might antedate the version preserved in MS Paris B.N. fr. 19152, and the text is therefore potentially important to any investigation of fabliau origins and development. Furthermore, appearance in a manuscript that is otherwise totally independent of the textual tradition of fabliau dissemination suggests that this version may reflect some features associated with memorial transmission, and might contribute to our understanding of this little-understood phenomenon. There is only the most tenuous connection between the text of Le Vilain Asnier preserved in the conclusion of the Cantique des Cantiques manuscript and the independently circulating fabliau, also preserved in a single manuscript. Since both texts are quite short, they are presented in the same format as that used in NRCF and in the treatment of the two versions of Le Cuvier in Appendix A above. In a long note on the version of Le Vilain Asnier that at v. 3507 follows without a break the text of Le Cantique des Cantiques Pickford acknowledges some previous scholarship on the allegorical significance of a fabliau appearing in the context of a French treatment of The Song of Songs. He notes that features of Le Vilain Asnier are anticipated by a pervasive concern throughout the religious text

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to present revelation of the Divine Word by the idea of odeur, to which is coupled the idea of especies and especiaire. Either the poet or the scribe, in his opinion, regarded this fabliau as an exemplum which would summarise one aspect of The Song of Songs, and in particular vv. 1851–2 of the French poem: ‘Sofrir ne puent bone odeur / Cil ki norri sunt en puer.’

224 APPENDICES

APPENDIX D Le Couvoiteus et l’Envieus Untitled version contained in     by Jean Bodel Les Enseignements de Robert de Ho Texte Critique in NRCF 6: 285–87.    ed. Mary-Vance Young From MS Paris Bibl. Nat. fr. 19152 Seignor, aprés le fabloier Un ensample tei voil apprendre, Me vueil a voir dire apoier; 192 Alcun bien i purras entendre. Quar qui ne sait dire que fables Ore escutetz ceste lesçun. 4 N’est mie conterres regnables Por a haute cort a servir, S’il ne sait voir dire ou mentir. Mais cil qui du mestier est fers 8 Doit bien par droit entre deus vers Conter de la tierce meüre. Que ce fu veritez seüre Que dui compaignon a un tans Jadis i furent dui compaignon: 12 Furent, bien a passé cent ans, Qui menoient mauvaise vie; Que li uns ert si pleins d’envie Li un de deus fut envious, Que nul plus de lui a devise, 16 L’autre si plain de covoitise 196 Et l’autre fut mult coveitous. Que riens ne li pooit soufire. Cil ert ainsi malvais ou pire, Que covoitise si est tieus 20 Qu’ele fait maint home honteus: Covoitise preste a usures Et fait recouper les mesures Por covoitier d’avoir plus aise. 24 Envie si est plus malvaise, Qu’ele va tot le mont coitant. Entre Envieus et Covoitant Cil deus leverunt un matin Chevalchoient un jor ensamble, Et ensemble alerunt lur chemin. Dans Jubiter qui fut lasus 200 Esgarda vers la terre jus Et vit ces deus hommes errer. Il commensa a purpenser Que il homme voleit devenir 204 Pur lur corages esprover. Les hommes qui si errerunt Nulle garde ne se donerunt Que il lur fut tiel espie. 208 Ja si est mis en lur compaignie. Mult suefement les aresoune: ‘Seignours, iretz vers Colonie?’ Cil li dient en lur respons:

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212 ‘Oïl, sire, desques la irroms.’ ‘Et jeo ensemble od vous irrai Et bone compaignie vous tendrai.’ Cil demandent: ‘Qui estes vous 216 Que issi voletz errer od nous? N’avoms cure de compaignon, Si ne savom com cil ad a non Et de quele terre il seit neez, 220 Et que prodoume l’eit engendrez.’ 28 S’aconsivirent, ce me samble, Saint Martin en une champaigne. Poi ot esté en lor compaigne, Quant il les ot espermentez 32 De lor mauvaises volentez Qui es cuers lor erent plantees. Lors truevent deus voies hantees, Ses departoit une chapele: 36 Saint Martin les homes apele Cil lur dist en sa reison: Qui menoient malvais mestier: ‘Seignor,’ fait il, ‘a cest mostier Tornerai mon chemin a destre; 40 Et de moi vos doit il melz estre. Ge sui saint Martin, le preudon: ‘Seignors, Jubiter ai noun. Un dompnedeu sui de lasus, 224 Si m’engendra Dan Saturnus De la deuesse Veneris. Venu su ore en ceo païs. Pur vos amours m’i plust turner, Li uns de vos me ruist un don 228 Car jeo voil un doun doner: L’un de vous avera sa demande Si avra lués que lui plaira, Que il requerra, ja n’iert si grande, 44 Et li autres, qui se taira, Et al teisant si ert dublee. En avra maintenant deus tanz.’ 232 Itele faz la destinee’ Lors se pensa li Covoitanz Li coveitous sei merveilla Qu’il laira demander celui, De si fet dun, se purpensa Que si il primer requerreit, 48 Si en avra deus tanz de lui: 236 Soen compaignon le duble avereit, Et il de ceo n’en [out] cure, Mout goulouse double gaaig. Car coveitus fut sanz mesure. Et . . . . . n resoune l’envious: ‘Demande,’ fait il, ‘beaus compaing, 240 ‘Amys,’ fet il, ‘n’entendetz vous Seürement, que tu avras Cum bon doun nous est doné? 52 Quanque tu demander savras: Que fetetz vous? Quar demandetz Soies larges de sohaidier! Quele chose vous est mestier. Se de sohaiz te saiz aidier, 244 Ne devetz mie longes targier, Riches seras tote ta vie.’ Car qui soen prou vait purloignant, Home le tendra a nonsachant.’

