The Fabliaux
Language: English
Pages: 1024
ISBN: 0871403579
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Bawdier than The Canterbury Tales, The Fabliaux is the first major English translation of the most scandalous and irreverent poetry in Western literature.
Composed between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, these virtually unknown erotic and satiric poems lie at the root of the Western comic tradition. Passed down by the anticlerical middle classes of medieval France, The Fabliaux depicts priapic priests, randy wives, and their cuckolded husbands in tales that are shocking even by today’s standards. Chaucer and Boccaccio borrowed heavily from these riotous tales, which were the wit of the common man rebelling against the aristocracy and Church in matters of food, money, and sex. Containing 69 poems with a parallel Old French text, The Fabliaux comes to life in a way that has never been done in nearly eight hundred years.
Candide (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
chair and lost in thought (he’s not a ninny), he swears that ten pounds of his money he’d give up sooner than not do with the girl what he wishes to,70 face-to-face with her, who was fair and comely, still in her twelfth year, her whose behavior was so right, tenderly cared for, with her white throat, lovely, unaffected, sweet.75 They had the table set to eat in the good woman’s dwelling place. They didn’t make a meal on dace at that time or have fish at all, but bittern, pheasant,
each other?” “Don’t fret yourself,” she tells him, “brother. The money’s on hand, and I’ll pay.255 You’ve really no cause for dismay. A quail’s egg even could do more harm, for we have more cash than straw to spare ten pounds or twice that sum. I’m well aware how this has come260 about. No need to get worked up or keep us from sitting down to supper.” The two of them then took a seat, but when they’d just begun to eat, the judge’s messenger shows up.265 “Get up, Constant,” he calls,
made my wish, so don’t resent it.135 There’s not a creature half so splendid!” The peasant said, “I’m not amused. Three wishes more are yet unused. I wish,” the fellow said at once, “that you had just as many cunts140 on you as I have pricks on me. May your cunts pop out rapidly!” At once the cunts start to arise. A pair appears before her eyes, four on her forehead in a row,145 and cunts above, and cunts below, and cunts behind, and cunts in front, every variety of cunt— bent
took every possible care and squatted down so she could see,55 but Agace didn’t take a pee, though you might torture her or press her. To pee she had to apply pressure. She went at it with might and main, forcing herself, till from the strain60 she let out an enormous fart; for all her care and skill and art, her ass broke wind, the powder scattered. “The devil! What have you done, drat it, you slut?” said Brunatin. “Why this is65 without a doubt a filthy business! You’ve blown our
to their yard he made his way in stealth. The iron-studded gate the merchant knew, and he went straight90 on up to it and gave a rap. She, unaware it was a trap, came to the door, opened it wide, and, hugging him, drew him inside because she thought he was her lover.95 (That hope deceives her, she’ll discover.) She hastens to welcome her lord and greets him with a tender word. “Your coming, love, makes me rejoice.” He kept from speaking in full voice100 and, when he answered,
