The Fabliaux, Trans. by Nathaniel E. Dubin, Liveright, 2013.
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.
A fabliau is an “Old French comic tale in verse,” explains R. Howard Bloch, Sterling Professor of French at Yale University, in his informative, tantalizing introduction to the first modern anthology of these little-known, devilishly bawdy and irreverent works. The 69 fabliaux presented here in their original French and translated into rascally, buoyant English by Nathaniel E. Dubin, are relentlessly scabrous, egregiously misogynistic, and exuberantly oppositional to “bourgeois respectability” and the church. With such mischievous titles as “The Cleric behind the Chest,” “Black Balls,” and “The Knight Who Made Cunts Talk,” the rollicking fabliaux were composed during the Middle Ages to be performed aloud, forgotten for more than two centuries, then gingerly resurrected by scholars. Vivid, funny, robustly grotesque, and drolly outrageous, these satirical tales of lust, revenge, and folly feature lecherous peasants, fornicating priests, scoundrels, fools, and women wily and tough, castigated and abused. Though their leering focus is on the body and its appetites, the fabliaux do reflect their world, one both alien to us and undeniably familiar. An historic literary achievement bound to arouse vociferous discussion. --Donna Seaman
“Like Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf,…Dubin reproduces the world and the feeling of the medieval tale…that travel joyfully from the Middle Ages to the present.”
- R. Howard Bloch, from the introduction to The Fabliaux
“Devilishly bawdy and irreverent…The 69 fabliaux presented here in their original French and translated into rascally, buoyant English by Nathaniel E. Dubin, are relentlessly scabrous, egregiously misogynistic, and exuberantly oppositional to ‘bourgeois respectability’ and the church…. Vivid, funny, robustly grotesque, and drolly outrageous, these satirical tales of lust, revenge, and folly feature lecherous peasants, fornicating priests, scoundrels, fools, and women wily and tough, castigated and abused…. An historic literary achievement bound to arouse vociferous discussion.”- Booklist
“Pure, unadulterated fun…. A golden bough of erotic imagination and folk humor, peopled by randy wives, cuckolded husbands, fornicating priests, and priapic knights…. Ultimately, what’s so potent and profound about these risqué yarns is not their unbridled expressions of sexuality and vulgarity per se, but their unusual ability to provoke a carnivalesque laughter in all. Through denuding, debauchery, and bodily degradation, the fabliaux create a common denominator for humanity, an earthy, holistic world in which, to quote Bakhtin again, ‘he who is laughing also belongs to it.’ Flaunting unabashed obscenity in delightful verse, The Fabliaux is a book that would entertain the fans of Dr. Freud and Dr. Seuss alike.”- Yunte Huang, The Daily Beast
“Fabliaux are comic tales, in verse, composed between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries…. The words used…have not been adjusted to conform to modern immodesty; the translation is literal…[This is the] first substantial collection of fabliaux, in any language, for today’s general reader.”
- Joan Acocella, The New Yorker
“The fabliaux, then, is a short story that is a tall story. It combines a burly blurting of dirty words with a reveling in humiliations that are good unclean fun. A popular venture that is keen to paste―épater―everybody (not just the bourgeoisie), it is the art of the single entendre. Highly staged low life, it guffaws at the pious, the prudish, and the priggish. High cockalorum versus high decorum…. The introduction here, like the translator’s note, tells well the story of the comic tales, anonymous for the most part, usually two or three hundred lines long, of which about 160 exist.”- Christopher Ricks, New York Review of Books
“The fabliaux are important not only for their approach to humor, but for their focus on sex, class and wealth, and bodily functions like eating and defecating―all elements quite absent from more highbrow, courtly, or Church-sanctioned religious texts. Liveright’s edition serves as the largest and most complete collection of fabliaux, in English or French, ever published “for the general reader…" The Fabliaux is a reminder that medieval texts can remain engaging, lively, and, above all, funny.”- Charlotte Bhaskar, Zyzzyva
The fabliaux are an attempt to parody the more courtly formal literature, which is certainly more elegant but never truly represented the thoughts and feelings of the average peasant as did the fabliaux. The introduction points out that these tales were written from the later 12th through the early 14th century, but were largely forgotten from the 16th century to about 1830 when the first popular translation occurred.
