Eighteen Anglo-Norman Fabliaux (review)

298 Short Notices This is an extremely useful text and the entire series will be of immense help to manuscript scholars specializing in this field. Judith Collard Art History and Theory University ofOtago Short, Ian and Roy Pearcy, eds., Eighteen Anglo-Norman Fabliaux (Plain Te Series 14), London, Anglo-Norman Text Society, 2000; paper; pp. 1,42; RRP not for sale to public; ISBN 0905474406. In his important survey of work done in Anglo-Norman from the end of the World War till the mid-sixties ('Anglo-Norman Studies: The Last Twenty Years', Australian Journal ofFrench Studies, II (1965), 113-55; 225-78), Keith Sinclair regretted that Dominica Legge had omitted all mention of the fabliau genre in her studies of Anglo-Norman literature. This Anglo-Norman genre has indeed been traditionally disparaged, so it is a pleasure to see here collected in one volume items written in Anglo-Norman which seem tofitinto the envelope 'fabliaux'. There are 18 fabliaux published in this slim volume. Each is edited from a single manuscript, clearly identified under the title of each text. The most recent earlier editions are briefly mentioned at the same place, and, where relevant, a reference is given to any published discussion of the manuscripts containing a version of that text. Manuscripts serving as witnesses for texts include M S S London B L Harley 527, 978 and 2253; M S . Oxford Bodleian Digby 86; M S Cambridge Corpus Christi College 50; and M S . Clermont-Ferrand Archives du Puy-de-D6me F2. Rejected readings are collected in a section at the back of the book, though no notes or glossary are offered to the reader. The literary quality ofthese texts is, it must be admitted, not ofthe highes level, the principal themes being the guiles of w o m e n and their innate lechery. The obscenity of many is indicated by the titles of a few: Du chevalier qui fit les consparler (No. 14); De Mi. dames qui troverent .i. vit (No. 15); Cele qui foutue et desfoutue (No. 17). Yet this is of course a trait common to most fabliau both Anglo-Norman and Continental. Four of the published fabliaux come from Marie de France's Fables; seven alreadyfigurein A. Hilka and W . Soderhjelm's 1922 edition of the Disciplina Clericalis. O f the remaining seven fabliaux, so have often been published, others have hitherto only been the subject of diplomatic editions in the twentieth century. Short Notices 299 The introduction, though short, is of high interest for its succinct tracing of changes in the definition of the word 'fabliau'. Short and Pearcy find that fabliau humour has as its basis logic, and this is their criterion for inclusion or exclusion of candidates for their collection. The editors justify the existence of this small anthology byfirstreferring to 'linguistic heritage', then to the question of what constitutes a fabliau, from the eighteenth-century edition of Legrand d'Aussy to the latest 'Recueil complef ofW . N o o m e n and N. van den Boogaard, and, finally, to a desire to demonstrate what contribution the Anglo-Norman corpus made to the genre as a whole. Maxwell J. Walkley University of Sydney Sutton, Marilyn, ed., Chaucer's Pardoner's Prologue and Tale: An Annotated Bibliography, 1900-1995 (The Chaucer Bibliographies), Toronto, University ofToronto Press, 2000; cloth; pp. liii, 445; R R P US$95.00; ISBN 0802047440. In 1940, G. G. Sedgewick, reviewing commentary on 'The Pardoner's Tale', observed that 'research and criticism and interpretation have been busy with the noble ecclesiasf; 60 years later, the busy-ness goes on apace, with well over 1,000 items published up to 1995. M u c h of this discussion is sharp and full of interest, as Marilyn Sutton says, treating a figure w h o disturbs, fascinates, but also compels responses that reveal as much about his audience as him. So it always was, from the moment of the Host's retort; the Tale seems to have been admired by its first audience, while thefifteenth-centuryresponse, according to Strohm, was to write out the discordant and disreputable, or to ignore the tale altogether. Sutton's Bibliography performs its...