Society for Comparative Studies in Society and History

Sexual Language and Human Conflict in Old French Fabliaux

Author(s): Sarah Melhado White
Source: Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 24, No. 2 (Apr., 1982), pp. 185-210
Published by: Cambridge University Press
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Sexual Language and Human

Conflict in Old French Fabliaux
SARAH

MELHADO

WHITE

Franklin and Marshall College

French literaturehas specialized, almost since its beginning, in accounts of
eroticism and courtship. During the twelfth century, Northernromance and
Southernlyric describedan idealized heterosexualityand its role in honing the
aristocraticindividual.1In the thirteenthcentury, a new genre appearedthat
dealt with sexual encounter in more materialisticterms. The new form, the
fabliau, added to literarylanguage a vocabularyof vulgarisms from the spoken vernacular.2At the same time, it gave Europeanliteraturea new theme:
sexuality that betokens not personal fulfillment, but rivalrous interpersonal
struggle.
Individualfabliauxvary in ambiance,but the tales generallytell of conflicts
between rivals-rich and poor, cleric and layperson, man and woman, even
between unintegratedpartsof the self. These are all sociogenic conflicts, with
little referenceto humanscourges like death, disease, or war. Fabliauportrays
a world that offers no real way to transcendor transformeconomic fact: a
good, to be won, must be wrested from the Other. This is not to say that
authors of the tales anticipate a Hobbesian, Marxist, class-conscious social
analysis. Rather,they paint their pictureby superimposingthirteenth-century
realities-knights out of pocket, priests out of parishes-on a traditional
Christianview of human existence since the Fall. New, however, is an emphasis placed on sexuality in the affairs of this imperfect world.
A version of this paper was presentedat the University of Michigan Boccaccio Symposium, 6
November 1976. I am gratefulfor CharlesTrinkaus'sinvitation, which initiatedthe project, and
for subsequentexchanges with Marvin Becker, Raymond Grew, Loy Martin, Nora Scott, Solomon Wank, and the late Albert Biele, M.D.
' Reto R. Bezzola, Le sens de l'aventureetde l'amour (Paris, 1968);RobertW. Hanning, The
Individual in Twelfth-CenturyRomance (New Haven, 1977); Ren6 Nelli, L'erotique des
troubadours(Toulouse, 1963).
2 Here, the term
fabliau refersto a body of brief rhymedtales writtenfrom the early thirteenth
to the mid-fourteenthcenturiesin northernFrance. As my interpretationdependson the tales' Old
French vocabulary, I do not use the term's extended meaning, found, for example, in LarryD.
Benson and Theodore Andersson, The Literary Context of Chaucer's Fabliaux (Indianapolis,
1971), and in Peter Dronke, 'The Rise of the Medieval Fabliau: Latin and VernacularEvidence," RomanischeForschungen, 85:3 (1973), 275-97. There,fabliau is appliedto any medieval tale in a comic or obscene vein, and often to Latin or English sources and analogues of the
Old French stories.
0010-4575/82/2154-6719 $2.50 ? 1982 Society for ComparativeStudy of Society and History

185

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SARAH MELHADO WHITE

One fabliau, "The Miller and Two Clerks," begins by introducingtwo

impoverished, unemployed clerics.3 They go to a mill to grind some grain
which they have borrowedin orderto take up bakingas a trade. The miller, a
ruthlessand clever cheat, conspireswith his wife to steal the clerks' grainand
their mule. But the clerks, spendinga night in the miller's house, seduce both
his daughterand wife, beat him up, and recover the stolen goods. It is not
importantthat they never get their grain milled. The clerks win the game on
the level most satisfying to them, most humiliatingto the miller, and most
entertainingto the audience, the level of sexual competitiveness.At the end of
the story, the characters'conditions have not changed. The clerks are still
socially marginal,in debt, and withouta living. The miller still has his mill, a
proverbialinstrumentof profit and exploitationin medieval Europe.4But his
wife, his daughter,and even his innocentbaby in cradlehave served the clerks
as means of revenge. To invoke a present-daysexual term in its extended,
psychosocial meaning, the clerks have "screwed" the miller and his family.
This fabliau has analogues familiar to readers of medieval narrative. Its
best-knownrelative, also involving clerks who visit a mill, is the Canterbury
tale told by the Reeve.5 Chaucerhas this characterturnthe narrativetables on
anotherpilgrim (in fact, on the Miller), who has offended the Reeve and his
trade by telling the story of a cuckolded carpenter.In the Canterburyframe
story, sexual words and sexual tales are instrumentsof aggression between
rivalrous social factions. The Reeve's Tale stresses the link between sexual
exchange and socioeconomic drives: it states (lines 3942-86) thatthe wife and
daughterare the miller's valuable properties,his best hopes for prestige and
advancement.The clerks' easy victory over their virtue is thus all the more
disconcertingto the proud householder.
The fabliau, written nearly two centuriesearlier, gives a less subtle social
analysis. But even here, language links sexuality to the world of livelihood
and supply:the clerk seduces his host's daughternot because he has fallen in
love with her beauty (as is the case in Boccaccio's later version of the tale),6
but because he can't resist finding out "if she can be worth something" to
him, "s'el me porroit rien valoir. " Reportingto his friend after the fact that
indeed she was of some value, he tells the numberof times he has taken her,
3 "Le meunieret les deux clercs,' in Recueil general et completdesfabliaux des XIIIeet XIVe
siecles, Anatole de Montaiglon and Gaston Raynaud, eds. (Paris, 1872-90), V, 83 (hereafter
cited as Montaiglon-Raynaud).Although many fabliaux have been edited and published more
recently, citations herein are to this edition, still the most inclusive fabliau collection. Where
possible, I also cite an English or Modem French translation. "The Miller and Two Clerks"
appearsin Benson and Andersson's anthology, cited in note 2, and in Robert Harrison, Gallic
Salt (Berkeley, 1974), 149-69 (translationsin verse, with Old French texts on facing pages).
4 Robert Fossier, Histoire sociale de l'occident medieval, (Paris, 1970), 200.
SGeoffreyChaucer, The Worksof Geoffrey Chaucer, rev. ed., F. N. Robinson, ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1957), 55-60.
6 Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron, Vittore Branca, ed. (Florence, 1960), Day 9, Tale 6.

SEXUAL LANGUAGE

AND HUMAN CONFLICT IN FABLIAUX

187

"seven times tonight,"'and boasts of how little he had to pay for her virginity,
just an iron ring stolen from the andiron. He urges the other clerk to go and
"take his shareof the bacon." In the text's concludinglines, the poet says the
clerks have "milled" the miller and "plied their trade" effectively. The
outcasts are on their way to economic recovery on the strengthof their gifts
for sexual trickery.
Another fabliau brings anatomy itself, actual genital difference, into the
foreground of a socioeconomic event. The story is "Berenger Long-Cul, " or

'"Brenger of the Long Asshole. "7 Like many fabliau texts, this title flaunts
obscene language while its style parodies that of contemporarytales set in a
courtly tone.8 The line of the story follows.
In Lombardy,a knight, a "riche chatelain, " owes money to anotherknight
of peasant origin, "fils d'un vilein usurier riche. " Unable to pay his debt, the

knight of the older family marries his daughterto the nouveau noble. The
bride is contemptuous of her husband's peasant origins, observing that he
preferseating, talking, and pitchinghay to the pursuitof trulyknightlyactivities. To prove thathe is as chivalricas her othermale relatives, he periodically
dresses in armor, rides off alone, hacks at his own shield, breaks his own
lance, and returnshome like an embattledhero. But one day the wife dresses
in knight's attireherself. She follows her husbandand challenges him as he is
jousting with a tree in a nearby wood. Not recognizing the strangeras his
wife, the antiherois terrifiedby this unknownknight, who demands that he
choose between fighting to the deathandbestowing a kiss on his/herbackside.
The husbandchooses the kiss, and the strangerturns and partiallydisrobes.
The man is astounded by the sight, described in vulgar terminology still
currentin French:
Et cil regarde la crevace;
du cul et du con li resamble
que trestot li tenist ensamble.
A lui mei'sme pense et dit
que oncques si long cul ne vit.
(And he looked at the crevice,
where it seemed to him that asshole and cunt
ran together into one.
He thought to himself
that he'd never seen such a long asshole.)

Having given the kiss, he asks the knight's name and is told it is B6renger
Long-Cul. When the knight/peasantreturnshome, he finds his wife in bed
with anotherknight. The cuckold protests, only to have the wife say she can
7

Montaiglon-Raynaud,III, 252; Harrison, Gallic Salt, 42-61.

