Other Forms
A large body of fables survive in Old French; these include (mostly anonymous) literature dealing with the recurring trickster character of Reynard the Fox. Marie de France was also active in this genre, producing the Ysopet (Little Aesop) series of fables in verse.
Related to the fable was the more bawdy "fabliau", which covered topics such as cuckolding and corrupt clergy. These "fabliaux" would be an important source for Chaucer and for the Renaissance short story ("conte" or "nouvelle").
Satire was also written during this period, including the Roman de Fauvel, which mocks the sins of humanity by making the Seven Deadly Sins appear in the personification of a horse.
The prose satire Les XV joies de mariage (The Fifteen Joys of Marriage, first published 1480-90, written perhaps in the early 15th century, and attributed variously to Antoine de la Sale, Gilles Bellemère the bishop of Avignon, and many others) is a riotous critique of wives (typical of misogynistic literature of the period), but it also provides important insight into the economic and social life of a married household in the 15th century.
Prose compositions in the Middle Ages—other than the prose versions of romances and "chansons de geste"—include a number of histories and chronicles, of which the most famous are those of Robert de Clari and Geoffroy de Villehardouin (both on the Fourth crusade of 1204 and the capture of Constantinople), Jean de Joinville (on Saint Louis IX of France), Jean Froissart (on the wars of the 14th century) and Philippe de Commines and Enguerrand de Monstrelet (on the troubles of the 15th century). Philippe de Mézières wrote "Songe du Vieil Pelerin" (1389), an elaborate allegorical voyage in which he described the customs of Europe and the near East.
Read more about this topic: Medieval French Literature
Famous quotes containing the word forms:
“There are these sudden mobs of men,
These sudden clouds of faces and arms,
An immense suppression, freed,
These voices crying without knowing for what,
Except to be happy, without knowing how,
Imposing forms they cannot describe,
Requiring order beyond their speech.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“It is given to few to add the store of knowledge, to strike new springs of thought, or to shape new forms of beauty. But so sure as it is that men live not by bread, but by ideas, so sure is it that the future of the world lies in the hands of those who are able to carry the interpretation of nature a step further than their predecessors.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)