226 APPENDICES 56 Cil qui le cuer ot plain d’envie L’envious commensa a rire, Ne demandera pas son vueil, Qu’il morroit d’envie et de duel Se cil en avoit plus de lui. 60 Ainsinc esturent anbedui Sanz demander une grant piece. ‘Qu’atens tu? Qu’i ne t’en meschiece?’ Fait cil qui avoit couvoitié 64 G’en avrai tote la moitié Plus de toi, n’en avrai garant! Demande, ou ge te batrai tant Que mielz ne fu asnes a pont!’ 248 Quant il out tele chose dire. ‘Mes tu,’ fet il, ‘enceis requer, Car jeo ne voil pas commencer Pur fere gainer tei teisant 252 Plus que ne freie requerant.’ Li coveitus dunque li redit: ‘Certes mout as le sen petit. Tei que chaut que jeo prenge, 256 Quant jeo al tuen ne met chalenge? A tun oés ore lui requer Qu’il te doint quanque est mestier. Et que puet de mei chaler 260 Que que jeo deie aprés aver?’ L’envious dunque lui respount Par itele ire que a poi ne font: ‘Mes tu, pur quei t’en voils retraire 264 De ceo que m’enseignetz a fere? Mes faille ore tuit autresi, De mei part ben le otri.’ Issi commencent a estriver 268 Li quels d’eus deust ainz rover. L’un dest[rein]t sa covetise, Envie l’autre justise. 68 ‘Sire,’ li Envieus respont, [Mes] a la parfin se purpensa ‘Ge demanderai, ce sachiez, 272 L’envious qu’il requerra, Ençois que vos mal me faciez. Et a dit a soen compaignon: Mais se ge ruis argent n’avoir ‘U jeo face mal ou noun, 72 Vos en vorroiz deus tanz avoir: Si jeo requer, quant tu l’orras, 276 Jeo qui que lee nient serras, Et quant en saveras le parfin Mais n’en avrez riens, se ge puis! N’iras ja al gain du vin. Saint Martin,’ dit il, ‘ge vos ruis Sire,’ fet il a dampnedeu, 280 ‘Ore vous dirrai qu’ei esgardé: Que j’aie perdu un des elz, Ffaites mei un des oilz voler, Et que del autre veie cler, Car dunque deveroit mon compaignon

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76 Et mes compainz en perde deus: 284 Les siens deus perdre par reson, Si sera doublement grevez.’ Solum iceo que vous deïstes, Quant vous ceo doun nous promistes.’ Ffait Jubiter: ‘Ceo est verité, 288 Cest argument n’iert ja fausé.’ Ainz que fuissent le mot finee, Tantost ot cil les elz crevez: Li oil li est del chef volé, Et al autre les deus volerent. Bien en fu tenuz li otroiz. 80 De quatre elz perdirent les trois: Ni conquistrent autre rien nule, 292 Issi tuz deus se damagerent. Ainz fist l’un borgne, l’autre avugle Sains Martins, et par lor sozhaiz! 84 S’il perdirent, maldahez ait De moie part qui il en poise, 86 Qu’il furent de male despoise! Meint home unquore fet autresi Que, pur grever soen enemi, Ffet de gré a sei damage 296 Pur descharger soen corage Et pur fere seli greignor: Vers lui soen queor est sanz amour. Del autre part vous redi el 300 Que meint envious est itel Que il het autre par sole envie, Si il veit qu’il ad greignur baillie De lui, ou s’il est meutz ametz 304 Et des autres plus honoretz; Ja ne mefface a lui rien, Ffor soule en tant q’il eit bien Et qu’il puisse doner ou vendre, 308 Et a soen oés eit que despendre; Si le harra il pur soul itaunt Et lui ert tut malvoilaunt. Ore veietz com grand damage 312 Que envie destreint issi corage Que le home het l’autre a graunt tort, 314 Come si il eust soen parent mort.

Although the two texts cover very much the same territory, and present the basic outline of the narrative in the same terms, they are obviously very different in execution. The story has a long history as a Latin prose exemplum, and the clerical nature of the version from Enseignements Trebor reflects its comparative closeness to this tradition. The clerical quality of the treatment influences the choice of Jupiter as the supernatural figure responsible for the enigmatic gift, and his introduction evidently provided an opportunity for the display of some

228 APPENDICES

quite extraneous knowledge of classical mythology. Furthermore the author of this version concludes his narrative with an extensive epimythium stressing the moral implications of his story, and castigating the vices displayed by the morally degenerate protagonists. While Jean Bodel clearly did not derive his version of the story from the treatment in the Enseignements Trebor, a comparison of the two texts casts light on his statement in another context of the need for a fablëor to avoid all suggestion of heavy-handedness when composing a popular narrative.

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APPENDIX  E Jean de Condé: La Nonete. Anonymous version of La Nonnette in Texte critique in NRCF 10: 41–47 Renart le Contrefait, ed. Gaston From MS N: Rome, Raynaud, Romania 34 (1905): 279–83. Bibl. Casanatense 1598.

