FABLIAU, plur. FABLIAUX (from the Latin fabulari, fatellare, to speak or to tell), was the name given in the old French literature to a class of short metrical narratives, intended merely for recitation, and which had for their subject-matter the talk and news .of the day in the middle ages. The narrator of such news was called a fableor (plur. fablMre), in opposition to the eltanteor, or singer proper, who composed poems not only for recitation, but also for singing. Besides the fabliaux, the department of the fableor embraced the Romans d'aventure (in short unstrophied couplets), usually called contes, whence their author or reciter also bore the name of contour; and the dit8, or sayings, the special cultivator of which was termed a diseur. As the fabliaux were fundament ully distinguished from the more genuine forms of poetry by the every-day character of their subject-matter, so the mode of treatment which their authors adopted was also more anecdotical, epigrammatic, and witty—the wit being richly spiced with scandal. They appear to have maintained a sort of ironical and parodistic antagonism to the Idealism of the epics of chivalry. In these fabliaux, the essential character of the French people manifested itself, and that opposition of the real to the ideal, of the understanding to the imagination, which, after the time of Francis I., began to charac
terize French literature generally. Thus they lashed not only the priesthood and the nobility in their actual degeneracy, but, from the very character of their satire,4hey engendered a contempt for the religious-chivalric spirit itself, and for all ecclesiastical and knightly notions and ceremonies. The oldest fabliaux are not of French origin; they are a fruit of the crusades, and were brought to France from the east, but they received a national coloring, and soon took root in the west. From them sprung. the drama of France. One of the most fecund fabliere was Rutebeuf, who flourished in the reigns of Louis IX. and Philippe III., whose works were published by Jubinal (2 vols., Paris, 1837). He was a true Parisian, and the prototype of Villon, La Fontaine, and Voltaire. The best collections of fabliaux and contes are those of Barbazan (3 vols., Paris, 1756), of Neon (2 vols., Paris, 1823), and of Jubinal (2 vols., Paris, 1839-43).