Per Nykrog, Lesfabliaux (1957; rpt. Geneva, 1973), 72-104, gives a detailed account of
anticourtlyparodies in fabliaux.
8

I88

SARAH

MELHADO

WHITE

do what she likes because Berenger Long-Cul will defend her against her
accusers. She knows of his humiliating experience in the wood; thus, the
husbandhas lost all masculineprestige. His shame is not only that he prefersa
kiss to a duel, but that he has placed the kiss on a partof the female anatomy
which the text describesas being very odd by comparisonto the same partof a
male. The whole tale turns on its explicit genital language and imagery. The
battlegroundin a war between the sexes and the social ordersis precisely that
area of the body where gender differences are most plain.
The social and literarycontext of these tales has occasioned much learned
argument.Joseph Bedier, the first moder critic of fabliaux, assumedthatthe
tales' crude language and plots would have displeased courtly audiencesjust
as, presumably, they displeased Victorians.9 Noting that the dates (ca.
1200-1346) and Northerndialects of fabliaux correspondto the loci of developing mercantileFrance, he places the tales in a category of "Litterature

Bourgeoise. "

Other scholars have concluded that B6dier's classification, while useful,

was oversimplified.10Jean Rychner has illustratedsome complexities of the
question by pointing to two different versions of "Berenger Long-Cul."1
One version, the earlier, includes a diatribe against old families that allow
their blood to be vilified by marriagebetween their daughtersand nonnoble
men. This socially conservativestatementtends to link the text to a chivalric
ethic, not to a bourgeois one. But anotherversion of the same tale attenuates
this aristocraticbias by eliminatingthe diatribeand allowing plot conflicts to
arise from individualcharactertraits(sloth, cowardice)ratherthan from class
origin. The existence of the variantssuggests thatauthorsof fabliauxadjusted
their performancesto the tastes of different audiences. Fabliaux, on the
whole, while depicting types, behaviors, situations, and expressions not
found in the literaturewe call courtly, cannot be termedpurely "of the town
square" or "of the castle. "12 They seem to be literaturefor a range of people
with a taste for brief narrativein a low mimetic style, people who were
pleased, not offended, by parodies and travesties of courtly language and
motifs.
Almost all fabliau plots have a dupe or victim.13 Losers of competitive
games that take place in the tales come sometimes from one class, sometimes
from another. They may be male, female, landed, moneyed, lay, clerical,
town-dwelling or rural. Though plots frequentlydepend on conflicts within
9 Joseph Bedier, Lesfabliaux, 6th ed. (Paris, 1969).
10 The best-known critic of Bedier's thesis is Nykrog, cited in note 8, above. For a more
recent balanced summary and treatmentof the audience questions, see Charles Muscatine,
"The Social Backgroundof the Old French Fabliaux," Genre, 9:1 (Spring 1976), 1-19.
11 Jean Rychner, Contributiona l',tude dufabliau (Neuchatel, 1960).
12
Bedier, Lesfabliaux, 371.
13
Mary Jane Schenck, "A StructuralDefinition of the Old French Fabliau" (Ph.D. diss.,
PennsylvaniaState University, 1973), 157-206.

SEXUAL

LANGUAGE

AND

HUMAN

CONFLICT

IN FABLIAUX

I89

medieval society, the tales do not seem an apology for one social ordermore
than another.
Nor can fabliau authorseasily be identified with a single group. We may
call them clerical only if we take into account a varietyof types subjectto that
label. Bedier evoked a groupof anonymouswanderers,similarto the Goliard
poets, earninga living by writingor recitingfabliaux.14 He supposedthatthey
were poor, like the clerks who dupe the miller, and hostile to the clerisy that
had educated them yet failed to provide enough benefices. This social bias
is consistent with the tone of many fabliaux that ridicule these clerics,
monks, priests, and bishops for whom the Church did provide relatively
well. However, there are also fabliaux written by aristocrats15and by
well-known men of letters like Jean Bodel of Arras and Rutebeuf of Paris,
who, while critical of clerical abuses, were themselves neitherwanderingnor
alienated from traditionalreligious values.
If fabliau authorshold a point of view in common, it is that of the fable
writer. It lies at a critical distance from the social world, its transactions,and
its struggles. The resultantvision depicts most social incidents as zero-sum
games in which neither winners nor losers are much to be admired. These
authorsask little sympathy from the audience for any of the characters.
The sources of fabliaux are as wide ranging as their comic outlook.16The
authorsborrowedthe narrativeform, rhymedoctosyllabic couplets, and some
of the motifs from courtly lai and romance. They borrowedplots from many
directions, including fables, folktales, Milesian tales, Latin comedy and,
apparently,from obscene jokes and local gossip.17Fabliau authorswere acquaintedwith sermon literature.Several Latin exempla present analogues to
fabliaux.'8Both genres are brief narratives,told with no elements extraneous
to the plot. Both have charactersthat are stereotypedfunctions of that plot;
both usually end with a fable-like moralpurportingto draw a lesson from the
tale. Most exempla and many fabliaux illustratethe workings of some vicePride, Greed, Envy, Lust. Both the Latin and vernaculargenres tend to be
misogynist as well as misanthropic,warning innocent males against female
sinners of the flesh.
But the vernaculartales are unique in the language they use to describe
male and female vicissitudes. Fabliaux, despite elements they share with
14

Bdier, Lesfabliaux, 389-98.

'S E.g. Henri d'Andeli, Philippe de Beaumanoir,Jean de Conde.

16

Dronke, "Rise of Medieval Fabliau."

Jean Bodel's "ExtravagantWish," discussed below, claims to retell "a story I heard in
Douai abouta man and a woman whose names I don't know," a narrativeformula,to be sure, but
possibly true.
18 For a discussion of the relationshipbetween fabliau and exemplum, see Roger Dubuis, Les
Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles et la tradition de la nouvelle en France au Moyen Age (Grenoble,
17

1973), 485-500,

1977), 9, 27-28.

and Nora Scott, Contes pour rire? Fabliaux des XIIIe et XIVe siecles (Paris,

I90

SARAH MELHADO WHITE

contemporarydidactictales, explore otherrealms of the comic, fantastic, and

grotesque.Theirexpressionand imageryare astonishinglyexplicit, describing
in detail variouspsychological, characterological,and anatomicaltraitslinked
to gender.
In earlier times, scholars and antiquariansfulminated colorfully against
fabliau's obscene language, even while they were publishing and promoting
it.19But the day of the diatribeis past. More typical of moder scholarsis Per
Nykrog's claim of espousing "une objectivite toute medicale" with respect to

fabliau's sexual content.20Recent publishedcollections of fabliauxin English

and in ModernFrenchtestify to the enthusiasmof many medievalists for the
genre and to theirrecognitionthat obscenity is, and always was, a significant
part of the tales' appeal.21
However, in the recent proliferationof fabliau studies there is a general
avoidance of the psychosocial implicationsof sexuality and sexual language.
A focus on manuscripttradition, genre definition, levels of discourse, and
narrativestructurefollows lines laid down for medieval studies by philology,
literaryhistory and, recently, by linguistic and formalistcriticism. There are,
of course, studies of fabliau humor and at least one discussion of the tales'
obscene diction.22In it, Roy J. Pearcylinks fabliauwordplayand euphemism
to medieval quarrels between idealist and realist philosophies. Here is an
ingenious, even heroic, effort on the part of a medievalist not to violate
scholarlycontext by appealingto moder interpretationsof sexual expression.
Yet, it may be overly heroic to insist on strictdisciplinaryboundarieswhen
dealing with materialwhich evokes such explosive social issues. The fact that
the issues appearin an ambianceof humorousentertainmentshould not discourage serious interpretation.One man's laughteris anotherman's (or woman's!) humiliation. Contes pour rire? The title of a recent fabliau collection
appends a question mark to Bedier's famous definition of the genre.23The
translatoris more sceptical than one of her colleagues who praises the tales'
"joyous laughter"and claims that it neutralizestheir "potentialpornographic
tendencies."24 Such easy optimism threatens to trivialize the hilarity and
19 Scott, Contes
pour rire?, 16-17; Geoffrey Wilson, A Medievalist in the EighteenthCentury: Le Grand d'Aussy and the Fabliaux ou contes (The Hague, 1975).
20
Nykrog, Lesfabliaux, 209. Elaboratingthe medical model, Rychnerwrites, "Je n'aifait
que regarder, observer et comparerles textes; ce sont des 'observations'que je publie, sur des
'cas,' qui sont, dans un sens, pathologiques. Je soumetsau lecteur mes malades ... en l'invitant
expressementi les ausculter lui-meme...." Contribution,7.
21 Besides Harrison'sEnglish translationand Scott's ModernFrenchone (see notes 3 and 18
above), there is Robert Helman and RichardO'Gorman, Fabliaux: Ribald Tales from the Old
French (New York, 1965).
22 Roy J. Pearcy, "Modes of Signification and the Humor of Obscene Diction in the Fabliaux," in The Humor of the Fabliaux, T. D. Cooke and B. L. Honeycutt, eds. (Columbia,
Missouri, 1974), 163-95. A recent etatpresent of fabliauxstudies is HarryF. Williams, "French
Fabliau Scholarship," South Atlantic Review, 46:1 (January1981), 76-82.
23
Scott, Contes pour rire?
24 Thomas D.
Cooke, in Humor of the Fabliaux, Cooke and Honeycutt, eds., 162.