The radical discrepancy in length between the version of La Nonnette from Renart le Contrefait (42 lines) and that of Jean de Condé in NRCF (250 lines) makes it impractical to follow the same procedure as that employed in appendices A–D. Instead, while the shorter La Nonnette is reproduced in full, only pertinent extracts are provided for the fabliau. Li abbesse nel haoit mie Une abbesse jadis estoit 20 Car elle avoit souvent sen mie, Sote, qui par amour amoit. Qui de ses maus le garissoit. Ung soir ot couchié privément Avecques lui ung sien amant; Cest soir après son resveillier Oÿst ung huys desveroullier Et une nonnain o ung prestre De faire follour toute preste: Ne voult qu’en venissent a chief. Kant sen cuevrekief cuida prendre Lors voult prendre son coeuvrechief Laidement au prendre mesprist, Pour eulx jetter de leur emprinses: 144 Car les braies a l’abbé prist, Les brayes son amy a prinses, Et puis les jeta erranment Et celle qui avoit grant heste, Sour son cief, car grant mal talent Les a mis par dessus sa teste; Eut et d’aïr fu alumee. Vit les laniers qui pendoient Les lanieres qui y pendoient, 152 Devant sen front et baulioient, Tout au devant ses yeulx estoient. Dist: ‘Orde ribaude prouvée [‘Ce n’iert pas tant que li ans dure,’ Or vous ay je en mal trouvée! Dist l’abbesse, ‘que celle en isse! Bien diffamés ore nostre ordre! 124 Ce sanle uns ciers u une bisse, De male mort vous feray mordre! Tant est sa maniere volage!’ Vous serez an male prison; ‘E, dame, ciertes cel outrage Trop avez fait grant mesprison! Li fait faire Amours, bien le sai! Qui tous les membres vous trairoit, 128 Metés le hors, et par assai L’amende mie n’en aroit. Se point se vorroit castiier.’ Comment avez ozé ce faire? ‘Vous y plaideriés jusk’a hier Les membres deussiez avant traire. Avant que vous le revissiés!’ Comment ozé penser avez 132 ‘Ma dame, ce seroit peciés L’ort pechié dont morir devez? S’ensi vous le laissiés mourir!’ Nulle aultre amende il ne y a. L’abbesse fu plainne d’aïr Fy! a! fi! a! fi! a! fi! a!’ De çou qu’ensement estrivoient.] La nonnain l’abbesse regarde, Qui des brayes ne se prent garde;

230 APPENDICES 188 ‘Que savés vous que il vous pent, Dist: ‘Dame, ne me blamez tant, Bielle dame, devant vos ieuls?’ Mais gardés bien qu’a l’oeul vous       pent.’ ‘Que m’i penderoit, garce vieuls? ‘Qu’il m’y pent, malvaise nonnain?’ Lors l’abbesse a mise la main, Des braies se tieste descuevre, Les brayes treuve et le laniere; Si k’a genouls mierchi cria. Donc s’apensa, et fu moins fiere; 220 Li prieuse l’en releva, Et l’abbesse plus de cent fois Leur cria mierchi la endroit. Lors dist: ‘Amye, celle moy, Et je celeray aussi toy.’ Ains que sour autrui on mesdie Pour ce, enfans, trop ne blamez 250 Queres qui plus vous en die! Ce dont, espoir, blamé serez.

Although the two versions of La Nonete are roughly contemporary, they are obviously very differently conceived. It is probable that the version from Renart le Contrefait represents an original form of the story which Jean de Condé has amplified with the introduction of numerous characters missing from the more skeletal version, and a series of much more developed dialogic exchanges between the errant nun and her supporters, and between the latter and the authoritarian abbess. The violent censure of the nun’s offence by the abbess, although very similar in tone in the two versions, is in one instance addressed to the members of the petitioning group and occurs before the misappropriation of the lover’s trousers, and in the other instance is addressed to the offending nun herself and follows this inadvertent self-exposure. The two versions seem nevertheless to be related, as shown by the rencontre textuelle at lines 188–89 in Jean de Condé’s fabliau and the equivalent passage in the version incorporated in Renart le Contrefait. Although the great disparity in length renders any detailed comparison of the two texts inappropriate, the existence of different versions may provide important evidence of the relationship between texts which emerge out of a written literary tradition, and those which owe their existence to some form of memorial transmission.

