Logic and Humour in the Fabliaux: An Essay in Applied Narratology (Gallica, 7) - Hardcover

Pearcy, Roy J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1843841223 ISBN 13: 9781843841227

Publisher: D.S.Brewer, 2007

Synopsis

A theoretically defensible inventory of the fabliaux based on a new structural definition.

Joseph Bédier's 1893 definition of the fabliaux as 'funny stories in verse' is still widely accepted as the best brief and general description for a heterogeneous collection of texts. But the heterogeneity creates difficulties and at the periphery of the canon all three of the criteria included in Bédier's definition are open to question. The inventory proposed in the current study is based on a new structural definition, a conjointure, akin to that of romance, combining a logical episteme with a rhetorical narreme. The episteme features a contradictory taken from Boolean algebra, and assumes four different forms, depending on whether ambiguity resulting from the contradictory is understood by neither, by both, or by either the sender or the receiver of a message, In the first two instances, a character foreign to the episteme intervenes to resolve confusion in the narreme, or appears as the victim of the sophistical assumption of a contrary-to-fact reality; in the latter instances the sender or the receiver of the message in the episteme triumphs in the narreme. The resulting inventory, including and augmenting the texts admitted by Per Nykrog and discarding numerous stories already challenged for authenticity, is theoretically defensible to a degree not previously achieved.

ROY PEARCY is anHonorary Research Fellow of the University of London.

About this title

About the Author

ROY PEARCY is an Honorary Research Fellow of the University of London.

Edition details

• Publisher: D.S.Brewer
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1843841223
• ISBN 13: 9781843841227
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 260