Ni fable ni estoire : les fictions mitoyennes et la troisième voie du fabliau

Medievalists frequently emphasize the typological challenges that afflict the fabliau (Adrian Tudor, 2003). Often ineffectual in rethinking the definition proffered by Joseph Bédier (“tales written in verse to laugh at”, 1893), they contend that medieval authors and scribes do not distinguish generic labels. Criticism has only rarely queried the meaning of the word fable (fablel) that has been given to this accepted genre employed throughout the 13th century. If these brief narratives were sometimes read as “historic” documents as they generally favor a contemporary frame and do not convey the marvelous as do the Arthurian romances, the etymological link that the designation fablel maintains with the Latin term fabula (that contests historia as false speech to the word of truth) points the reader on the path to fiction. A perusal that takes into account the generic vocabulary, the metatextual commentaries and the manuscript collections that have preserved the narratives, reveals that the fabliaux claim to belong to the domain of the fabula while distinguishing themselves from other forms of fiction. Their singularity stems principally from the “third way” in which they are situated. On the fringe of absolute truth as well as pure fabrication, they offer a reflection on the truth-value of fictional texts.  The question of fiction permeates both the Latin medieval poetic arts as well as works in the vernacular that seek to be singularized in relation to the Latin language. The overview of instances of romance, as well as of epic and hagiographical genres reveals a continual desire to guarantee the legitimacy of fiction (chapter I). Examination of the lexicological and semantic highlights the specificity of the fabliau. More precisely, the use of fable testifies to an effort of semantic reinvestment of fable, a term associated with dishonesty in literature (chapter II). The use of octosyllabic couplets, accepted as the medium of literary fiction since the 12th century, lends a sentiment of usury regarding already practiced fictions that are also called to be renewed (chapter III). This desire to find new avenues in fiction becomes more apparent when one is drawn into the pedagogical content of the fabliaux that depicts a world of changing values and rejects both the courtly and Arthurian traditions and the absolute truths transmitted by the Bible (chapter IV), the conclusions that reinforce and enrich the examination of the manuscript collections (chapter V). In the end it is a question of identifying the nature of the ambivalent fiction (the “third way”) in the fabliaux. The analysis underscores a penchant for the semblance which, linked with the truth, traces the contours of a medieval definition of the vraisemblance recalling the category of the argumentum that refers to an in between in the Latin poetic arts and that, unlike those of the fabula (fable) and the historia (estoire), has not bequeathed an equivalent to the vernacular (chapter VI).

Keyphrases: Argumentum, Fabliau, Fabula, Fiction, Historia, Vraisemblance, Immanent poetics, Realism, Manuscript collection, Truth