APPENDICES

231

APPENDIX  F Anthologies of fabliaux Some of the relevant anthologies are listed below with prefix letters A–E, and the fabliaux, or in some instances of portmanteau texts the constituent fabliau-narratives, are identified by anthology, number, and page references. Uniquely for D, which offers both the Latin text and an English translation, two sets of page numbers are given, those for the English translation in parenthesis. A. A Selection of Latin Stories, ed. Thomas Wright, Percy Society, 8 (London, 1842). B. Anecdotes Historiques, Légendes et Apologues tirés du Recueil inédit d’Etienne de Bourbon, ed. A. Lecoy de la Marche, Société de l’Histoire de France, 59 (Paris, 1877). C. Les Contes moralisés de Nicole Bozon, ed. Lucy Toulmin Smith and Paul Meyer (Paris, 1889). D. The Exempla or Illustrative Stories from the ‘Sermones Vulgares’ of Jacques de Vitry, ed. Thomas Frederick Crane, Folk-lore Society Publications, 26 (London, 1890). E. Die Exempla aus den Sermones feriales et communes des Jakob von Vitry, ed. Joseph Greven, Sammlung mittellateinischer Texte, 9 (Heidelberg, 1914). Aristote et Alixandre: A, 83, p. 74; E, 15, pp. 15–16. Brunain, la Vache au Prestre: A, 114, p. 108. La Contrarieuse: A, 9, p 13; B, 243, p. 205; D, 222, p. 92 (223). Le Couvoiteus et l’Envieus: C, 112, pp. 129–30; D, 196, p. 81–82 (212–13). Dame Avonde: A, 19, p. 21; B, 368, p. 324; D, 269, pp. 112–13 (251). La Femme qui charma son Mari: A, 111, pp. 91–92; Fab. 3, pp. 176–77. L’Epée: A, Fab. 4, pp. 177–78. Les Fers alesnes ou Pertus: A, 12, pp. 14–15; D, 228, pp. 94–95 (226). L’Home qui avoit Feme tencheresse: A, 10, pp. 13–14; B, 244, pp. 205–6, 299, p. 252; D, 227, p. 94 (225–26). The Man made Monk: B, 458, p. 395; D, 231, p. 96 (227–28). Le povre Mercier: D, 69, p. 30 (165). La Pierre au Puis: A, 101, pp. 89–91; Fab. 6, pp. 181–82. La Plantez: B, 433, p. 376; D, 310, p. 129 (269). Le Prestre qui fu mis au Lardier: B, 470, p. 405. Les Tresces: A, Fab. 7, p. 183. La Vieille et la Lisette: A, 13, p. 16; Fab. 5, pp. 178–80; C, 138, pp. 169–70; D, 250, pp. 105–6 (243–44). La Vieille qui oint la Palme au Chevalier: A, 43, p. 43; B, 436, p. 405. Le Vilain Asnier: A, 99, p. 84; D, 191, p. 80 (210–11). Le Vilain Mire: C, 44, p. 62–63; D, 237, p. 9 (231–32); 254, p. 107 (243–44).

One significant anthology, the fables of Eudes de Cheriton, for which see The Fables of Odo of Cheriton, ed. and trans. John C. Jacobs (Syracuse, 1985), is composed exclusively of animal fables, and consequently of no interest for the

232 APPENDICES

current project. Numerous versions of the fabliau-analogues recorded appear in isolation in various moral treatises. They are listed in the notes to fables in the compendia analysed. Reference to the later appearance of motifs from the Old French fabliaux in collections of novella in the early Renaissance may be found in the notes to Johannes Pauli Schimpf und Ernst, ed. Hermann Oesterley, Bibliothek des litterarischen Vereins im Stuttgart, 85 (Stuttgart, 1866), and see Roger Dubuis, Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles et la Tradition de la Nouvelle en France au Moyen Age (Grenoble, 1973). Some bibliographical details of the appropriate exempla are given by Mary Jane Stearns Schenck, ‘Narrative Structure in the Exemplum, Fabliau, and the Nouvelle’, Romanic Review, 72 (1981): 367–82. The uncertainties surrounding fabliau chronology make it impossible to determine in specific instances whether the fabliau derived from the exemplum or the exemplum from the fabliau, and indeed both might derive independently from some orally circulating version of the tale.

FABLIAU INVENTORY In the following inventory, the number in brackets represents the number of the fabliau in NRCF. When not from NRCF, titles have been regularised to accord with NRCF practice. For texts appropriated by Nykrog from the Disciplina Clericalis, from Marie de France’s Fables, and from MR, the majority of titles are taken from Nykrog’s inventory, Fabliaux, pp. 311–24. Others finally are from Reid, Twelve Fabliaux, from Eighteen Anglo-Norman Fabliaux, or in one instance the title is new. 1. 2. 3. 4.

(14) (99) (90) (–)

5.

(4)

6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

(9) (6) (34) (47) (7) (19) (18) (17)

14. (115) 15. 16. 17. 18.

(61) (40) (30) (20)

19.

(63)

Aloul L’Anel qui faisoit les Vis grans et roides Les deus Anglois et l’Anel Aristote et Alixandre

192–94 59–60, 182–83 39 6, 74, 149–52, 154, 156, 160–65 passim, 177, 211, 231, 238–42 passim, 246 Auberee 57, 84–86, 95, 105–111, 114–21, 135, 141, 150–51, 172–73, 174, 175, 212, 242 Les trois Aveugles de Compiegne 176, 186, 239 Barat et Haimet 195, 243 Berengier au lonc Cul 146, 180–81, 203, 238 Les trois Boçus 66, 73, 158, 159 Boivin de Provins 184–85, 239 La Borgoise d’Orliens 146, 166–67 Le Bouchier d’Abeville 121, 131–32, 185 Les Braies au Cordelier 67, 71, 91, 111–12, 144, 181–82, 212, 244 Les Braies le Priestre 55, 66–67, 111, 154, 182, 212 Brifaut 60, 145 Brunain, la Vache au Prestre 15, 170–71, 231 Cele qui fu foutue et desfoutue 146, 186–88 Cele qui se fist foutre sur la Fosse de son Mari 16, 18, 24–33, 38, 40–41, 56, 64, 69, 70, 74, 77, 102, 103, 105, 155, 159, 179, 187, 199 Celui qui bota la Pierre 146, 159–60, 199–200

234

FABLIAU INVENTORY

20. (51) Les deus Changeors 21 (131) Le Chapelain 22. (112) Charlot le Juif 23 (53) Le sot Chevalier 24. (113) Le Chevalier a la Corbeille 25. (12) Le Chevalier a la Robe vermeille 26. (15) Le Chevalier qui fist parler les Cons 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

(33) (78) (50) (123) (79) (119) (46) (77) (2) (–)

37. 38. 39.

