Fabliaux — circulating deception and bodily-humour plots
About the work
Imported from the workbook's Full reassessment sheet, revised 7 October 2026 (record ID 68). The assessment below is the workbook's comparative judgment under its stated criteria; source links and limits are retained.
Workbook assessment: Spread only
Date or witness: Main surviving French manuscript tradition 13th–14th centuries; late-12th-century antecedents
Region: France and wider medieval Europe
Workbook date-sort bounds: 1170 CE to 1400 CE; these bounds are not automatically invention or disappearance dates.
Description
Short comic verse tales reuse adultery, deception, clerical misconduct and bodily humour. The snow-child story survives in separately dated late-13th- and early-14th-century copies.
Evidence of adoption or transmission
Fabliaux preserve shared plots and variant manuscript witnesses.
What remains uncertain
The genre’s audience and social function cannot be reduced to the bourgeoisie or peasantry from subject matter alone. Current sources document manuscript transmission, not independent adoption by working people.
Workbook revision note: Reassessed using grassroots criteria