SEXUAL LANGUAGE

AND HUMAN CONFLICT IN FABLIAUX

191

crueltyof some fabliaujokes. It tends to dismiss laughteritself as a significant

expression of human aggression.
For regardlessof culturalor class variation, most vulgarismsutteredin the
mother tongue carry a charge of awe and pleasure instilled during the years
when a child first learns what the words represent.25These strong emotional
associations make the terms useful expressions of anger and surprise. The
impactof sexual and scatological words depends not on an absence of inhibition, but on a dynamic interactionof taboo and defiance.
Freudian and post-Freudianthought propose approaches to sexual language, humor, and fantasy. It seems wasteful to discount such insights, particularlywhen dealing with languagesthatoften seems to ring with the sounds
of primaryprocess. Moreover, certain fabliaux give a rich early account of
anatomyand destiny. They arejust the kind of lore thatreceives and transmits
controversial gender-related notions. For example, Freud's 1925 paper,
"Some Psychological Consequences of the Anatomical Distinction between
the Sexes,'' asks how each type of genital affects the behaviorof people, both
those who possess the part and those who do not.26Just as Freud proposed
scientific answers to such questions, fabliau authors offer fanciful ones by,
describing disembodied or anomalous sex organs.
A subgroupof fabliaux (approximately13 percentof the 150 to 160 known
texts) evoke genital organs in a literal way and present them virtually as
charactersin their own right. These tales combine literal language and imagery with narrativesabout males and females in varied relationshipsto the
genitalia: men and women are shown possessing, pursuing, finding, losing,
using, scorning, and admiringthe gender-specificobjects. The latter, in turn,
often appearin a state of disembodiment.A penis, for instance, is found lying
by the roadside, away from any signs of life except its sack of testicles.
Vulvas are also seen detached from their moorings.
Centuriesbefore Freud, fictional women have well-delineated "masculinity complexes." Men and women suffer a range of desires for the sexual
organ of the opposite gender, from the libidinous (wishing to enjoy) to the
narcissistic (wishing to possess). There are lurid confusions of genital with
excretory functions, such as those found in infantile theories of sexuality.
There are genitalia acting independently of their supposed owners, and a
whole arrayof illustratedwishes pertainingto the genitals.
In fact, the plethoraof sexual contentshould put alertpsychoanalyticcritics
on guard. In this world of linguistic genitalia, one has to ask what elements
beyond themselves the literalpenises and vaginas may represent.27They seem
25
Ralph R. Greenson, "The Mother Tongue and the Mother," International Journal of
Psychoanalysis, 31: pts. 1, 2 (1950), 18-28.
26
Sigmund Freud, Collected Papers, James Strachey, ed. and trans. (New York, 1959), V,
186-97.
27 See the discussion of "literal sex" in ShoshanaFelman,
"Turningthe Screw of Interpretation," Yale French Studies, 55/56 (1977-78), 109-13.

I92

SARAH MELHADO WHITE

themselves to symbolize otherthan sexual things, for example, the tokens of

social, economic, and domestic gain seen in "The Miller and Two Clerks"
and in "Berenger Long-Cul. "

Despite their physical preoccupations, fabliaux are not necessarily or

primarilyerotic. They do not appealto ordinarydesires for sexual stimulation
and release. They are less an explorationof sexuality per se than an arrangement of genital terms into potent metaphor.For all its explicitness, the language is rudimentary,reducing the whole of intimatephysical experience to
four nouns (vit, coille, con, cul) and two verbs (foutre, chier). Through the

use of these blunt syllables in surprisingcombinations,a world of interesting

vices and conflicts is describedand given sexual correlatives. Sex is defiance
and power. Sex is humiliation and mischief. The pursuit of sex, among
fabliau characters,expresses and sometimes replaces their pursuit of dominance or revenge. This confusion of aims is not unfamiliaramong modem
men and women, according to frequent accounts by our psychologists,
novelists, and poets.28
Anthropologyand economics, as well as psychoanalysis,should informthe
examination of sexual material in fabliaux. Followers of Engels and LeviStrauss, for example, explore the forms of sexual exchange upon which
societies and economic systems are founded. They, too, could usefully elaborate on the economics of sex and gender found in fabliaux.29
This study invites comment also from social historians, who are best
equippedto determinewhetheror not, duringthetimeswhenfabliauxflourished,
rivalrousnessover sexual and materialadvantageswas especially acute. This
could be the case but does not need to be. On the one hand, there has never
been a time when supplies of love and money were not scarce for someone.
On the other hand, changing conditions may have raised a longstandingfeatureof humanexperienceabove the thresholdof awarenessand caused it to be
articulatedby poets. In eithercase, we can see furtherdetails of these articulations in the following account of nine other fabliaux, notable for their use of
genital language.
The Four Wishesof Saint Martin30

SaintMartinappearsto a peasantandrewardshimforhis devotionby grantinghim

fourwishes. The peasant'swife persuadeshim to let her makethe firstwish. She
28
E.g., Eric Berne, Sex in Human Loving (New York, 1970). Robert Herz, "Beautiful
Women," in WhiteSmoke (Fort Collins, Colo., 1977), has written: "Yet a point comes / when
each man is unable to tell the woman / from everything else he does not have."
29 E.g., Gayle Rubin, "The Traffic in Women: Notes on the 'Political Economy of Sex,'"
and KarenSachs, "Engels Revisited:Women, the Organizationof Productionand PrivateProperty," in Towardan Anthropologyof Women,RaynaR. Reiter, ed. (New York, 1975), 157-210,
211-34.
30 "Les
quatressohais Saint Martin," Montaiglon-Raynaud,V, 201; Harrison, Gallic Salt,
176-89.

SEXUAL

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wishes that his body be covered with penises. Erect male organs springup all over the

peasant'sbody. He retaliatesby wishingher bodycoveredwithan equalnumberof

vulvas.Theyregrettheirwishesanduse the thirdone to wishthatthe genitalsdisappear,forgettingto say thattheywantto keeptheiroriginalones. Whenthesevanish
alongwiththeothers,theymustuse thelastwishto restorethe statusquoanteof one
apiece.Moral:A manshouldneverruinopportunities
by consultinghis wife.
This anonymous fabliau begins with a typical narrativeflourish: "There
was a peasantin Normandyabout whom it is right that I tell you a marvelous,
quaintfabliau." He is, the poet says, such a faithful devotee of Saint Martin
that he remembershis patronin all circumstances.Martinof Tours was much
beloved in medieval France. His presence in this obscene tale shows irreverence, but also makes much of his powers as an intercessor.Respondingto the
peasant'smorninggreeting, Martin'sanswerillustratesthe power of speech in
fabliau. The peasanthas frequently"named" the saint. But today, he not only
names but "calls on" him, whereupon "Saint Martinwas before his eyes."
The saint tells the peasant about the four wishes that could change his life of
toil forever, advising him to be wise aboutchoosing the wishes and, above all,
to be careful what he says: "Whateveryou say, in making four wishes, you
can be sure that you will have it." We recognize a folktale world with
supernaturalelements. This is not always the case in fabliaux. Most often,
they are domestic comedies in which resourcesfor obtainingwishes do not go
beyond the props found in average households, ladders, tubs, cupboards,
windows, curtains, and so on. Usually, it requiresa dose of ingenuity on the
one hand, and of stupidity on the other, to advance a charactertoward the
object of his desire. Yet there are several tales that invoke supernaturaldevices; these texts are particularlywell suited to an explorationof the imaginary kingdom where wishes reign.
As the peasant'sstory continues, he turnstowardhome aftertakingleave of
SaintMartin,andwe areintroducedto its otherimportantfigure, the wife. With
a couple of strokes, the narratorpaints a type. We are warned that, in his
home, the peasant will hear anothersort of language: he will be "reasoned
with," harangued("aresniez"). This is because he has a particularkind of
wife, "his wife who wears the pants," "sa fame, qui chauce les braies."
This turnof phraseastoundsus, having lost none of its impactover centuries,
and across languages. Despite hundredsof changes in fashion, we still know
what is meant by "a woman who wears the pants." She may in fact wear
dresses, slacks, or skirts;but figuratively she wears improperclothing if she
plays the wrong role, the dominantone, with respect to her husband. In an
overbearingspeech, the peasant's wife reproacheshim for coming home from
work so early: "Just because the weather's a little cloudy? Hungry already?
You never have liked hardwork," and so on. But the peasantannouncesthathe
has only come home to consulther aboutthe wishes. He promisesthatsoon they
will be rich. What four things, he asks, could betterfulfill the dearestwishes

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of a hard-workingman and woman than "land, wealth, gold, and silver"?