(71) (57) (44)

40.

(83)

41. (108) 42. (54) 43. 44. 45. 46.

(82) (11) (96) (26)

47. 48. 49.

(25) (48) (–)

50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57.

(–) (58) (1) (38) (68) (104) (–) (–)

191–92 194, 195 189–90 39–40, 46–47, 62, 70 39 111–14, 174 11, 137, 146, 151, 197, 211 Le Chevalier qui fist sa Fame confesse 125, 198, 199, 204–8 Le Chevalier qui recovra l’Amor de sa Dame 150, 155–56, 210 Les deus Chevaus 13–14, 61, 72, 121 Un Chivalier et sa Dame et un Clerk 166, 247 Le povre Clerc 60 Le Clerc qui fu repus derriere l’Escrin 39, 65–66 La Coille noire 61–62 Connebert 12, 75–76, 121, 165, 244 Constant du Hamel 193, 195, 238, 239 La Contrarieuse [see Appendix B] 35–36, 83, 133, 136–37, 219–20, 231 Le Couvoiteus et l’Envieus [see Appendix D] 74–75, 197, 224–28, 231 La Crote 180 Le Cuvier [see Appendix A] 79, 80, 82, 147, 163, 179, 212, 215–18, 244 La Dame escoillee 119–20, 133–35, 140–42, 143, 208 La Dame qui Aveine demandoit pour Morel sa Provende avoir 198–204 La Dame qui fist trois Tors entor le Moustier 7, 45, 62–63, 111, 112, 162, 163, 166, 172, 173, 174 La Dame qui se venja du Chevalier 153–54 Les trois Dames qui troverent l’Anel 78, 79, 80, 110, 127, 146 Les trois Dames qui troverent un Vit 50, 61, 75, 146 La Damoisele qui ne pooit oïr parler de foutre 38–40, 43–44, 56, 59, 70, 146, 155, 159, 185, 187, 203–4, 244 La Damoisele qui sonjoit 60 L’Enfant qui fu remis au Soleil 7, 162–63, 165, 185, 204 L’Espee 79, 80, 82, 88–89, 92, 94, 161, 211, 231 149, 150, 160–61, 211 L’Espervier L’Esquiriel 56, 59, 187–88 Estormi 66, 158, 195 Estula 42, 171–72, 176, 182 6, 61, 151, 156, 177, 211 L’Evesque qui beneï le Con La Feme qui cunquie son Baron 57, 124 La Femme qui charma son Mari 79, 80, 82, 156, 231, 234 Les Fers alesnes ou Pertus 137–40, 143,149, 150, 231



FABLIAU INVENTORY

58. 59. 60. 61.

(42) (59) (56) (114)

Le Fevre de Creil Le Foteor Frere Denise La Gageure

62. 63. 64. 65.

(84) (35) (93) (–)

Gauteron et Marion Gombert et les deus Clers Guillaume au Faucon L’Home qui avoit Feme tencheresse

66. 67. 68. 69.

(–) (10) (73) (43)

Le riche Humme e sa Fille Jouglet Le Maignien qui foti la Dame La Male Honte

70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76.

(–) (97) (32) (110) (80) (125) (117)

Les deus Menestreus Le povre Mercier Les trois Meschines Le Meunier d’Arleux Le Meunier et les deus Clers Le Moigne La Nonete [See Appendix E]

77. 78. 79. 80. 81.

(86) (21) (28) (55) (–)

82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89.

(76) (116) (67) (102) (27) (91) (95) (103)

90. 91. 92. 93.

(87) (45) (98) (–)

Le Prestre et le Mouton Le Prestre et les deus Ribaus Le Prestre qui abevete Le Prestre qui fu mis au Lardier

94. 95. 96. 97.

(75) (41) (85) (81)

Le Prestre qui manja Mores Le Prestre qui ot Mere a Force Les quatre Prestres Le Prestre teint

L’Oue au Chapelain Les Perdris Le Pescheor de Pont seur Saine Le Pet au Vilain La Piere au Puis La Plantez Le Pliçon Porcelet Le Prestre comporté Le Prestre crucefié Le Prestre et Alison Le Prestre et la Dame Le Prestre et le Chevalier

235 71, 152–53, 203 60 59 59, 74, 119, 156, 168, 179 161 48, 157–58, 159 154, 156 133–34, 140–42, 143, 231 46, 62, 65, 83, 144–45 131–32, 201 60, 192–93, 210 3, 36–37, 38, 40, 42, 53, 64, 144, 146 144–45, 188–89 49, 50, 72, 73, 184, 231 142–43, 239 183–84 48, 157–58, 159, 183 129–30, 212, 242 146, 153–54, 229–30, 245 44–45, 48, 63, 161, 174 161–62, 174 152–53, 172, 244 55, 67, 238 48, 79, 80, 83, 88, 89, 94, 95, 231 167–68, 231 112, 155–56 198, 201 193–96 passim 163, 165–66, 204 71–72 91, 178–80, 212 121–22, 132, 168–70, 185, 242 128–29, 222 59 168, 174 149, 163–65, 210, 231, 237 128–29, 146 41–42, 182–83 66, 158, 195 12, 86, 165–66, 169, 195, 239

236 98.