Before going further, I should note that the vast majority of these verse contain an abundance of explicit four-lettered words; if one were to be offended by these then one need go no further; assuming otherwise, please read on. The fabliaux might be compared to the rap lyrics of today which also appeal to baser instinct and use an abundance of explicit verbiage.
These verses were told by a jongleur or storyteller who expected to get paid for the telling as a modern actor would so expect. Some of the verses are attributed to particular individuals but many have no particular name attached. In keeping with the overall sexual theme of these works, the author translated exactly 69 verses although there are more. The verses are best appreciated when heard as opposed to read, but since few if any jongleur survive today, reading is the next best thing. I felt the authors use of a particular choice of words to complete a rhyme was magnificent, but do admit my French is, at best, sketchy. But for those so interested the French version of each fabliaux is given on the left hand page and the English translation on the right hand page for those wishing to compare the translation with the original. Assuming one is only reading the English translation, the book is approximately half as long as the stated pages.
The introduction tells us that "The fabliaux belong to an abundant medieval Latin and vernacular lterature intended both to instruct and amuse." [pXXI] As can be surmised from the aforementioned, "The fabliaux are a social mirror of their time." [pXXII]
I would like to describe a few of my favorite verses described in chapter form.
1. Chapter 19 - Berengier Au Long Cul; in which a braggart and lazy knight is both literally and figuratively brought to his knees when his assertive wife states he must fight her to the death or simply kiss her derriere. You can pretty much guess what the cowardly braggart chooses. Yet the telling of this is quite humorous.
2. Chapter 23 - La Dolente que fu foteu sur la tombe - This is really funny in that a knight comes upon a pretty young widow mourning her newly deceased husband at his grave. He tells her he understands her sorrow as he has just recently lost his wife, but that his grief is even greater, as it was his fault. She asks how that could be. The knight explains that his wife died of his vigorous love making. The lady doubts him and asks him to disrobe and show her his deadly apparatus, to which the knight hurriedly complies, after which the widow replies that she doesn't see as how his weapon could be lethal. ;-)
3. Chapter 31 - Le vallet aus xii fames: This story is about a fellow who tells his girlfriend that he would only marry her if she would let him have eleven more wives to satisfy him. She agrees, but a short time later he begs her to stop her sexual cravings, as he is worn out and needs no more wives.
4 Chapter 63 - La Sorisete des estopes - Another extremely funny verse about a man man who is a virgin who marries a somewhat experienced female. She tells him on their wedding night that she cannot have sex with him as she forgot and left her sexual apparatus at her parents' house. She sends him home to retrieve said anatomical part while she has one final fling with her previous lover. The funny part is the new groom explaining to his mother-in-law what he has come to retrieve, and her going along with it. The distraught young man loses said object on his way back home but his new wife forgives him and makes it up to him. This verse was the height of gullibility.
"[T]he fabliaux most resemble fables that teach savvy rather than virtuous behavior, and the people in them are more exemplary than individualized." [p481]
"What makes these poems fabliaux is their humor, the trickery perpetuated by or on the principal character." [p817]
Overall, a rewarding and fun read for those not easily shocked. - D_shrink
amazon.com reviews
What a delightful and important book. Dubin's extremely witty, no-holds-barred, and often literal verse translation of sixty-nine fabliaux (about half of those that survive) captures the good-humored bawdiness and antic wordplay of these medieval short stories. They're both sweet-tempered and very naughty--like Bette Midler telling dirty jokes. If these funny, madcap tales and Dubin's clever rhymes don't make you laugh out loud, check your pulse. Once you start reading them, it's hard to stop; they're medieval literary peanuts.
Beyond their risqué pleasures and their expert, lively translation, these stories are fascinating windows into everyday life in 13th-century France. Here are details about what people wore and ate, how they made their livings and spent their idle time, how they fought the (apparently constant) battle of the sexes, and how they maneuvered through a socially stratified world. This is a Middle Ages filled with earthy laughter. Add to this content a beautifully-produced hardback with an embossed cover, a sewn-in cloth book mark, and close to 1,000 pages (!) of facing Old French and English translation, and this is an incredible bargain at Amazon's current price. This book now surpasses all previous translations. - JRS amazon.com reviews
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.
