Table Of ContentCOMIC PROVOCATIONS:
EXPOSING THE CORPUS OF OLD FRENCH FABLIAUX
Edited by
Holly A. Crocker
COMIC PROVOCATIONS
STUDIES IN ARTHURIAN AND
COURTLY CULTURES
The dynamic field of Arthurian Studies is the subject for this book series,
Studies in Arthurian and Courtly Cultures, which explores the great variety of
literary and cultural expression inspired by the lore of King Arthur, the
Round Table, and the Grail. In forms that range from medieval chronicles
to popular films, from chivalric romances to contemporary comics, from
magic realism to feminist fantasy—and from the sixth through the twenty-
first centuries—few literary subjects provide such fertile ground for cultural
elaboration. Including works in literary criticism, cultural studies, and history,
Studies in Arthurian and Courtly Cultureshighlights the most significant new
Arthurian Studies.
Bonnie Wheeler, Southern Methodist University
Series Editor
Editorial Board:
James Carley, York University
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, George Washington University
Virginie Greene, Harvard University
Siân Echard, University of British Columbia
Sharon Kinoshita, University of California, Santa Cruz
Alan Lupack, University of Rochester
Andrew Lynch, University of Western Australia
COMIC PROVOCATIONS:
EXPOSING THE CORPUS
OF OLD FRENCH FABLIAUX
Edited by
Holly A. Crocker
Foreword by
R. Howard Bloch
COMICPROVOCATIONS
© Holly A. Crocker, 2006.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2006 978-1-4039-7043-5
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
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First published in 2006 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-53210-0 ISBN 978-0-230-60117-8 (eBook)
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Comic provocations : exposing the corpus of old French fabliaux /
Holly A. Crocker, editor; R. Howard Bloch, foreword.
p. cm.––(Studies in Arthurian and courtly cultures)
Includes index.
1.Fabliaux––History and criticism. 2.French poetry––
To 1500––Historyand criticism 3.Humorous poetry, French––History and
criticism. 4. Tales,Medieval––History and criticism I. Crocker, Holly A.
(Holly Adryan), 1971– II. Series.
PQ207.C63 2006
841(cid:2).03––dc22 2005057925
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: August 2006
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
Foreword: R. Howard Bloch vii
Acknowledgments ix
Note on Texts and Translations xi
Introduction: The Provocative Body of the Fabliaux 1
Holly A. Crocker
Part 1 Imaginative Generation
1. The Lewd and the Ludic: Female Pleasure in the Fabliaux 17
Lisa Perfetti
2. Of Monsters and Men: The Power of Female Imagination
in Les quatre Sohais Saint Martin 33
Susanne Hafner
3. Go-Betweens: The Old Woman and the Function of
Obscenity in the Fabliaux 45
Nicole Nolan Sidhu
Part 2 Anxious Circulations
4. Coprus [sic] Christi: The Scatological Tales of the Fabliaux 63
Sheila J. Nayar
5. Dressing the Undressed: Clothing and Social Structure
in Old French Fabliaux 83
Mary E. Leech
6. Conflicting Economies in the Fabliaux 97
Christian Sheridan
7. Mobility and Resentment in a World of Flux: Arrogance
in the Old French Fabliaux 113
Kiril Petkov
vi CONTENTS
Part 3 Mobile Formations
8. “Be careful what you wish for”: Folkloric Caution in
the Fabliaux 131
Ellen Lorraine Friedrich
9. Chaucer’s French Accent: Gardens and Sex-Talk in
the Shipman’s Tale 149
Peter G. Beidler
10. Rude Theory: The Rough Trade of the Fabliaux 163
Cary Howie
11. Creative Choices: Notes on Translating the Old French
Fabliaux 175
Nathaniel E. Dubin
Notes on Contributors 193
Index of Fabliaux 197
Index 199
FOREWORD
R. Howard Bloch
The essays in Comic Provocations: Exposing the Corpus of Old French
Fabliaux explore the relation between the physical body, the body
politic, and the textual corpus of the medieval comic tale. The fabliaux,
which are at the root of a long tradition of short narratives in the West,
have for the most part been taken as a pleasurable relief from more serious
genres like the epic, romance, and the allegorical forms of thirteenth-
century France. Yet, the contributors to the current volume explore both the
entertaining and serious dimensions of this “counter-genre,” in the phrase
of Charles Muscatine. While treating the body, which is celebrated in all its
members and pleasures, the authors remind us of the ways in which the
fabliaux work to define the body’s limits and its deeper meanings—the point
at which farcical beatings and scenarios of submission turn pleasure into
something more grotesque and deadly; the point at which bodily produc-
tion or excrement might be related to the sacred and even to the sacraments;
the point at which bodily age transforms physical capacity into wisdom and
cleverness; the point at which clothing comes into contact with the body
to create multiple and illusory definitions of the self; the point at which the
body renders inner states via gesture; the point at which firm distinctions
between male and female bodies translates into the instability of gender.