FABLIAU INVENTORY

(89) Le Preudome qui rescolt son Compere de noier 12, 48–49, 50, 51, 72, 73, 184, 244 99. (65) La Pucele qui voloit voler 56, 58–59, 119 100. (74) Le Sacristain 146, 194–96 passim 101. (36) La Saineresse 44, 181 102. (120) Le Sentier batu 190–91 103. (31) Les quatre Sohais saint Martin 47–48, 130, 164 104. (70) Le Sohait des Vez 129, 212 105. (66) La Sorisete des Estopes 57–58 106. (111) Le Testament de l’Asne 53, 67–69, 70, 204 107 (69) Les Tresces 146, 173–74, 175, 231 108. (37) La vieille Truande 11–13, 32, 73, 122, 197–98, 245 11, 79, 180, 193–96 109. (124) Trubert passim 110. (–) Le Velous 79, 80, 82, 88 111. (127) Le Vescie a Prestre 63–64, 139, 149, 150, 154, 155, 189, 191 112. (–) La Vieille et la Lisette 86, 95–102, 103–8 passim, 117, 124, 231 113. (72) La Vieille qui oint la Palme au Chevalier 37–38, 40, 64, 144, 231 114. (106) Le fol Vilain 57, 58 115. (92) Le Vilain Asnier [see Appendix C] 147, 167–68, 221–23, 231 116. (52) Le Vilain au Buffet 166–67, 187, 200 117. (49) Le Vilain de Bailluel 71 118. (62) Le Vilain de Farbu 47, 180 119. (13) Le Vilain Mire 177–78, 186, 231 120. (–) Le Vilain qui od sa Fame vit aler son Dru 79, 80, 81, 93–94, 174 121. (–) Le Vilain qui vit un autre Home od sa Feme 79, 80, 81–82, 88, 91–92, 94 122. (107) Les deus Vilains 171, 172, 176

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Wailes, Stephen L. ‘The Unity of the Fabliau Un Chivalier et sa Dame et un Clerk’, Romance Notes 14 (1972): 593–96. Warnke, K. ‘Die Quellen des Esope der Marie de France’, in Forschungen zur romanischen Philologie: Festgabe für Hermann Suchier, ed. J. Bédier et al. (Halle, 1900), 1: 161–284. Watriquet de Couvin. Dits de Watriquet de Couvin, ed. Auguste Scheler (Brussels, 1868). Welter, J-Th. L’Exemplum dans la Littérature religieuse et didactique du Moyen Age (Paris, 1927). Whitehead, Alfred North, and Bertrand Russell. Principia Mathematica, 2nd edn, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1978). William of Sherwood. Die Introductiones in Logicam des Wilhelm von Shyreswood († nach 1267), ed. Martin Grabmann, Literarhistorische Einleitung und Textausgabe, Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Abteilung 10 (Munich, 1937). ———. William of Sherwood’s Introduction to Logic, trans. Norman Kretzmann (Minneapolis, 1966). Wright, Thomas. Essays on Subjects Connected with the Literature, Popular Superstitions, and History of England in the Middle Ages, 2 vols. (London, 1846). ———. A Selection of Latin Stories, Percy Society 8 (London, 1842). Wright, C. H. C. A History of French Literature (New York, 1925). Ziolkowski, Jan M. ‘The Erotic Pater Noster Redux’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 97 (1996): 329–32. ———, ed. Obscenity: Social Control and artistic Creation in the European Middle Ages, Cultures, Beliefs and Traditions 4 (Leiden, 1998). Zumthor, Paul. Histoire littéraire de la France Médiévale (Paris, 1954).

INDEX Abaelard, Peter: 4, 6 Accentus: 41–42, 182 Accidens: 42–43 Adam Balsamiensis Parvipontani, Ars Disserendi, ed. Minio-Paluello: 3, 4, 237 Aequivocatio: 36–41 Albert of Saxony, Sophismata: 4 Alphabet of Tales, ed. Banks: 2, 237 Amphibologia, 140 Antimonies: Whitehead & Russell, Principia: 1; Koyré, A: Epiménide: 1; Grelling, K., Logical Paradoxes: 1–2 Aquinas, Thomas, De Fallaciis: 4, 34, 37, 41, 42, 237; Summa Theologiae, ed. Caramello: 200, 209, 237 Aristotle: Organon: 3; Prior Analytics: 2, 3; Posterior Analytics: 3; Sophistici elenchi: 2–4 passim, 34, 36, 48, 151; Topics: 3, 167; Works, trans. Ross: 7, 237 Auberée, ed. Ebeling: 120, 237

