Privacy and the Boundaries of Fabliau in The Miller's Tale

Abstract

Most Old French fabliaux construct a private universe, one where society's concerns and well-being are subordinated to satisfaction of some character's personal desires, even those of the basest instinctual aspects of psyche.' Characters act for their own interests, and genre rewards most generously those who do so most imaginatively. The genre's two chief narrative topoisexual triumph and physical battery-do not provide a realistic depiction of fabric of life so much as powerful metaphors for private vengeance or domination: in fabliaux, sex occurs outside social institution of marriage, and quite often as an extramarital attack on institution; violence almost inevitably privileges individual vindictiveness (or whim) over social order. The typical setting is also private, since fabliau plots repeatedly demand small hiding places-tubs, closets, rafters, chests, cupboards, nooks-and of course beds. These loci circumscribe or limit action, and also dictate that typical larger settings be relatively crowded middle-class houses rather than spacious halls and wide forests of romance. The root, etymological meaning of privacy identifies household as essentially private domain: Roman civil law gave society no authority over it.2 The fabliaux develop this principle to an ultimate degree: characters are fully empowered to manipulate private space to their own advantage.3 The genre's insistence upon private-the personal, selfish, secret, hidden-has been noticed before, although not to my knowledge as directly as here. My emphasis harmonizes with those of a longstanding scholarly tradition that has sought to explain peculiar aura surrounding fabliaux. Joseph Bedier explained aura as an absence: il manque de metaphysique [it lacks metaphysics]; Roy Pearcy notices instead presence of a quasi-magical, almost irresistable mana, seizing control of narrative.4 Both insights suggest autonomy of what happens in fabliaux from external standards of judgment. Scheming pragmatism and immediate gratification define their operative ethic, labeled hedonistic materialism by Charles Muscatine. The narra-