A version of this paper was presented at the University of Michigan Boccaccio Symposium, 6 November 1976. I am grateful for Charles Trinkaus's invitation, which initiated the project, and for subsequent exchanges with Marvin Becker, Raymond Grew, Loy Martin, Nora Scott, Solomon Wank, and the late Albert Biele, M.D.

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² Here, the term fabliau refers to a body of brief rhymed tales written from the early thirteenth to the mid-fourteenth centuries in northern France. As my interpretation depends on the tales’ Old French vocabulary, I do not use the term's extended meaning, found, for example, in Benson, Larry D. and Andersson, Theodore, The Literary Context of Chaucer's Fabliaux (Indianapolis, 1971)Google Scholar, and in Dronke, Peter, “The Rise of the Medieval Fabliau: Latin and Vernacular Evidence,” Romanische Forschungen, 85:3 (1973), 275–97. There, fabliau is applied to any medieval tale in a comic or obscene vein, and often to Latin or English sources and analogues of the Old French stories.Google Scholar

³ “Le meunier et les deux clercs,” in Recueil général et complet des fabliaux des XIII^e et XIV^e sièdes, de Montaiglon, Anatole and Raynaud, Gaston, eds. (Paris, 1872–90), V, 83 (hereafter cited as Montaiglon-Raynaud).Google Scholar Although many fabliaux have been edited and published more recently, citations herein are to this edition, still the most inclusive fabliau collection. Where possible, I also cite an English or Modern French translation. “The Miller and Two Clerks” appears in Benson and Andersson's anthology, cited in note 2, and in Harrison, Robert, Gallic Salt (Berkeley, 1974), 149–69 (translations in verse, with Old French texts on facing pages).Google Scholar

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⁶ Boccaccio, Giovanni, Decameron, Branca, Vittore, ed. (Florence, 1960), Day 9, Tale 6.Google Scholar

⁷ Montaiglon-Raynaud, , III, 252Google Scholar; Harrison, , Gallic Salt, 42–61.Google Scholar

⁸ Nykrog, Per, Les fabliaux (1957; rpt. Geneva, 1973), 72–104, gives a detailed account of anticourtly parodies in fabliaux.Google Scholar

⁹ Bedier, Joseph, Les fabliaux, 6th ed. (Paris, 1969).Google Scholar

¹⁰ The best-known critic of Bédier's thesis is Nykrog, cited in note 8, above. For a more recent balanced summary and treatment of the audience questions, see Muscatine, Charles. “The Social Background of the Old French Fabliaux,” Genre, 9:1 (Spring 1976), 1–19.Google Scholar

¹¹ Rychner, Jean, Contribution à I'étude du fabliau (Neuchatel, 1960).Google Scholar

¹² Bédier, Les fabliaux, 371.

¹³ Schenck, Mary Jane, “A Structural Definition of the Old French Fabliau” (Ph.D. diss., Pennsylvania State University, 1973), 157–206.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Bédier, , Les fabliaux, 389–98.Google Scholar

¹⁵ E.g. Henri d'Andeli, Philippe de Beaumanoir, Jean de Conde.

¹⁶ Dronke, “Rise of Medieval Fabliau.”

¹⁷ Jean Bodel's “Extravagant Wish,” discussed below, claims to retell “a story I heard in Douai about a man and a woman whose names I don't know,” a narrative formula, to be sure, but possibly true.

¹⁸ For a discussion of the relationship between fabliau and exemplum, see Dubuis, Roger, Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles et la tradition de la nouvelle en France au Moyen Age (Grenoble, 1973), 485–500Google Scholar, and Scott, Nora, Contes pour rire? Fabliaux des XIII^e et XIV^e siècles (Paris, 1977), 9, 27–28.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Scott, , Contes pour rire?, 16–17Google Scholar; Wilson, Geoffrey, A Medievalist in the Eighteenth Century: Le Grand d'Aussy and the Fabliaux ou contes (The Hague, 1975).Google Scholar

²⁰ Nykrog, , Les fabliaux, 209. Elaborating the medical model, Rychner writes, “Je n’ ai fait que regarder, observer et comparer les textes: ce sont des ‘observations’ que je public sur des ‘cas,’ qui sont, dans un sens, pathologiques. Je soumets au lecteur mes malades … en I'invitant expressément à les ausculter lui-même.…” Contribution, 7.Google Scholar

²¹ Besides Harrison's English translation and Scott's Modern French one (see notes 3 and 18 above), there is Helman, Robert and O'Gorman, Richard, Fabliaux: Ribald Tales from the Old French (New York, 1965).Google Scholar

²² Pearcy, Roy J., “Modes of Signification and the Humor of Obscene Diction in the Fabliaux,” in The Humor of the Fabliaux, Cooke, T. D. and Honeycutt, B. L., eds. (Columbia, Missouri, 1974), 163–95.Google Scholar A recent état présent of fabliaux studies is Williams, Harry F., “French Fabliau Scholarship,” South Atlantic Review, 46:1 (01 1981), 76–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²³ Scott, Contes pour rire?

