Literary Context

Question 1

What is the Fabilaux genre?

Answer 1

• a fabilau is a comic, often anonymous tale written between c.1150 and 1400
• generally characterised by sexual and scatological obscenity, and a set of anarchic attitudes - contrary to the church and to the nobility
• defined as a short narrative in verse, its content often comic or satiric.
• types of characters ; cuckolded husbands, greedy clergy, foolish peasants, beggars, thieves, whores
• senex amans = ‘amorous old man’, jealous old man married to a young woman + a subject of mockery - embodied by janurie
• examples - The Story Of Lydia And Pyrrhus (from Boccaccio’s Decameron, 1353)

Question 2

What is the Courtly Love genre?

Answer 2

• highly conventionalised medieval tradition of love between a knight and a married noblewoman, extensively employed in medieval literature
• love of the knight for his lady is regarded as an ennobling passion - the knight was often set near impossible tasks to complete to win the favour of his lady + the relationship was typically unconsummated (not in the case of the merchants tale)
• they often contained high rhetoric and classical allusions
• examples - The Roman De la Rose, by Guillaume de Lorris + Jean de Meun, allegorical love poem which takes the form of a dream vision - mentions of a walled garden (similar to the garden in the merchants tale)