Fabliaux and humour

• The verb to swyve is found six times in the Canterbury Tales
• “He swyved thee; I saugh it with myne yen” 


  MPT - 2378
• The mismatched marriage of elderly Januarie to fresh May would have been familiar to medieval readers as derived from the senex amans or “aged lover” trope common to the genre.
• Fabliau is a literary form known for both its sexual brashness and generic equivocation
• Fabliau derives from the Latin fabula, which has meanings ranging from general narrative or newsworthy account to a fictitious tale
• Fabliaux “sole satisfaction…seems to be the breaking of verbal and behavioural taboos” 

  Laura Kendrick
• While January might rely on devotional or even sacramental ideals in order to justify his sudden decision to marry, his marital encounters with May strongly suggest the realities of a fabliau world and the undignified nature of sexual intercourse. 
• “She preyseth nat his pleyying worth a bene” - MPT 1854

  May’s negative assessment of her husband’s sexual prowess suggests that she herself has both an inner erotic life and a capacity for pleasure, though it is clear that her development as an erotic subject is interrupted by her marriage rather than fuelled by it.
• Through the end of the wedding feast, the tale is markedly lacking in the physicality, vulgarity, and good old-fashioned smut that typically characterizes the genre. 
• Even after the love triangle has been identified and the narrative has been rededicated to lewdness and sexual play, the fabliau still retains some of that romance essence, a vulgar parody of courtly love.
• While Damyan is somewhat presented as the classic courtly-lover, we come to see that his motivation is lacking in that ideal.
• 'She rente it al to cloutes atte laste,

  And in the pryvee softely it caste.'


  MPT - 1954  
• 'She rente it al to cloutes atte laste, And in the pryvee softely it caste.' - metaphor for the way the idealised courtly environment is just the covering of the pure bodily desire underneath it all.
• January refers to the songs of Solomon as “Swiche olde lewed wordes”. Lewed meaning both lewd and 'unlearned. Abrupt change in register also signifies abrupt change from somewhat sacred, marital sex, to a 'lecherous fabliau fuck'
• “And sodeynly anon this Damyan

  Gan pullen up the smok, and in he throng”

  MPT - 2352-53
• In classic fabliaux, audience’s enjoyment stems both from a sense of schadenfreude – January is cuckolded and knows it – and an understanding of the basic sexual morality of fabliau – old men who marry young women are violating a known law