But the tale turnson the idea that a wife, especially a wife-who-wears-pants,
has a wish even dearerthan those that repairher materialwants. She sees a
chance to indulge that wish and changes the style of her language, "humbles
herself in her words:" she has always been such a devoted wife-could she
not have just one of the wishes?
The peasant objects because he suspects that women's wishes are dangerous. They may emerge as fleeting whims ("You might ask for a mere three
spools of hemp, wool or linen thread") or as strange lusts ("I don't know
what you love" ("'vozamors")). Amors, in othermedieval contexts, refersto
more exalted aspirations, but here it simply means appetites: "You might
preferme as a bear, a donkey, goat or horse." Thoughthe woman swears she
loves her husbandas a peasant, the man has doubts, as well he might. These
are the fateful wishing-wordsshe utters: "I ask... in the name of God, that
you be loaded with pricks. Let there be no space on your body, eye, face,
head, arm, foot or side, where a prickis not planted!And let them not be soft
or tenderbut let each prickhave balls! Let the pricksbe foreverdistended,and
may you resemble a hornedpeasant."
In supernaturalfabliaux like this one, wish and word tend to be simultaneously realized. The woman's spoken wish produces a creaturelike a phallic
porcupine: "Pricks sprangfrom his nose and from the mouth beneath it. He
had long pricks and squarepricks, fat, short, curled, hefty and sharppricks,"
and so on. The crucialwords in the Old Frenchare vit, m. (penis), and coille,
f. (testicle), popular terms for male genitals and typical fabliau language.
There is a fictional calling into being of a graphicimage. Thisjoke-story has a
relationshipto a modernconceptionof jokes and of dreams.Freuddescribesa
process whereby, in dream-work,an optative "O! if only. ..." is replacedby
an indicative "it is," leading to "a hallucinatoryrepresentation . . the core
of the manifest dream-picture."31 The Saint Martintale gives its reader or
listenerjust such a transformation.The wife wishes in a kind of optative, in
this case, a French subjunctive: "Je demant...

que vous soiez."

As the

wish-language takes effect, the mood of the verb changes: "Quant ele ot
souhaidie et dit / du vilain saillirent li vit." According to Freud, it takes a

dream, fantasy, or joke to incarnatea desire so instantaneouslyin the indicative. Here, a fabliau mechanismprovides the wife with the instantreparation
of a secret lack, and providesthe reader/listenerwith the linguistic accountof
a woman's perverse wishes.
The peasantis horrified.What an "ugly wish" she has made! The woman
explains it in terms of assuaging a long-felt dissatisfaction: "One prick was
worth nothing to me." It was always "soft as fur." The term fur is, of
31 Sigmund Freud, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, James
Strachey, ed. and
trans. (New York, 1960), 162.

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course, more frequentlyused to describe the female genital. The unflattering

male image createdby this language complements our pictureof a wife with
masculine tendencies. The husband's insufficient maleness has fostered the
woman's sense of impoverishment,as she makes clear in her delighted reaction to the initial wish-fulfilment: "Now I am very rich in pricks!" She
suggests thatthis is a betterway to repairpoverty thanto wish for money. She
even tells him that now, wherever he goes, he will never have to pay for
anything. Why not? Are such ever-erect penises as good as money? Better?
The peasant, though still dismayed, now responds to the fact that his
original desire for wealth is being enacted on a different plane. He joins the
game. When he wishes that female genitals cover his wife's body, they, too,
promptlymaterialize,generatinga list of adjectivestypical in fabliaudescription of the female: "Cunts twisted, straight, graying, hairy, bald, virginal,
used, narrow,well-made, small, wide, deep and shallow." The man's simple
logic (if I have all these, you must have all those) is lost on the woman, and
she doesn't understandhis wish. Explaining, he offers a neat pun: now,
wherevershe goes, she will be bien connue, both "well-known" and "wellcunted," a makeshift participle formed from the noun, con, m., the one
vulgarismthat subsumes all one ever finds in medieval tales about the female
genitalia.
The woman recognizes that the exteriorizationof her phallic wish has led
them astray. She had wanted a certain kind of wealth representedby the
proliferated vits. But prodigious sexual activity, logically suggested by the
many genitals, is apparentlynot what she had in mind. The multiplicationof
her own genitalia leads her to revulsion: "Wish these things away from both
of us ... let's leave it alone." Forget sexuality and its inevitable disgust and
disappointment,and use our last wishes on the real business at hand, to make
us into riche gent. But because the peasanthas made an erroras he attempted
to restore anatomicalnormalcy, they never have the opportunityto increase
their wealth. They have wished in disregardof an unwrittenlaw of the gambling world which decrees that an attemptto make extravagantgains is most
likely to result in no gains at all: "The good man wished again; so he neither
lost nor won, for his prick returnedto him as his wishes were spent."
This fable has several "morals," one of which is expressed conventionally
by the poet: women are mysteriouscreatures.We never know what they may
want, so it's better not to consult them. The other obvious lesson is the one
taughtby the unwise use of wishes. Wishes, by their very nature, deal with
the extravagant,not with the real. The average peasant is fortunatenot to be
grantedmagic wishes. Many tales teach this lesson.32For the purposesof this
32
E.g., W. W. Jacobs, "The Monkey's Paw," in ShortStories, H. C. Schweikart,ed. (New
York, 1934), 387-99; also, Stith Thompson, Motif Index of Folk Literature, rev. and enl. ed.
(Bloomington, Ind., 1955-58), IV, J2070ff.

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study, one must ask how the traditionalmessage changes when genitals are
the emblems of what is foolishly wished ratherthan, for example, the cottages
and castles in a folktale like "The Fishermanand his Wife." The succession
of comic images, the spiny peasant, the well-cunted wife, the unsexed pair,
and the normalone, show what sexuality itself usually is accordingto fabliau:
a rapidescalation of hilarity(an orgasm in laughter?)followed by a resigned
lull, as peasant, wife, and readerreturnto reality, to the disappointingworld
with its affectless, unsatisfying, unprofitablesexlife. The wife is depicted as
the one who feels most deprivedby this mode of existence. It is her eager grab
for compensation that generates this comic structure,as is the case in the
following tale as well.
The ExtravagantWish33

A sexuallyfrustrated
wife falls asleepnextto herhusbandanddreamsof a market
wheremalegenitaliaareforsale. Shebuysa large"cockandballs"butwakesandis
In the end thereis a partialreconciliation
withherhusband.
disappointed.
The title, "Li sohaiz desvez, " could be translated as "the crazy wish," the

"altered," "displaced," or even "repressedwish."34 The narratorwas Jean

Bodel, one of the most humaneand versatile of thirteenth-centurypoets. He
introduces"a man and woman whose names I don't know." Fabliautypes are
seldom named. The designationsprode fame and prodon, good woman and
good man, suffice. They are "very dearto each other." Where, then, will the
story come from?There must be a problemto startthe tale. Here it is: "One
day the man had out-of-town business and he was gone a good three months
acquiringhis merchandise." A reader accustomed to medieval tales recognizes a motif common to many stories of merchants,tradespeople,and their
families: a husband who absents himself in order to take part in and profit
from the economic order. Many of these stories sketchthe theme elaboratedin
later EuropeanRealism, that is, the conflict between economic necessity and
emotional satisfaction. In numeroustales, the husband'sdeparturefor town,
market, shop, or business trip is the signal for the adulterer'sarrival.35It is
unfortunateand ironic for husbandsthat the very activity that makes it possible for them to have wives and households is the one that makes them too
absentor too crass to be companionsto their spouses. However, in this story,
we do not find the familiar equation, "couple minus merchantequals wife
plus adulterer." Anotherconflict is createdby the merchant'slong absence.
His business goes well; he returnshappily to Douai, and his wife is overjoyed to see him. There is an account of the excellent meal with which she
33 "Li sohaiz desvez," Montaiglon-Raynaud,V, 184; "Le souhait reprime," in Scott, Contes pour rire? 137-40.
34 Pierre Nardin, Lexique compare des fabliaux de Jean Bodel (Paris, 1942), 40.
35 E.g., "Les braies le priestre," Montaiglon-Raynaud,VI, 257; Boccaccio, Decameron,
Day 7, Tale 2, and Day 8, Tale 1.