Laye: 3; ed. Ermini: 3, 239; Lidia, ed. Lackenbacher: 21, 141 Conjointure: 15–16, 30, 31, 33, 54, 148–49; Douglas Kelly, Sens et Conjointure in the Chevalier de la Charrette: 15, 242; Eugène Vinaver, Rise of Romance: 15, 246; W.R.J. Barron, English Medieval Romance: 15, 237 Consequens: 42–47ff. passim Cooke, Thomas D., Old French & Chaucerian Fabliaux: 212, 239 Cooper, Lane, Aristotelian Theory of Comedy: 198–99, 239 Coup de théâtre: 56, 60, 71, 81, 82, 111, 153, 154, 155, 173, 174, 181, 185, 196, 197 Crossland, Jessie, Medieval French Literature: 10, 239 Cuckolds, Clerics, & Countrymen, ed. Eichmann, trans. DuVal: 131, 239

Bédier, Joseph, Les Fabliaux: 8ff. passim. Beyer, Jürgen, Schwank und Moral: 3, 237 Bloch, R. Howard, The Scandal of the Fabliaux: 208, 237 Bodel, Jean: 13–15; 157; L’Œuvre de Jehan Bodel, ed. Charles Foulon: 13, 238; Jean Bodel: Fabliaux, ed. Pierre Nardin: 13, 238 Boehner, Philotheus, Medieval Logic: 4, 238 Boethius, An. Manlius Severinus, Elenchorum Sophisticum Aristotelis: 3–4, 34, 36, 41, 238; De topicis differentiis: 15 Bozon, Nicole, Contes moralisés, ed. Smith & Meyer: 231, 238 Buridan, John, Sophismata: 4

Diogenes Laertius, Lives & Opinions: 2, 239 Dubuis, Roger, Cent Nouvelles nouvelles: 232, 239

Chaucer, Geoffrey, The Canterbury Tales: 9, 33, 178, 198, 200, 238 Chrétien de Troyes, Cligès: 14; Erec et Enide: 14; Yvain: 15, 25, 38, 181, 197, 239 Comédie latine, ed. Gustave Cohen: 3, 8, 239; Geta, ed. Guilhou: 3; Babio, ed.

Fabliaux, ed. Johnston and Owen: 12, 240 Fallaciae extra dictionem: 36 Fallaciae in dictione: 36–42, 129 Faral, Edmond, Fabliau latin: 3, 240; Arts Poétiques: 8, 240 Flinn, John, Le Roman de Renart: 91, 240

Eighteen Anglo-Norman Fabliaux, ed. Short & Pearcy: 35, 46, 48, 79, 86, 94, 179, 188, 215, 219, 233, 239 Les Enseignements de Robert de Ho, ed. Mary-Vance Young: 224, 227–28 Epicharmus of Syracuse: 2 Episteme / epistemic: 31, 63–65, 66ff. passim, 129ff., 148, 176ff. passim Epreuve d’amour: 150, 154, 156, 177 Etienne de Bourbon, Anecdotes, ed. Lecoy de la Marche: 231, 239

250

INDEX

Foolish act: 54, 55, 65, 67, 111, 126, 128, (bêtise) 129, 144, 157, 158, 171–72, 180, 182, 186 Frenken, Goswin, Exempla des Jacob von Vitry: 6, 240 Freud, Sigmund, Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewussten: 5, 240 Galterus Anglicus, Fabulae: 17, 21–22 Geoffroi de Vinsauf, Poetria Nova: 8 Gesta Romanorum, ed. Hermann Oesterley: 79, 87, 93, 95, 99, 100, 101–2, 240 Giraldus Cambrensis, Gemma Ecclesiastica: 6–7, 240 Gower, John, English Works, ed. Macaulay: 6, 130, 240 Grabmann, Martin, Geschichte der scholastischen Methode: 3; 240; Sophismataliteratur: 4, 240 Greimas, Algirdas-Julien, Sémantique Structurale: 18–19, 241; Du Sens: 18, 241 Guer, Ch. Guerlin de, Le Comique et L’Humour: 27, 241 Guillaume de Lorris & Jean de Meun, Le Roman de la Rose, ed. Lecoy: 83, 100, 241 Haskins, Charles H., University of Paris: 3, 241 Hazlitt, William Carew, Jest Books: 2, 241 Henri d’Andeli, Bataille et Mariage des VII Arts, ed. Jubinal: 6, 241; Aristote et Alixandre: 6, 150–52, 160, 161, 163–64, 177, 241 Henryson, Robert, Morall Fabillis, ed. Wood: 19, 241 Hervieux, Léopold, Fabulistes latins: 17, 90, 241 Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan: 5, 241 Hoccleve, Regimen of Princes: 130 Homologue/homology: 104, 113, (hospitality) 132, (economy) 136 Ipomedon, ed. Kölbing; 104, 241 Isomorphic relationship: 104, 108, 122 Jacques de Vitry, Exempla aus den Sermones Feriales, ed. Greven: 6, 177, 231, 241; Exempla from the Sermones Vulgares, ed. Crane: 21, 79, 83, 88–97 passim, 137, 178, 231, 241 James of Venice: 4

