Genre Experiment: The Para-fabliau Features In Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales

The English classic The Canterbury Tales enjoys world-wide fame and population among both the Anglophonic and non-Anglophonic countries. However, there is a big difference in the scales and depths of Chaucerian research conducted in English-speaking and non-English speaking countries. Chaucer’s success in his masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales,owes much to his gradually improved writing techniques and exceptional genre experimentations. Fabliau is Chaucer’s most successful genre experiment. Chaucer’s fabliau exceeds that of the French, from which it originates. The thesis emphasizes Chaucer’s experimented fabliau and terms it as ’para-fabliau’,which highlights Chaucer’s exceptional adaptations and innovations, especially those in terms of language and structure. This thesis has three chapters, which deals with the term of fabliau, generic features of fabliau, and Chaucer’s experimented para-fabliau writing. Examples taken are The Miller’s Tale, The Reeve’s Tale,The Friar’s Tales, The Summoner’s Tale,The Merchant’s Tale and The Shipman’s Tale.Chapter one introduces the term and history of fabliau. The definition of fabliau, ’conte a rire en vers’, namely ’a verse tale meant for laughter’, is as problematic and controversial as popular and prevalent among the critics. The fact that fabliau is hard to define is closely related to the ambivalent state of fabliau in history. Fabliau derives from fable, and overlaps with other genres such as romance, lai, and anecdote. The inclusive nature of fabliau makes it include the courtly noble class, the priestly class, the new bourgeois class, and the lower working class, and it transgresses the borders of many genres and modes of writing and reflects and deforms characters or actions which conventionally belong to different genres.Besides, the relationship between French fabliau and English fabliau, between Chaucer’s fabliaux and those before and after him, is also subtle and ambivalent. This thesis proposes the pictographic Chinese terminology,’法博俚’,for the purpose of localizing Chaucerian studies in China. In the terminology,each Chinese character has implications. ’法’ has triple meanings, which are ’France’,’the law of composition’,and ’abiding by the law of nature’.’博’ refers to ’the theory of game’,which stresses the rivalry between the opponents and the opposed opinions. ’俚’ is about the folklore nature of language, which features The Canterbury Tales as work of folklore tales and oral literature.Chapter two analyzes the generic features of fabliau. The definitive generic features of fabliau are humour and obscenity, amorality or pseudo-morality, and misogyny or anti-misogyny. Humour is the most evident feature of fabliau, and it is particularly so, when it is combined with obscenity (and also scatology). Fabliau defies morality and refuses convention, and ridicules and satirizes relentlessly the medieval society, under the pretext of amorality or pseudo-morality. Fabliau follows the misogynist tradition and believes that women are evil, and meanwhile mocks the religious misogynist society under the rule of hierarchy, and reversely extols the talents and wits of women. One thing should be noted, in the three paired phrases about the generic features of fabliau, the conjunction ’and’ means that the two are combined, and ’or’ means that the two are optional. Alternatives are given and are largely dependent on the choice of audiences and readers, and vary according to the change of their stances and circumstances. All in all, humour-intended fabliau is dotted with vulgar and obscene words; amorality or pseudo-morality is prevalent in fabliau; women are mercilessly flouted and meanwhile highly praised for their talents and wits.Chapter three focuses on Chaucer’s para-fabliau features in The Canterbury Tales. The word, ’para-fabliau’,is built upon the root of fabliau with the prefix ’para’,which is aimed to stress the fact that Chaucer’s fabliau originates but deviates from French fabliau. Chaucer’s para-fabliau features are largely manifested in the experiment of language and structure. In terms of language experiment, Chaucer is a good player of names, dichotomy and register of speech, and most impressively, dialect. As the first English writer to apply dialects to literary writing, Chaucer presents a marvellous portrait of the characters from the North, the Reeve,as well as John and Alein in The Reeve’s Tale. In terms of structure, Chaucer has tried his master hand in the framed structure of the work, which contains four layers of narration: the upper and the lower are joined, the inside and the outside are combined, texts are inter-and intra-connected, and sources and analogues are drawn and associated. He rewrites old tales with individual talents, so that his fabliaux could echo many sources and analogues, bring new life to old tales, refashion the genre of French fabliau, and usher in the new era of fabliau in England.