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celebrateshis homecoming. Then economic reality reassertsitself as the poet

tells us why she goes to all this trouble,giving him "the best pieces of meat":
the wife is also a kind of merchantin that her actions are governedby certain
principles of exchange. "The lady was anxious to give him her very best,
because she was expecting to have his in return and to receive her own
welcome-home gift." But she doesn't tell him this, and he isn't aware of her
expectations. Though he must know that all is marchandise in the outside
world, he may thinkhe can get somethingfor nothingat home.36The husband
drinkstoo much wine and falls asleep, forgetting "the otherdelight" that has
been on his wife's mind. From this situation there arises the "extravagant
wish."
The woman curses her loutish spouse, verbally demoting him from merchantto peasantand sending him to the devil. But the poet is carefulto tell us
that "she doesn't say everything she is thinking, but reflects upon and re37She falls asleep "in anger and
presses her thoughtbecause it excites her.
annoyance" and her thoughtsbecome a dreamdesigned by the poet to relieve
her feelings of deprivation. She dreams of an annual marketlike the yearly
fairs that became centers of twelfth- and thirteenth-centuryEurope's "common market." The descriptionof the dream fair is the comic kernel of the
text. It juxtaposes a languageof bustlingmerchantlife with the vocabularyof
the dreamer's currentobsession. Nothing is to be seen or purchasedin the
shops or stands but "cocks and balls." There are warehouses full of them,
and they are being freshly delivered all the time in carts and wagons which,
like the "Four Wishes" peasant, are "laden with cocks." Prices are mentioned, ranging from nine or ten sous for small ones to thirty for "a good
one." We read that they are sold both "retail and wholesale." The woman
looks for and finds one of magnificent proportions. The adjective gros is
repeatedthreetimes in the description,and a strangehyperboleexplains that a
cherry,throwninto its "eye," would not stop until it landedat the base of the
testicles, "which were like the spade of a shovel." Another proof of the
genitals' monumentalityis that she pays more than fifty sous for them, the
largestprice mentionedin the tale. The narratorthen fashions a comic crisis in
which dream world and reality are superimposed: she slaps the "cockseller's" hand to seal their bargain and, in so doing, strikes her sleeping
husbandin the face, waking them both, to the regret of the woman, "who
would have preferredto stay asleep, for her joy turnedto sorrow... thatjoy
of which she was mistress in dream."
36 He should know
better, if only because the moral-religiouslanguageof his time labelled the
maritalsex act as "paying the debt," a debt owed by both partnersexcept underspecial circumstances. See Thomas N. Tentler, Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation(Princeton,
1977), 170-74, 208-23.
37 In fabliaux, women's talk is an expression of sexual energy associated with their gender.
This is one of the few female characterswho repressesher speech. The authortells what happens
when this form of energy is not immediatelyreleased.

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WHITE

A transitionhas taken place in the elaborationof the fantasy-dream-joke.

Before the dream, we saw quite a sensitive descriptionthat mimed a real but
routinemaritalmishap:eager wife disappointedby tired, tipsy husband. Unlike the wife in the "Four Wishes," she is not presented as having been
repeatedlydisenchantedwith her husband. On the contrary,she expects that
he will satisfy her. But the sequence of anger, repression,and dream, plus her
fantasy of the enormouspenis, have made a differentperson of her. Waking
up without her purchase, she is no longer in a mood to be consoled by the
gratificationsof real life. Her husband asks what she was dreaming about
when she hit him so hard, and she explains. He forgives her for the slap and
begins to make love to her. The descriptionis more delicate than that of the
usual hurriedfabliausex, and the readermay thinkthatfor once this is a scene
of mutuallysatisfying maritalsex. Not yet. The fabliau universe makes such
reconciliations difficult, if not impossible. When the man has become
aroused,he asks what his penis would have fetched at the fair. A cartloadlike
this one, she replies, wouldn't have found a single buyer. He takes the insult
good-naturedlyand tells her she will have to put up with it until she finds a
better one. Good humor defuses her fantasy aspirationsafter all; a certain
normalcy is restored, and "the night together was a good one."
In both "FourWishes" and "ExtravagantWish," a penis, by proliferation
or magnification, becomes a kind of totem. It appearsto be a metaphorof
well-being that is not merely sexual. Economic well-being, in a world of
shortage and commercial competitiveness, is not the least importantof its
referents.It is also seen, at least momentarily,to be colossally gratifyingto a
woman, who counts it as one of her personalriches. Such a fiction might well
serve a numberof purposes for a male authorand male audience. Realistically, it suggests some of the sources of women's dissatisfactionsand feelings
of deprivation. Unrealistically, it shows an organ, like a real man's but far
more grandiose,capableof satisfyingevery wish of this deprivedand difficult
creature.So, on one level, the image depicts the extravagantwish of a woman. But, on another,the story illustratesan equally extravagantwish in men,
the wish for a phallus so large and inexhaustibleas to realize the dreamsof
even the hungriestpartner,an unreal,omnipotentpenis, enviable by male and
female alike.38
Three Ladies Who Found a Phallus39

Threewomenfinda setof malegenitalialyingin theroad.Onepicksit upandhides

it in herdress,butthe secondwomanhas seen the prizeanddemandsa shareof it.
Theytry to settlethe quarrelby submittingit to thejudgmentof an abbess,butthe
38 Maria Torok, "The Significance of Penis Envy in Women," in Female Sexuality: New
Psychoanalytic Views, J. Chasseguet-Smirgel,ed. (Ann Arbor, 1970), 135-70. "Penis envy is
always envy of an idealized penis" (ibid., 139).
39 "De III dames qui troverent un vit," Montaiglon-Raynaud, V, 32; "Des III dames,"
Montaiglon-Raynaud,IV, 128; Scott, Contes pour rire? 160-63.

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latterfoils themboth,claimingthatthe objectproperlybelongsto her:it is the bolt

stolenfromthe conventdoor.
This tale, of which there are two published versions, recapitulatesaspects
of the two describedabove. Again, the penis is presentedas a treasure,a prize
coveted by women. In the "Four Wishes," it symbolizes a reassuringnest
egg to assuage a rangeof feminine frustrations.In the "ExtravagantWish," it
is a private acquisitionby which a woman seeks to rival her husband'scommercial success. The "Three Ladies" story is framedin a way that shows the
penis as a prize in a world of shortages,but this tale puts the accent on another
area of competition. Whereasthe peasantwoman fights all the frustrationsof
peasantexistence, and the merchant'swife fights her husband,the threeladies
fight other women, first one another,then the abbess and nuns. The intent to
show a generalized competitiveness among women may explain a seeming
flaw in the narrativestructureof this tale, namely, thatonly two ladies seem to
participatein the quarrelover the penis. No part of the argumentis ever
ascribedto the third. One wonders why there could not have been just two in
the first place. But this might have put too much emphasis on the conflict
between two individuals, each one with reasons for wanting a penis. The
group of three suggests an undifferentiatedclass of beings that tend to have
the same desire.
Both versions of the tale create a humoroustravestyof religion. The ladies
find the penis and testicles on the holy road to Mont Saint Michel. The
narratorsof "Three Ladies" dwell on the "long, deep sighs" of the abbess
when she first sees the object of contention. The inexplicablydetachedpenis
and testicles acquire the status of religious icon, just as, in previous stories,
they were icons of wealth and power. Here is one description of the find:
"When the hour of tierce came, one lady looked down a path and there she
found a great fat prick wrapped in a cloth, with nothing uncovered but its
muzzle." The cloth wrappingis reintroducedwhen the nuns have claimed the
prize and one of them "throws it into her smooth, white sleeve" to take it
back where it belongs on the convent door. One of the narratorsmakes the
parodyclear in the conclusion: if the ladies ever find anotherprick, they will
not submit it to a judgment, but "the one who finds it will keep it always as a
relic, greatly desired and honored by all ladies. 40
The tale representsa literaryparody as well as a religious one. A courtly
lyric genre, the jeu parti (and the famous "court of love" sequences in
AndreasCapellanus'sArt of CourtlyLove), deals with love-quarrelssubmitted to some judge for a ruling.41In an age when verballitigation was of great
40 The conclusion of the other version is
merely a deadpanmoral about competitiveness:he
who is greedy will end up with nothing.
41 Recueil general des jeux partis franqais, Arthur Langfors, ed. (Paris, 1926); Andreas
Capellanus, The Art of CourtlyLove, John Jay Parry, trans. (New York, 1941), 167-77.

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interest, the question was not who had the best case but who arguedit in the
most eloquent language. Here, too, it is because of a quick-wittedbon mot
that the abess wins the case in her own court. No one really believes that this
phallus is the bolt from the door, but the pun on the shape and motion of both
objects resolves the fictional quarrel.The joke hints at anotherfunction and
privilege of the phallus:it may be an exceptionalpenis, ratherthan any sacred
vows, that keeps the nuns within the doors of their abbey. Medieval reader/
listeners, accustomedto figures of priapic monks or abbots, or of gardeners
like Boccaccio's Masetto da Lamporecchio(Decameron, 3, 1), may have
needed no furtherhint in order to imagine such a person's presence on the
scene. Narratorscould focus on sexual rivalryamong women, introducingno
male characterat all other than the disembodied organs with all their comic
and symbolic potential.
All three of the precedingtales turnon the desire of woman to win a penis,
not on the sexual activity itself for the sake of which she presumablywants it.
The narratorand audience assume what the woman wants to do with the
treasure,but none of these authorsseek any erotic effects throughdepictions
of love making. Many fabliaux, especially those that concern cuckoldry or
seduction, have a line or two which briefly recounts intercourse;but these
three stories have a differentproblematic:she does not have it; she wants it;
she gets it; will she lose it?
The threeladies, like the wives in the othertwo tales, are motivatedby only
one thing-not having a penis. Certaintraits seem inherentin a person-whodoes-not-have-a-penis.One is self-evident. She is Lustful. She seems to desire the sexual pleasure to be affordedby the male organ. But she has other
qualities that emerge even more strongly: she feels a generalized sense of
grievance and deprivationwhich she would allay by acquiringher own penis.
She is calculating, verbal, strongly competitive in a universe of competition
againstmen, againstotherwomen, and againstthe whole economy for scarce
supplies. She is excessively, insatiably greedy. In the medieval language of
the vices, her problemis Convoitise, Covetousness. Of course, fabliaux and
other medieval fictions also depict many males with the vices of Covetousness, Envy, and Wrathfulcompetitiveness. The fabliaux explicitly link these
vices in female characterswith one anatomicaltrait,the absence of a penis, at
least as much as the presence of an organ of her own. This anatomy-destiny
link is elaboratelydeveloped in the following tale, by far the least comic and
most gruesome of any treatedin this study.
The Gelded Woman42

Thisis an "example"("essample")to teachmennotto let theirwiveslordit over

them("seignorir").A knighthas let his wife havecontrolover his household.A
42 "De la dame
escoillee," Montaiglon-Raynaud,VI, 95; Paul Brians, Bawdy Talesfrom the
Courts of Medieval France (New York, 1972), 24-36.

