Bawdy Tales from the Courts of Medieval France

by Paul Brians (Editor & Translator)

127 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Paul Brians (1942-) earned his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at Indiana University and joined the Department of English at Washington State University in 1968. He taught literature, interdisciplinary humanities, and world civilizations courses. He retired in 2008 and now lives on Bainbridge Island.

Reviews

[Ronald Morton · Rating 4 out of 5]

A decent sampling of bawdy medieval French tales. Most are fairly short, clocking in at just a few pages, a handful are longer, but you manage to get 10 tales in 125 quick pages. I’m familiar with about half of these tales through other contexts (many of these motifs were common for the time), but it’s always interesting to hear other workings of known tales.

Bawdy is of course a relative term, and there’s really only a few smatterings of moments here that are truly bawdy. There are some decently smutty moments - along with a helping of over the top violence for entertainment’s sake - that made me laugh.

A decent collection, but I find a lot of the joy of medieval literature (as an English speaker/reader) is being able to see language around the time it was shifting to something familiar, so reading these in translation (not that I can read French mind you) does dampen that a bit.

[Lynn · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good collection of medieval fablieuxs.
Humorous and vulgar.

[Georgene · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hmmm..."bawdy", indeed.

One tale is of Sir Gawain, from the old Arthurian cycles of tales. Apparently, such stories are not confined to the British Isles.

Some are funny, one is just plain gross. Most are concerned with the seduction of married women by an outsider.

All which proves that sex is NOT a modern invention.