Above all, Comic Provocations probes the ways that bodies interact with
each other. The essays on economic exchange, money, gift, and barter, on
the conjugal unit and the family, on signs of social status and of social mobil-
ity, and on the relation of the comic to wider cultural debates serve to situ-
ate the individual body within the social corpus of the High Middle Ages.
Though the contributors to Comic Provocationseach speaks with a distinct
voice, their contributions, which are the result of seminar discussions in the
summer of 2003 on the medieval sense of the comic, respond in a remark-
ably coherent fashion to the questions of how the fabliaux can be defined
as a unified or stable corpus, of whether the fabliaux are a source of social
viii FOREWORD
order or disorder, of whether they are disruptive or conservative of exist-
ing values and institutions, of whether these often outrageous tales simply
reflect or actually contribute to the great social transformation of the late
twelfth and thirteenth centuries. What provokes the comic? What does the
comic provoke?
The essays in Comic Provocationsare united in their attention to the rela-
tion of language and of verbal play to both the individual and the social
body. Such attention is made possible through the brilliant, witty, cultur-
ally attuned, deeply accurate metrically and lexically, singsong, bawdy and
bad, never sallow or sad, rhymed translation of Nathaniel E. Dubin, whose
essay on translating the fabliaux shows just how difficult it is to make things
look simple. They run through this volume like a silk-basting thread, hold-
ing its diverse parts together, showing the way into the language secrets of
the comic tale, and producing delight and admiration with each quotation
of the medieval text.
Comic Provocations is a volume put together by specialists of Old French
as well as by those whose fields of expertise ranging from Chaucer and
Middle English and medieval German literature to history and manuscript
studies, to modern narrative forms and even film. The freshness and breadth
of perspective brought to traditional disciplinary issues makes it an original
and significant contribution to Old French and Medieval Studies. Its appeal
stands as a provocation to renewed interest in the fabliaux as well as to the
exploration of new paths within the inexhaustible field of the comic.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This volume had its genesis in a 2003 National Endowment for the
Humanities Summer Seminar, “Old French Fabliaux and Medieval
Theories of the Comic,” directed by R. Howard Bloch at Yale University.
Thanks to the NEH, to Yale, and to Howard for providing the occasion,
setting, and stimulus for this project. Other participants in the seminar were
crucial to the development of this volume: thanks to Sam Bloom, Jean Jost,
Dan Murtaugh, Dorothy Schrader, Larissa Tracy, and Judith Tschann for
their helpful comments on many of these essays. Although he was not part
of the 2003 seminar, special thanks also to Nathaniel E. Dubin, whose will-
ingness to answer an unending string of queries about linguistic and textual
matters has been invaluable and inspiring to all of us.
Through a number of conferences, this volume has grown to include a
larger community of scholars. Thanks to the University of Haifa, and their
2004 conference on the comic, for providing a venue for many of the ideas
contained in these chapters. Portions of other chapters included here were
first read at the annual meetings of the Modern Language Association, the
Southeastern Medieval Association, and the International Medieval
Congress at Kalamazoo. Thanks to audiences at those conferences for their
provocative engagements with the work that has come to form this volume.
Finally, I would like to thank the University Research Council, the
Charles Phelps Taft Memorial Fund, and the Department of English and
Comparative Literature at the University of Cincinnati for providing the
funds and leave that allowed me to edit this volume. The research staff at
the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University and at the Thomas Cooper
Library at the University of South Carolina also gave valuable assistance to
me at different stages of this project.
—Holly A. Crocker