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count comes to their castle. The knight intentionallymanages to house the traveller,
feed him, and introducehim to theirbeautifuldaughter,all by telling his wife he wants
these things not to be done. By the same method, the knight arrangesfor the count to
be engaged to his daughter.After the marriage,the knighttells his daughterto obey her
new husband,but the mothertells her to disobey him. On the way home to the count's
domain, the count cuts off the heads of two hounds and a horse, gifts from the girl's
father, telling her it is because they have disobeyed him, albeit innocently. At their
new home, the bridepersuadesa cook to follow her instructionsinsteadof the count's;
the count punishes the cook by mutilatingand banishinghim and subduesthe brideby
giving her a terriblebeating. When the bride's parentscome to visit, the count tells his
domineering mother-in-lawthat her excessive pride comes from possessing hidden
testicles on her body. He makes cuts in her thighs and pretendsto remove two testicles
(takenfrom a bull). The womanfaints in horrorand thereafterreforms,becoming more
obedient to her husband.
The first part of this unusually long fabliau demonstrates how the henpecked knight gets his own way by manipulating the unthinking style in which
his wife "unsays" and "undoes" ("desdire," "desfaire") everything he
asks. This part of the story is almost idyllic: the count has fallen in love from
afar with the daughter's reputed beauty; he meets her, desires her, and marries
her. All the more shocking, then, is the series of brutal acts whereby the count
finally teaches his bride submission. First, it is shocking that he decapitates
her father's noble beasts, the rabbit hounds and the palfrey, merely because
the dogs fail to catch a hare and the horse neighs against orders. The shock
escalates when a cook, who obeys the bride instead of the count by putting
garlic in the sauce, has an eye put out, an ear cut off, and is banished. The
series of horrors seems complete when the bride herself is beaten "almost to
death" with a thorn-tree cane. Escalating physical shocks that the husband
gives to the bride parallel verbal shocks that the narrator gives his reader/
listener. Both apparently function as essamples, signs, to teach a lesson:
man's physical dominance betokens his moral dominance over woman and
over his household. The author describes physical cruelty, allows it to have an
effect, but never comments on it as anything but an example of how one man
tamed the shrew. Nothing indicates that the author wished to create a critical
perspective on the count. His physical might bespeaks his domestic right. The
genitals that bestow both the might and the right appear in the second, most
shocking section of the story, where they become the explicit crux of the
matter. These are the count's words to his mother-in-law before he undertakes
her ritual castration: "I have seen in your eyes that you have our pride
("nostre orgueil"). You have balls like us. Because of them, your heart is
prideful." Of course, in the Middle Ages, Pride (Orgueil, Superbia) was a
vice like Wrath, Covetousness, and Envy. The count, by acknowledging that
he himself has the Pride associated with testicles, is admitting that he and his
fellow males are sinners. He is also saying that the same sort of Pride in a
woman is worse than his own, because it is not only a vice (in fabliaux, vices

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SARAH MELHADO WHITE

are hardlyunusual), but an unnaturalvice, springingfrom the imaginedpossession of something she ought not to have.
If Freud had read this tale, which is unlikely, he might have found its
account of a masculinity complex too crudely literal to be true. Here is a
woman led to believe that she possesses hiddenmale organs.43Her belief that
she has testicles has made her act like a man, "lordingit" over her husband.
As soon as she believes that they have been removed, she ceases to act that
way. The text makes much of the thigh wounds from which the count removes
the woman's "testicles." Like Freud's envious little girl, the woman comes
to see herself as possessing bleeding wounds in her genital area instead of a
male organ. Accepting the fiction of her mutilation, she accepts a new
"feminine" role, that of submissive wife and mother who counsels obedience, ratherthan rebellion, in her daughter.
Thus, some fabliaux emerge as particularlycolorful expressions of that
folklore of feminine psychosexual traits that Freud found so "amply justified" by his theory of "psychological consequences." We note that his
assumptionwas thatthe fiction and folklore types had been true all along and
that he was supplying a scientific justification of their insights. By contrast,
we note thatthe authorof this fabliaupresentshis accountof a gelded woman,
not as an account of human, psychic truth, but as an exemplum to teach a
frankly one-sided lesson in maintainingthe crudest and most complete patriarchaldominance.
This study has pointed out the vast symbolic potentialitiesof male genitals
as described and utilized in fabliaux. But as the following tale demonstrates,
female genitalia can also be vital and active entities, inspiringdesire and, at
times, even envy.
The Fabliau of the Monk44
A monk is riding alone and becomes so sexually arousedby the sight of some girls

sittingin windowsalongthe streetthathe cannotkeephis horsefromfallinginto a

puddle.Later,at an inn, he fallsasleepanddreamsof a marketwherefemalegenitals
arefor sale. He selectsone, aftermuchhagglingoverinferiorgoodsandhighprices,
and,in clappinghis handsto celebratethepurchase,embracesa bunchof thornslying
beside his bed and wakes up screaming.

As the "Four Wishes" peasants wish for penises and vulvas as a way to
remedy their downtrodden life, the monk fantasizes buying his way sexually
into the secular world that humiliates and excludes him because of his vows of
43 The
organsare testicles, not a penis, much more reasonableafterall. It is testicles thatmake
the differencebetween a bull and an ox; they should also make the differencebetween a real man
and a woman who behaves like a man. For the Freudian account of the necessary female
acceptance of castration, see his "Some Psychological Consequences," in Collected Papers,
194.
44 "Du
moigne," Romania, 44:3 (1914-15), 560-63; Scott, Contes pour rire? 132-36.

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chastity. There are, of course, other fabliau clerics less bound by the rule of
celibacy. They take advantage of their priestly disguise, and their freedom
from the need to work in the marketplace,to borrow peasants' and tradesmen's wives.
The anonymous "Fabliauof the Monk" is very inferiorto its counterpart,
Jean Bodel's marketstory. Its humordepends on a heavy-handedsatireof the
celibate life (monks and chaplains make up the majorityof customers at the
fantasy market) and on a series of lamely satiric exchanges with the "used
cunt salesman" about organs that the monk does not wish to buy: one is
"ugly... disgusting... hideous," with "thin lips... blacker than iron,"
seeming like "the hole leading to hell." Another, with "its hide shrunken,
sharp bones, dried skin, gray-hairedwith age," also bespeaks horrorsthat
men imagine in nightmares.The monk describes the vulva of his dreams: "I
want a con that is virginal, so that I find it soft and neat, as white as an
ermine, with sweet, soft breathand fur as soft as wool, big enough for a fat,
long rod." In a dreamworld it is possible to find a virginalvagina thateasily
accommodatesa huge penis. The monk is not the first nor the last to have this
all-encompassingfantasy. It is gratifiedfor a moment in the dreamwhen the
salesmanfinds what was asked for, an "English girl's cunt" whose "opening
was as sweet as honey."
This tale, in some senses a tribute to the desirabilityof the female, also
contains typical expressions of misogyny. The monk is resentfulthat woman
can cause so much trouble in his celibate life by arousing him, and the
genitaliaat the marketare alive with phobic imagery. Anger, fear, and disgust
underlie this tale as well as a number of other fabliaux treating female
genitalia. At the same time, there persists a currentof curiosity, respect, and
positive desire in some treatmentsof female sexual characteristics,such as
that in the next story.
The Ring that Made ...s Big and Stiff45
A man has a magic ring. When he has it on his finger his penis grows. Out riding

one day, he stopsat a springto washandleavestheringon thegroundby mistake.A

bishop passes by, admires the ring and puts it on. Its powers take effect, but he does

not know the cause of his transformation. When his penis grows so long that it is

dragging on the ground, the marvel becomes known; the original owner of the ring
comes and offers to cure the bishop, demanding that he be given two rings and a
hundredpounds in payment. When the bishop takes off the ring, his penis returnsto

normal; and the man is happy with his old ring, a new one, and the bishop's money.