A fabliau is an “Old French comic tale in verse,” explains R. Howard Bloch, Sterling Professor of French at Yale University, in his informative, tantalizing introduction to the first modern anthology of these little-known, devilishly bawdy and irreverent works. The 69 fabliaux presented here in their original French and translated into rascally, buoyant English by Nathaniel E. Dubin, are relentlessly scabrous, egregiously misogynistic, and exuberantly oppositional to “bourgeois respectability” and the church. With such mischievous titles as “The Cleric behind the Chest,” “Black Balls,” and “The Knight Who Made Cunts Talk,” the rollicking fabliaux were composed during the Middle Ages to be performed aloud, forgotten for more than two centuries, then gingerly resurrected by scholars. Vivid, funny, robustly grotesque, and drolly outrageous, these satirical tales of lust, revenge, and folly feature lecherous peasants, fornicating priests, scoundrels, fools, and women wily and tough, castigated and abused. Though their leering focus is on the body and its appetites, the fabliaux do reflect their world, one both alien to us and undeniably familiar. An historic literary achievement bound to arouse vociferous discussion. --Donna Seaman
“Like Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf,…Dubin reproduces the world and the feeling of the medieval tale…that travel joyfully from the Middle Ages to the present.”
- R. Howard Bloch, from the introduction to The Fabliaux
“Devilishly bawdy and irreverent…The 69 fabliaux presented here in their original French and translated into rascally, buoyant English by Nathaniel E. Dubin, are relentlessly scabrous, egregiously misogynistic, and exuberantly oppositional to ‘bourgeois respectability’ and the church…. Vivid, funny, robustly grotesque, and drolly outrageous, these satirical tales of lust, revenge, and folly feature lecherous peasants, fornicating priests, scoundrels, fools, and women wily and tough, castigated and abused…. An historic literary achievement bound to arouse vociferous discussion.”- Booklist
“Pure, unadulterated fun…. A golden bough of erotic imagination and folk humor, peopled by randy wives, cuckolded husbands, fornicating priests, and priapic knights…. Ultimately, what’s so potent and profound about these risqué yarns is not their unbridled expressions of sexuality and vulgarity per se, but their unusual ability to provoke a carnivalesque laughter in all. Through denuding, debauchery, and bodily degradation, the fabliaux create a common denominator for humanity, an earthy, holistic world in which, to quote Bakhtin again, ‘he who is laughing also belongs to it.’ Flaunting unabashed obscenity in delightful verse, The Fabliaux is a book that would entertain the fans of Dr. Freud and Dr. Seuss alike.”- Yunte Huang, The Daily Beast
“Fabliaux are comic tales, in verse, composed between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries…. The words used…have not been adjusted to conform to modern immodesty; the translation is literal…[This is the] first substantial collection of fabliaux, in any language, for today’s general reader.”
- Joan Acocella, The New Yorker
“The fabliaux, then, is a short story that is a tall story. It combines a burly blurting of dirty words with a reveling in humiliations that are good unclean fun. A popular venture that is keen to paste―épater―everybody (not just the bourgeoisie), it is the art of the single entendre. Highly staged low life, it guffaws at the pious, the prudish, and the priggish. High cockalorum versus high decorum…. The introduction here, like the translator’s note, tells well the story of the comic tales, anonymous for the most part, usually two or three hundred lines long, of which about 160 exist.”- Christopher Ricks, New York Review of Books
“The fabliaux are important not only for their approach to humor, but for their focus on sex, class and wealth, and bodily functions like eating and defecating―all elements quite absent from more highbrow, courtly, or Church-sanctioned religious texts. Liveright’s edition serves as the largest and most complete collection of fabliaux, in English or French, ever published “for the general reader…" The Fabliaux is a reminder that medieval texts can remain engaging, lively, and, above all, funny.”- Charlotte Bhaskar, Zyzzyva
The fabliaux are an attempt to parody the more courtly formal literature, which is certainly more elegant but never truly represented the thoughts and feelings of the average peasant as did the fabliaux. The introduction points out that these tales were written from the later 12th through the early 14th century, but were largely forgotten from the 16th century to about 1830 when the first popular translation occurred.
