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MELHADO
WHITE
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"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
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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. "
SEXUAL
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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
16
1973), 485-500,
1977), 9, 27-28.
and Nora Scott, Contes pour rire? Fabliaux des XIIIe et XIVe siecles (Paris,
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wishes that his body be covered with penises. Erect male organs springup all over the
I94
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.
SEXUAL LANGUAGE
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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
SEXUAL LANGUAGE
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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
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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
202
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
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.
SEXUAL LANGUAGE
203
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
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
204
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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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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SARAH
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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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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.
208
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.
SEXUAL
LANGUAGE
209
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
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.
210