This fabliau has an eccentric feature, because part of its humor consists in a
pseudo-delicacy of expression. No vulgar words are used. The title in the
manuscript contains an ellipsis indicating an omission, though it leaves no
45

"De l'anel qui faisait les .. .s grans et roides," Montaiglon-Raynaud,III, 51.

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doubt that the missing word is vits. Throughoutthe text, the more polite
word, membre, is used to mean penis. This restraintis almost certainly for
comic reasons. The euphemisticpenis correspondsto the euphemisticvagina
in the tale, that is, the ring, which is fraughtwith literaryparody as well as
sexual double entendre:rings play an importantrole in feudal ceremonyand in
the lore of courtly love. They not only symbolize marriageand homage but
also serve as tokens exchangedby high-bornlovers to seal theirpact of noble,
secret devotion. Magic rings are common in courtly romance, gifts of
fairy mistresses to their lovers, conveying invisibility, strength, and other
boons. Because of all this, and because of its shape, the ring is the basis of
many obscene jokes that serve in the elaboration of ribald tales, as, for
example, in "The Miller and Two Clerks." The presentring's marvel is not
to give love or strengthbutto increasethe lengthof the penis. To possess it can
confer the same kind of advantageas might be bestowed by the disembodied
phallusin "ThreeLadies," namely, self-generatedsexual excitementwithout
involvementin courtshipor humanobligation. Accordingly, the owner of the
ring is shown as a carefreefellow, riding across a plain, stopping at a spring
(typical site of courtly love-play), splashing his face, getting up "when he
pleased," carelessly leaving the ring, apparently unconcerned about its
loss, able to get back easily while turning a profit. The person who has
trouble with the ring is the one who does not understandits properties.The
bishop is anothercleric for whom sexual arousal is not an advantagebut a
source of discomfort and disruption:on horseback with the ring on, he is
described as extremely uncomfortable, and he shows his condition to his
household "with shame." He suffers too much to quibble over the price the
man demandsfor the cure.
This fabliau portraystwo kinds of men, their types defined by their differing relationto their penises and to the pleasure-potentialof the vagina. There
is also a wish (all "magic" fabliaux express wishes) to be carefree and
self-sufficient like the man, and not to be sexually ignorantand easily duped
like the bishop.
The following tale offers more specific informationabout women's genitals, not presentedas rings or roses but simply as cunts.
The Cunt Conundrum46
A man has three daughtershe hopes will marrywell. But they all love one man,
Robin, who has secretly promisedeach one that he would be her husband.The man's
brotherproposes to settle the quarrelbetween the threegirls by awardingRobin, and a
dowry, to the girl who best answers the riddle, "Which is older, you or your cunt?"
Each offers a witty answer. The youngest wins.
46 "Le jugement des cons," Montaiglon-Raynaud,V, 109.

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This is anotherjudgment tale, similar to the "Three Ladies." Again, the

structureis generatedby rivalrybetween women, this time not over a disembodied penis but over one attached to an owner with a name and a brief
biography:we are told thatRobin's family belongs to the impoverishedgentility. It may be the need for money that leads Robin to seek liaisons with the
three girls, but that is left vague. The girls' uncle, however, is said to be
prosperousenough to offer a dowry, and some economic scarcity is in the
backgroundof the sexual scarcity that sets the plot in motion.
The daughters'conundrumplaces sexual rivalry squarelyin the domain of
imaginativefacility with genital language. All three girls are requiredto react
coolly and wittily to the fiction that their vulvas may be of an age different
from the rest of their bodies, just as the abbess unblinkingly reacts to the
disembodied penis and imagines a spot for it in her convent. Unlike one or
two fabliau-demoiselles noted for their absurd unfamiliarity with genital
terms, these three are unabashedand well informed. Answering the riddle,
they articulate familiar female traits and, at the same time, some favorite
fantasy themes:
Daughterone:My cuntis olderthanI, becauseit has a beard,andI haven't.
Daughtertwo:Mineis youngerthanI, becauseit has no teeth(yet!), andI do.
Daughterthree:Mineis youngerthanI, becauseit stilllikesto "suckmilk,"whileI
was weanedlong ago.
No wonder the uncle, and three gentlemen who serve as jury, prefer the
third girl's answer. The beard (known to readers of Chaucer's "Miller's
Tale") makes the genital area into a grotesque antiface. As for the teeth
which may develop as the genital matures, they are a deadly danger, as we
learn from vagina dentata legends. But the infantlike sucking is just what a
husbandwould want, a guarantee,not only of his pleasure, but of her dependency. As in all the descriptionswe have seen, the woman's genital is presented as desirablewhile, at the same time, its potentialflaws are pointedout.
A man will be fortunateto happenon one thatsucks ratherthanone thatbites.
In the next tale, a skilled narratorinvents a female genital whose vitality
and enlightened self-interestexceed those of many fabliau penises.
The Little Rag-Mouse47

A stupidpeasantmarries.He is inexperienced
sexually,unlikehis new wife, who
hashadthe priestas herlover.In orderto dupethepeasanton theweddingnight,the

woman tells him she left her genital in the next town at her mother's house. The
peasant goes to fetch it, and the priest comes to bed with the wife. The peasant's
mother-in-law,when asked for the sex organ, gives him a basket of rags, which has a
mouse hiding in it. On the way home, the peasant tries to have intercoursewith this
47 "De la sorisete des estopes,"
Montaiglon-Raynaud,IV, 158; "The Little Rag-Mouse,"
Sarah M. White, trans., Playboy Magazine, April 1974, p. 157.

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WHITE

con, but the mouse escapes and the peasantassumes this was the genital. Back home,
the peasantfinds that the missing partof his wife has returnedhome but is "still wet
from falling in the dew."

Despite the routine adultery for routine reasons (clumsy husband versus
lascivious priest), this tale is full of surrealtransformationsof the literalto the
metaphoricaland vice versa. The narratorarrangesan ingenious confusion
between a literal con (what the peasant seeks), a literal mouse (what the
peasant finds), the peasant's own ignorantfantasies, and a wealth of genital
hearsay. All are superimposed as the reader witnesses the mouse's antics
partly throughthe narrator'saccount and partlythroughthe peasant's exclamations. When the peasantthen attemptsintercoursewith the supposedvulva
while his wife herself is home in bed, he does it partly throughlust, partly
throughcuriosity, expressing the best wish for dissociated sex we have seen
so far, "to see if it's truewhat they say: thata cunt is a sweet, smooth beast."
In popular language, the con is figured as a beast.48But the peasant is as
ignorantaboutlinguistic figures as he is about sex. His literalmind is just the
one that will see the real mouse as a real vulva, while the reader, more
linguisticallyand sexually aware, is capable of enjoying the literarymouse as
a figurativecon, an animatedcharacterof considerablecharm.The beast goes
throughvarious phases as the peasant watches: "Whoever had seen it make
faces at the peasant,twisting its cheek, would have been remindedof the pout
of a monkey when it laughs."
In the peasant's anguished cries, as the mouse runs away "piping and
squeaking," we learn of some psychic problems suffered by persons-whodo-not-have-vaginas:"I will suffer a great loss if she dies.... She will be
drowned in the ditch, and her back and sides will be all wet ....

I will be

laughed at loudly if it is known that she escaped." This is one of the more
active presentationsof a woman's genital in fabliaux, not only from the
standpointof the vulva's effect on men, but also for the depiction of its
essential, defiant vitality. However, it is impossible for a fabliau narratorto
complete a tale without some sign of sexual disgust. Accordingly, when the
peasantand wife are back in bed togetherand headed for some sort of reconciliation, the peasant'sdiscovery of the "muddy" dampnesson the "mouse"
preparesthe way for the poet's conventional message: women are devils.
Men, watch out for the deceiving they do with theirtongues, or you will have
the same fate as the peasant. It is arguablethat the more compelling moralof
the tale is expressed by its demonstrationthat it is a mistake for a man to
marry without "knowing how to please a woman in bed," a theme that
Boccaccio would develop more eloquently.
A final illustrationintroducesanotherfacet of the fabliau-commentaryon
genitals, especially female ones.
48

Bruno Roy. "La belle e(s)t la bete," Etudesfrancaises, 10:3 (1973), 319-34.