Jameson, Frederic, Prison House of Language: 104, 241 Jauss, Hans Robert, Grundriss: 222, 242 Jehan de Grise, illustration from The Romance Of Alexander: 201 Johannes Pauli, Schimpf und Ernst, ed. Hermann Oesterley: 232, 244 John of Garland, Parisiana Poetria, ed. & trans. Lawler: 89, 130, 242 John of Salisbury, Metalogicon: 7, 242 Kilwardby, Robert, Sophismata: 4 Lacy, Norris, Comic logic: 5, 242; Reading Fabliaux: 16, 69–70, 142, 242 Langer, Susanne K., An Introduction To Symbolic Logic: 35, 242 Latin Stories, ed. Thomas Wright: 89, 231, Essays, 178, 247 Lee, Charmaine, Les Remaniements d’Auberee: 84–85, 110, 115, 242 Le Mesnagier de Paris, ed. Pichon: 98, 243 Levy, Brian, Comic Text: 55, 242 Lewis,Clarence I. and Cooper H. Langford, Symbolic Logic: 35, 242 Livingston, Charles H., Le Jongleur Gautier le Leu: 12, 242 Marché obscène: 129 Marie de France, De la Femme qui fist pendre sun Mari, in Fables, ed. & trans. Spiegel: 18, 23, 24, 30, 90, 130, 243; Fables, ed. Brucker: 134, 243 The Matron of Ephesus: 16–21; 26–27, 30, 32, 33; 103, 130, 134; ‘Perotti’s Appendix’ in Babrius and Phaedrus, ed. and trans. Perry: 17, 90, 237 Modus Liebinc, ed. Carl Beck in Mittellateinische Dichtung: 8, 243 Muscatine, Charles, The Old French Fabliaux: 12, 152, 243; Chaucer and The French Tradition: 197, 243 Narreme / narremic: 30, 63–65, 66ff. passim, 129f, 176ff. passim Neckam, Alexander, De Naturis Rerum: 2, 243 Nouveau Recueil Complet des Fabliaux, ed. van den Boogaard & Noomen: 6ff. Nykrog, Per, Les Fabliaux: 6ff. passim Odo of Cheriton, Fables, ed. Jacobs: 231–32, 240



INDEX

Olson, Glending, Literature as Recreation: 203, 244 Paetow, Louis John, Arts Course: 3, 244 Pañcatantra, trans. Olivelle: 9, 244 Paré, G. et al. , Renaissance du XIIe Siècle: 3, 244 Peter of Spain, Summulae Logicales: 1, 2–3, 4, 34, 37, 41, 43, 245 Petronius, Satyricon: 16, 245 Petrus Alphonsi, Disciplina Clericalis I: 79, 245; Disciplina Clericalis III: 79; 82, 86, 146, 245; Version A: 88–89, 92, 96–98, 100–1, 102, 120, 124; Version D: 94, 99, 100, 101–02, 104; Chastoiement d’un Père, ed. Montgomery: 79, 123, 245 Pre-Socratic Philosophers: Zeno of Elea: 1; Kathleen Freeman:1, 240; Freeman, Ancilla:1, 240; Hermann Diels Fragmente: 1, 239; Eugène Dupréel, Sophistes: 1, 239 Propp, Vladimir, Morphology of the Folktale: 52–53, 245 Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, ed. and trans. Butler: 7, 245 Rashdall, Hastings, Universities of Europe: 27, 245 Raynaud, Gaston; La Nonnette: 153–54, 245; Poème Moralisé: 164, 245 Recueil Général et Complet des Fabliaux, ed. Montaiglon and Raynaud: 8, 123, 135, 149, 160, 163, 219, 245 Recueil Général des Isopets, ed. Julia Bastin, Isopet I-Avionnet: 17–20 passim, 22–23, 24, 26, 32, 245 Renart le Contrefait: 154, 229–30 Le Roman d’Eneas, ed.Salverda de Grave: 101, 245 Le Roman de Renart, ed. Ernst E. Martin: 12, 90–92, 115–16, 192, 193, 245 Le Roman des Sept Sages, ed. Speer: 17–18, 19–20, 22, 24, 120, 133, 141, 146, 246 Le Roman de Tristan par Thomas, ed. Bédier: 115, 245

251

Rutebeuf,Œuvres complètes, ed. Faral and Bastin: 7, 246; Œuvres complètes, ed. Zink: 7, 246 Rychner, Jean, Les Fabliaux: 9, 151, 246; Contribution à l’Etude des Fabliaux: 73, 246 Schenck, Mary, Tales of Wit and Deception: 53–54, 60, 125, 143, 246 Schopenhauer, Arthur, Sämtliche Werke, ed. von Löhneysen: 5, 246 Secundum quid et simpliciter: 47–48 Semiotic square: 102–03, 104 Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Mathematicos: 2, 246 Siger de Courtrai, Œuvres, ed. Wallerand: 2, 4, 7, 34, 36, 45, 180, 246 Siger von Brabant, Impossibilia, ed. Baeumker: 1, 81, 246 Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell: 197 The Song of Songs, ed. Pickford: 222–23, 246 Spargo, John W., Lover’s Gift Regained: 178, 246 Stoic Pilosophers: Benson Mates, Stoic Logic: 1, 243; Carl Prantl, Geschichte der Logik: 1, 245 Tableaux de mœurs: 126–27 Twelve Fabliaux, ed. T.B.W. Reid: 12, 233, 246 Universe of discourse: 48–51, 61–62, 75 Vance, Eugene, From Topic to Tale: Logic and Narrativity: 15–16, 54, 246 Versus de molar piperis: 178–79 Warnke, K., Quellen des Esope: 81, 247 Watriquet de Couvin, Dits, ed. Scheler: 126–27, 244, 247 Welter, J-Th., L’Exemplum: 5, 247 William of Moerbeke: 4 William Shyreswood, Introductiones in Logicam, ed. Grabmann: 4, 34, 37, 41, 42, 48, 247