According to Robert E. Lewis in his “The English Fabliau Tradition and Chaucer's ‘Miller's Tale',” the heyday of the French fabliaux lasted from “the late twelfth century to the 1340s.” In addition, as Lewis goes on to point out, the French genre appeared in several other languages, some dating well after the mid-fourteenth century. Various extant fabliaux have been put forward as analogues to some of the more racy stories told in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
[...] While the poet identifies himself as Ptochoprodromus (poor Prodromus), it is still argued whether or not he is in fact the well established Greek poet Theodore Prodromus. The Three Guests of Heile of Bersele, translated by Constance B. Hieatt, in The Canterbury Tales: Fifeteen Tales and the General Prologue with Authoritative Text, Sources and Backgrounds, and Criticisms. Selected and edited by V.A. Kolve and Glending Olson, 2nd Edition. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc pp. 341- 343). [...]
[...] The Miller and the Two Clerics, translated by Robert Hellman and Richard O'Gorman, in The Canterbury Tales: Fifeteen Tales and the General Prologue with Authoritative Text, Sources and Backgrounds, and Criticisms. Selected and edited by V.A. Kolve and Glending Olson, 2nd Edition. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc pp. 344-347). [5]The Three Guests of [...]
[...] Both the “Miller's Tale” and the “Reeve's Tale” differ from other fabliaux with very similar plots in the specific details they provide, suggesting that because the tales are written into a narrative context, they are modified to suit the purposes of the pilgrim telling them.[15] As noted by Kolve and Olson, Chaucer's Canterbury fabliaux are “rich with detail and nuance usually lacking in the genre.”[16] It is because of Chaucer's over- arching narrative in the Canterbury Tales that his fabliaux are not the best representatives of the literary genre, while the two analogues discussed here are fairly typical. [...]
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