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The Black Balls49

A peasantmarriesa proud,contemptuous
lady.Fiveyearsaftertheirmarriage,she
learns,by lookingthrougha holein his trousers,thathis testiclesareblack.Sheinsists
on takinghimbeforean ecclesiasticalcourt(to be grantedan annulment?),
thoughhe
warnshershe will regretit. Thepeasantwins an obscenedebatein court,disgracing
the wife in frontof the clerics.
Male-female competitiveness inherent in nearly all the tales becomes
explicit here. The clerics are asked to judge whose genitals are most disgusting, whose most dishonorthe mate, the husband'sor the wife's. Otherpeasants in fabliaux are said to have "black" genitals, perhapsa scornful reference to dirtcollected and seldom washed off. Contemptibleindeed, but less so
than the genitals of women. As has been previously observed, rivalryis both
verbal and sexual; or rather,the two modes are inseparable.As the woman is
explaining how she would not have marriedthe peasanthad she known of his
disgraceful testicles, "blacker than a coal-sack," her husband "cuts off her
words" to make his own complaintto the court: "My wife has dirtiedall my
hay by using'it to wipe her asshole, her cunt and the crease in her rear."
'You lie throughyour mustache," retortsthe proudlady. "It has been five
years since I wiped my backside with hay or with anything else."
"I thought so. Then, that is why my balls have grown so blackened."
When "this word," ("cele parole") is heard, everyone in the court laughs
and says the lady was mad to bring her case to be judged. The couple is sent
home. Conclusion:even a high-bornwoman has no call to be contemptuousof
any man's genital, white or black. In the verbal warfare against the female
genital that goes on with greateror lesser ferocity in any fabliau, this is the
ultimate weapon: not that it may be bearded, toothy, mischievous, aged, or
mutilated,but thatit lies in such close proximityto the urethraand anus, intra
urinas etfaeces: "Love has pitched its mansion in the seat of excrement."s
It would be tedious to describe all the fabliauxthat depend on this point.51
Perhapsit is not so remarkablethat fabliau authors,aiming to be both sexual
and comic, deflect sexuality in the direction of scatology. But it does seem
worth noting how frequently the anatomical topography is used to evoke
disgust with the female anus and genitals, never with male ones.
Although the genitals of both sexes carry metaphoric weight, there are
differences in the fabliau's portrayalof male and female organs as prizes in
the struggle for dominance. The penis can have different shapes and colors,
49 "De la coille noire," Montaiglon-Raynaud,VI, 90.
50 W. B. Yeats,
"CrazyJaneTalks with the Bishop," in Collected Poems (New York, 1951),
254-55.
51
Aside from "Berenger Long-Cul," see 'Le sot chevalier," Montaiglon-Raynaud,I, 220,
and Harrison,Gallic Salt, 323-41; 'Le debatdu cul et du con," Montaiglon-Raynaud, II, 133;
and the tale cited in note 52.

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but when its value is measuredit can only be huge and erect or small and limp.
It can be a totem of pride, power, and wealth, or it can be humdrum,disappointing and fallible. The vulva and vagina, on the other hand, even at their
most desirable, are not powerful, but virginal, soft, and sometimes active in
sucking or scampering. They have many more unpleasantvariantsthan the
male genitals do. The lattercan only be inadequate,while the female organs
can take on a numberof hallucinatorydefects, especially in the maturewoman. They can be twisted, leathery, bald, grey, stretched, shrunken, discolored and, of course, contaminatedby fecal effluvia, the cloaca mundi. The
unambiguouslydesirable ones are a rarity. No wonder that some women
imbued with such lore may develop the other traits that fabliaux and other
tales assign to them, that is, a generalresentmentof the position of man and a
frantic desire to acquire a "superior" sex organ.
The language and imagery that convey this sexual competitiveness also
express a strong sense of sexual fragmentation:genitals are detached and
dissociated from the rest of the organism. Each "Four Wishes" penis materializes with no regard to its naturalplace on the body. The dream-market
organs, the three ladies' phallus, and the mouse-vulva are not attached to
bodies at all. The ring-vagina lives in a man's pocket; testicles are extracted
from a woman's thigh. Some cons may be younger or older than their mistresses;others, in a tale not describedhere, areconjuredto "speak" againstthe
will of their owners.52
Such dissociation adds anotherelement to the picture of a world in which
the body physical does not function any better than the body politic. By the
thirteenthcentury, John of Salisbury's exposition of Plutarch's "anatomical
metaphor" had become a commonplace account of the healthy kingdom.53
Yet, authorsand audiences of fabliaux seem to have known that this vision
was an idealizedone, subjectto correctionby othervisions of a world ruledby
competition and fragmentation.Internalhuman discord had been recognized
long before by Saint Augustine, who wrote that sin had deprived men and
women of the consonancethatonce, in Eden, harmonizedthe actions of mind
and body, will and libido.54Fabliaux, with no Augustinianregret, and for no
theological purpose, portraythe breakdownof these harmonies.
The tales are fragmentaryin more than merely thematicways. The texts of
these brief works, nearlyall writtenin short(octosyllabic)couplets, are found
in unintegratedcollections, scatteredin manuscriptsamong works selected,
apparently, only for their comparable length.55 Beginning in the midfourteenthcentury, various authorsbegan to adapt fabliau materialsto new
52
"Le chevalierqui fit parlerles cons," Montaiglon-Raynaud,VI, 68; Harrison,Gallic Salt,
218-55.
53 John of Salisbury, Polycraticus, bk. V, ch. 2, cited in Fossier, Histoire Sociale, 156.
54 Augustine, City of God, Book XIV, Ch. 19.
55 Scott, Contes pour rire? 8-12.

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reading and performanceconditions. The genre, in effect, ceased to exist

when the tales' language and form were changed from verse to prose, when
their literal vulgarisms were replaced by suggestion and euphemism, and
when single autonomous stories were organized in framed sequences of
tales.56

Boccaccio's Decameron was set in 1348, two years after the death of Jean
de Cond6, the last known fabliau author. The Decameron is the first of
several great collections to integratefabliau's genital humor with other medieval expressions of heterosexual feeling. Boccaccio's prose, his sexual
metaphor,his more elaboratecharacterizationand, above all, his framestructuretransformfabliau's genitality, making sexuality partof a social landscape
and partof the self-conscious adult personality.In the Decameron, the CanterburyTales, and in Margueritede Navarre'ssixteenth-centuryHeptameron,
the frame stories are as significant as the tales themselves, a metadiscourse
that comments on the text of each tale.
In fabliaux, the narrators'voices interveneonly to assure the audiencethat
the brevity, "truth," and wit it expects of a tale are indeed present. Withouta
performancesituation, the stories come to us in a deadpantone, devoid of
intelligent comment on their startlingmaterial. All we can tell from reading
them is that display and manipulationof genital terminologywere permissible
and desirable within the conventions and limits of the genre.
In the Decameron, however, the bawdiest stories are consistently told at
the end of the tale-telling day by Dioneo, the characterauthorizedby the nine
othernarratorsto indulge his taste for explicitly sexual tales. Thus, a personality intervenesbetween the reader'sconsciousness and thatof the author.In the
latter, the reader recognizes a taste, not only for bawdiness, but also for
romance, pathos, and adventure.While the fabliau, as a game, allows space
for the outpouringof hostile genital fantasy, the later forms enlarge the playing space and change the rules to account for the limitations, as well as the
truth, of such fantasies. The same might be said of subsequent novels like
Don Quixote, which incorporatetales in a larger narrative.It might also be
said of graphicworks by Bosch and Brueghel, who took grotesqueand fantastic 'images from the margins' 57of medieval expression and fashioned them
into art with greaterscope and explanatorypower.
Syntheses like these are the privilege of art, not of life. The decline and
transformationof fabliaux did not mark an end to destructivesocial compet56

Dubuis, Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles.

57 Lilian M. C. Randall, Images in the Margins of Gothic Manuscripts(Berkeley, 1966). Jean

de Meun's Roman de la Rose (ca. 1275) should not be omitted from this sketchy account of
significantearly syntheses that include
genital referencein complex, large-scalepoetic discourse.
See Nancy FreemanRegalado, " 'Des contraireschoses' lafonction poetique de la citation et des
exempla dans le 'Roman de la Rose' de Jean de Meun," in "Intertextualitesmedievales,"
Litterature,41 (February1981), 62-81.

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itiveness or to extravagantphallic wishes. Men and women continued to

confuse sexual ambitions with quests for social and material advancement.
The overlappingdesires at work within bourgeois society would be explored
by eighteenth- and nineteenth-centurynovelists. Fabliaux appeared before
that society had been fully constituted, and their analysis of socioeconomic
conditions is thin comparedto that of a Fielding or a Zola. The materialfacts
are hardly more complex than those in ancient fable: the story of "The Fox
and the Crow" presupposesthat, on its stage, thereis only one cheese. For the
fox to have it, the crow must dropit. The authorof a genital fabliauelaborates
this account, transformingthe word cheese into a word signifying a human
sexual organ. He exploits the magic, comic, metaphoricproperties of the
term. Then, frequently, he returnsto a stark conclusion, namely, that each
humanbeing spends his or her lifetime with a penis or a vagina, never more
than one, never both.
Men and women, reluctant to live with that conclusion and its consequences, have an astoundingcapacityto escape from it into flights of hilarious
wordplay.Aroundthe year 1200, this creativedefiance, along with the opportunityto use certainliterarymaterials,allowed the play to emerge as fabliaux.
Among the materialswere old exemplary-talestructures,new narrativeforms
and motifs, and a repertoireof vernacularterms, the elementarysigns of male
and female desire.