²⁴ Cooke, Thomas D., in Humor of the Fabliaux, Cooke, and Honeycutt, , eds., 162.Google Scholar

²⁵ Greenson, Ralph R., “The Mother Tongue and the Mother,” International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 31: pts. 1, 2 (1950), 18–28.Google Scholar

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²⁷ See the discussion of “literal sex” in Felman, Shoshana, “Turning the Screw of Interpretation,” Yale French Studies, 55/56(1977–78), 109–13.Google Scholar

²⁸ E.g., Berne, Eric, Sex in Human Loving (New York, 1970).Google ScholarHerz, Robert, “Beautiful Women,” in White Smoke (Fort Collins, Colo., 1977), has written: “Yet a point comes/when each man is unable to tell the woman/from everything else he does not have.”Google Scholar

²⁹ E.g., Gayle Rubin, “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘Political Economy of Sex,’ ” and Sachs, Karen, ”Engels Revisited: Women, the Organization of Production and Private Property,” in Toward an Anthropology of Women, Reiter, Rayna R., ed. (New York, 1975), 157–210, 211–34.Google Scholar

³⁰ “Les quatres sohais Saint Martin,” Montaiglon-Raynaud, , V, 201Google Scholar; Harrison, , Gallic Salt, 176–89.Google Scholar

³¹ Freud, Sigmund, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, Strachey, James, ed. and trans. (New York, 1960), 162.Google Scholar

³² E.g., Jacobs, W. W., “The Monkey's Paw,” in Short Stories, Schweikart, H. C., ed. (New York, 1934), 387–99Google Scholar; also, Thompson, Stith, Motif Index of Folk Literature, rev. and enl. ed. (Bloomington, Ind., 1955–58), IV, J2070ff.Google Scholar

³³ “Li sohaiz desvez,” Montaiglon-Raynaud, , V, 184Google Scholar; “Le souhait réprimé,” in Scott, , Contes pour rire? 137–40.Google Scholar

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³⁵ E.g., “Les braies le priestre,” Montaiglon-Raynaud, , VI, 257Google Scholar; Boccaccio, , Decameron, Day 7, Tale 2, and Day 8, Tale 1.Google Scholar

³⁶ He should know better, if only because the moral-religious language of his time labelled the marital sex act as “paying the debt,” a debt owed by both partners except under special circumstances. See Tentler, Thomas N., Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation (Princeton, 1977), 170–74, 208–23.Google Scholar

³⁷ In fabliaux, women's talk is an expression of sexual energy associated with their gender.This is one of the few female characters who represses her speech. The author tells what happenswhen this form of energy is not immediately released.

³⁸ Torok, Maria, “The Significance of Penis Envy in Women,” in Female Sexuality: New Psychoanalytic Views, Chasseguet-Smirgel, J., ed. (Ann Arbor, 1970), 135–70.Google Scholar “Penis envy is always envy of an idealized penis” (ibid., 139).

³⁹ “De III dames qui troverent un vit,” Montaiglon-Raynaud, , V, 32Google Scholar; “Des III dames,” Montaiglon-Raynaud, , IV, 128Google Scholar; Scott, , Contes pour rire? 160–63.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ The conclusion of the other version is merely a deadpan moral about competitiveness: he who is greedy will end up with nothing.

⁴¹ Recueil général des jeux partis français, Langfors, Arthur, ed. (Paris, 1926)Google Scholar; Capellanus, Andreas, The Art of Courtly Love, Parry, John Jay, trans. (New York, 1941), 167–77.Google Scholar

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⁴³ The organs are testicles, not a penis, much more reasonable after all. It is testicles that make the difference between a bull and an ox; they should also make the difference between a real man and a woman who behaves like a man. For the Freudian account of the necessary female acceptance of castration, see his “Some Psychological Consequences,” in Collected Papers, 194.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ “Du moigne,” Romania, 44:3 (1914–15), 560–63Google Scholar; Scott, , Contes pour rire? 132–36.Google Scholar

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⁵⁰ Yeats, W. B., “Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop,” in Collected Poems (New York, 1951), 254–55.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Aside from “Bérenger Long-Cul,” see “Le sot chevalier,” Montaiglon-Raynaud, , I, 220,Google Scholar and Harrison, , Gallic Salt, 323–41Google Scholar; “Le débat du cul et du con,” Montaiglon-Raynaud, , II, 133Google Scholar; and the tale cited in note 52.

⁵² “Le chevalier qui fit parler les cons,” Montaiglon-Raynaud, , VI, 68Google Scholar; Harrison, , Gallic Salt, 218–55.Google Scholar

⁵³ John, of Salisbury, Polycraticus, bk. V, ch. 2Google Scholar, cited in Fossier, , Histoire Sociale, 156.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Augustine, , City of God, Book XIV, Ch. 19.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Scott, , Contes pour rire? 8–12.Google Scholar

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⁵⁷ Randall, Lilian M. C., Images in the Margins of Gothic Manuscripts (Berkeley, 1966).Google Scholarde Meun's, JeanRoman de la Rose (ca. 1275) should not be omitted from this sketchy account of significant early syntheses that include genital reference in complex, large-scale poetic discourse.Google Scholar See Regalado, Nancy Freeman, ” ‘Des contraires choses’ lafonction poétique de la citation et des exempla dans le ‘Roman de la Rose’ de Jean de Meun,“ in “Intertextualités médiévales,” Litterature, 41 (02 1981), 62–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar