The Couple in Chaucer's Fabliaux
- Author / Editor
- Brewer, Derek.
The Couple in Chaucer's Fabliaux
- Published
- Flemming G. Andersen and Morten Nojgaard, eds. The Making of the Couple: The Social Function of Short-Form Medieval Narrative: A Symposium (Odense: Odense University Press, 1991), pp. 129-43.
- Description
- Surveys views on sex and marriage in Chaucer's works and argues that his fabliaux reflect human desires to escape from and to re-create the couple. The brevity of the fabliau limits the possibilities of readers' identification with the characters and thereby creates the "essential ambivalence of comedy." Fabliaux also capitalize on the contradiction implicit in the orthodox view of sex in marriage: it is both enjoyable and sinful.
- Contributor
- Andersen, Flemming G.,
- Nojgaard, Morten,ed.
- ed.
- Alternative Title
- The Making of the Couple: The Social Function of Short-Form Medieval Narrative: A Symposium.