Title

The Fabliaux: A New Verse Translation

Authors

Nathaniel E. Dubin, College of Saint Benedict/Saint John's University

Files

Description

Bawdier than The Canterbury Tales, The Fabliaux is the first major English translation of the most scandalous and irreverent poetry in Western literature.

Composed between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, these virtually unknown erotic and satiric poems lie at the root of the Western comic tradition. Passed down by the anticlerical middle classes of medieval France, The Fabliaux depicts priapic priests, randy wives, and their cuckolded husbands in tales that are shocking even by today’s standards. Chaucer and Boccaccio borrowed heavily from these riotous tales, which were the wit of the common man rebelling against the aristocracy and Church in matters of food, money, and sex. Containing 69 poems with a parallel Old French text, The Fabliaux comes to life in a way that has never been done in nearly eight hundred years.

ISBN

9780871403575

Publication Date

2013

Publisher

Liveright Publishing

City

New York, NY

Disciplines

French and Francophone Literature

Recommended Citation

Dubin, Nathaniel E., and R. Howard Bloch. The Fabliaux: A New Verse Translation. New York: Liveright Publishing, 2013.