fabliau
a short metrical tale, usually ribald and humorous, popular in medieval France.
Origin of fabliau
1Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024
How to use fabliau in a sentence
Literary history aside (or be damned), these anti-establishment, anti-ecclesiastical fabliaux are pure, unadulterated fun.
In spite of the exaggeration, hyperbolism, and excessiveness, the fabliaux embody an authentic, deep sense of realism.
As in all of the fabliaux, the table can be turned as easily as changing positions in bed.
The fabliaux, so called—fables, that is, or stories—were still another form of French literature in verse.
French Classics | William Cleaver WilkinsonJust as the spirit of the fabliaux is found again in the farces, so that of the contes dvots continues in the miracle plays.
Tales from the Old French | Various
The great means for doing this in literature is irony; and irony appears in the fabliaux as it had hardly done since Lucian.
The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory | George SaintsburyThe fabliaux more particularly were farces already in the state of scenario, and some of them actually contained dialogue.
The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory | George SaintsburyLater poets sought to relieve the monotony of this form through what we to-day call fabliaux.
The Prose Writings of Heinrich Heine | Heinrich Heine
British Dictionary definitions for fabliau
/ (ˈfæblɪˌəʊ, French fɑblijo) /
a comic usually ribald verse tale, of a kind popular in France in the 12th and 13th centuries
Origin of fabliau
1Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
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