The Fabliaux: A New Verse Translation

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.

Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Liveright Publishing Corporation
Published: 06/10/2013
ISBN: 9780871403575
Pages: 1024
Weight: 2.05lbs
Size: 7.80h x 5.20w x 2.00d

Review Citations: Booklist 06/01/2013 pg. 15
New York Review of Books 12/05/2013 pg. 44