The Old French fabliaux are short narrative verse texts composed between the late twelfth and early fourteenth centuries, in France, particularly north-eastern France, and occasionally England. Definition has been a problem from the beginning; it is unclear what the medieval understanding of the term “fabliau” was, for it is found applied to a variety of short texts, and only half of the texts considered fabliaux by modern scholars describe themselves thus, others preferring “dit”, “conte”, “fable” or “exemple”. Accordingly, the extent of the corpus has varied considerably according to different critical approaches, ranging from around 120 to around 160 texts; the standard modern edition, the
Nouveau recueil complet des fabliaux (NRCF), presents 127, some in multiple…
2595 words
Citation: Cobby, Anne. "Fabliaux". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 13 December 2021 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=19630, accessed 24 April 2024.]