Before going further, I should note that the vast majority of these verse contain an abundance of explicit four-lettered words; if one were to be offended by these then one need go no further; assuming otherwise, please read on. The fabliaux might be compared to the rap lyrics of today which also appeal to baser instinct and use an abundance of explicit verbiage.
These verses were told by a jongleur or storyteller who expected to get paid for the telling as a modern actor would so expect. Some of the verses are attributed to particular individuals but many have no particular name attached. In keeping with the overall sexual theme of these works, the author translated exactly 69 verses although there are more. The verses are best appreciated when heard as opposed to read, but since few if any jongleur survive today, reading is the next best thing. I felt the authors use of a particular choice of words to complete a rhyme was magnificent, but do admit my French is, at best, sketchy. But for those so interested the French version of each fabliaux is given on the left hand page and the English translation on the right hand page for those wishing to compare the translation with the original. Assuming one is only reading the English translation, the book is approximately half as long as the stated pages.
The introduction tells us that "The fabliaux belong to an abundant medieval Latin and vernacular lterature intended both to instruct and amuse." [pXXI] As can be surmised from the aforementioned, "The fabliaux are a social mirror of their time." [pXXII]
I would like to describe a few of my favorite verses described in chapter form.
1. Chapter 19 - Berengier Au Long Cul; in which a braggart and lazy knight is both literally and figuratively brought to his knees when his assertive wife states he must fight her to the death or simply kiss her derriere. You can pretty much guess what the cowardly braggart chooses. Yet the telling of this is quite humorous.
2. Chapter 23 - La Dolente que fu foteu sur la tombe - This is really funny in that a knight comes upon a pretty young widow mourning her newly deceased husband at his grave. He tells her he understands her sorrow as he has just recently lost his wife, but that his grief is even greater, as it was his fault. She asks how that could be. The knight explains that his wife died of his vigorous love making. The lady doubts him and asks him to disrobe and show her his deadly apparatus, to which the knight hurriedly complies, after which the widow replies that she doesn't see as how his weapon could be lethal. ;-)
3. Chapter 31 - Le vallet aus xii fames: This story is about a fellow who tells his girlfriend that he would only marry her if she would let him have eleven more wives to satisfy him. She agrees, but a short time later he begs her to stop her sexual cravings, as he is worn out and needs no more wives.
4 Chapter 63 - La Sorisete des estopes - Another extremely funny verse about a man man who is a virgin who marries a somewhat experienced female. She tells him on their wedding night that she cannot have sex with him as she forgot and left her sexual apparatus at her parents' house. She sends him home to retrieve said anatomical part while she has one final fling with her previous lover. The funny part is the new groom explaining to his mother-in-law what he has come to retrieve, and her going along with it. The distraught young man loses said object on his way back home but his new wife forgives him and makes it up to him. This verse was the height of gullibility.
"[T]he fabliaux most resemble fables that teach savvy rather than virtuous behavior, and the people in them are more exemplary than individualized." [p481]
"What makes these poems fabliaux is their humor, the trickery perpetuated by or on the principal character." [p817]
Overall, a rewarding and fun read for those not easily shocked. - D_shrink
amazon.com reviews
What a delightful and important book. Dubin's extremely witty, no-holds-barred, and often literal verse translation of sixty-nine fabliaux (about half of those that survive) captures the good-humored bawdiness and antic wordplay of these medieval short stories. They're both sweet-tempered and very naughty--like Bette Midler telling dirty jokes. If these funny, madcap tales and Dubin's clever rhymes don't make you laugh out loud, check your pulse. Once you start reading them, it's hard to stop; they're medieval literary peanuts.
Beyond their risqué pleasures and their expert, lively translation, these stories are fascinating windows into everyday life in 13th-century France. Here are details about what people wore and ate, how they made their livings and spent their idle time, how they fought the (apparently constant) battle of the sexes, and how they maneuvered through a socially stratified world. This is a Middle Ages filled with earthy laughter. Add to this content a beautifully-produced hardback with an embossed cover, a sewn-in cloth book mark, and close to 1,000 pages (!) of facing Old French and English translation, and this is an incredible bargain at Amazon's current price. This book now surpasses all previous translations. - JRS amazon.com reviews
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