A collection of 13 essays which examines short comedic tales from the 13th and 14th centuries, commonly known as the medieval French fabliaux. It covers topics such as: the frequent use of bacon as humorous symbolism; the use of comedic rhyme; and the common ""virgin miracle"" tale.

Table of Contents Introduction      Hamming It Up: Porcine Humor in the Old French Fabliaux      KRISTIN L. BURR Fabliaux as Fair Exchange: Boivin de Provins and La Bourse pleine de sens      ELIZABETH W. “So This Vilain Walks into a Bar...”: The Fabliau as Stand-up Comedy      JOHN F. MORAN Customary Law in the Old French Fabliau      F.R.P. AKEHURST Rhetorical Reasoning, Authority, and the Impossible Interlocutor in Le Vilain qui conquist paradis par plait      ELIZABETH KINNE L’Esquiriel, or What’s in a Tail?      CAROLINE JEWERS Trickery, Trubertage, and the Limits of Laughter      NORRIS J. LACY “No, No, Nonete!”: Reciting Jean de Condé’s Virgin-less and Miracle-less Virgin Miracle      ADRIAN P. TUDOR Rhyme or Reason: Le Prestre comporté and Le Prestre et le chevalier      ANNE COBBY The Non-Conformist Fabliau Genre and Its Transgressions: A Bakhtinian Analysis of Two Old French Fabliaux      JEAN E. JOST The “Fin Humour” of Guillaume au faucon      JOAN TASKER GRIMBERT Modern Dirty Jokes and the Old French Fabliaux      LOGAN E. WHALEN Esprit gaulois for the English: The Humor of the Anglo-Norman Fabliau      KEITH BUSBY Marie de France in the Manuscripts: Lai, Fable, Fabliau      RUPERT T. PICKENS About the Contributors      Index