Comic Provocations Exposing the Corpus of Old French Fabliaux

This interdisciplinary collection explores the ability of Old French fabliaux to disrupt the literal and figurative bodies with which they come into contact. Essays in this volume address theoretical issues including fragmentation and multiplication, social anxiety and excessive circulation, performative productions and creative formations, to trace the competing consequences that result from this literary body's unsettling capacity. Resisting the impulse to see the fabliaux as either liberatory or restrictive, comic or satiric, didactic or immoral, contributors assess the ways in which Old French fabliaux expose bodily relations that elude binary classifications. As a gathering of scholars in French, English, and History, this volume suggests that the Old French fabliaux form a corpus that is provocative across medieval studies.

Holly A. Crocker is Assistant Professor of English, University of South Carolina.

Note on Texts and Translations * Foreword--R. Howard Bloch * Introduction: The Provocative Body of the Fabliaux--Holly A. Crocker * Part I * Literalism and Eunuchs of God in the Fabliaux--Judith Tschann * The Comic Uses of Torture and Violence in the Fabliaux: When Comedy Crosses the Line--Larissa Tracy * Coprus [sic] Christi: the Scatological Tales of the Old French Fabliaux--Sheila Nayar * Part II * Go-Betweens: the Old Woman and the Function of Obscenity in the Old French Fabliau--Nicole Nolan Sidhu * Dressing the Undressed: Clothing and Social Structure in Old French Fabliaux--Mary Leech * The Lewd and the Ludic: Female Pleasure in the Fabliaux--Lisa Perfetti * Part III * Creative Choices: Notes on Translating Old French Fabliaux--Nathaniel E. Dubin * Mobility and Resentment in a World of Flux: Arrogance in the Old French Fabliaux--Kiril Petkov * Conflicting Economies in the Fabliaux--Christian Sheridan * Part IV * Posterity of the Fabliaux: Georges Feydeau and Marcel Proust--Sam Bloom * Chaucer’s French Accent: Gardens and Sex-Talk in the ‘Shipman’s Tale--Peter G. Beidler * Be Careful What You Wish For: Folkloric Caution in Les .iiii. Souhais Saint-Martin--Ellen Friedrich * Notes on Contributors