El mundo rural en los fabliaux: el campesino, el herrero y el molinero

The combination of narrative with considerably long dialogues provides the fabliau with an extraordinary sense of life. Even though the short extent and comic character of this type of narrative prevents its use as an exhaustive source of information on its contemporary reality, the fabliau may still provide interesting data on the medieval rural life. Accordingly, some of these short stories allow us to somehow soften the satiric picture of peasantry portrayed by the literature of the period, one usually dominated by cowardice, ugliness, dirt and poverty. Thus, from the approximately one hundred and fifty texts which have survived to our days, over thirty fabliaux present peasants in their everyday life, talking, commenting, expressing their opinions or simply facing reality. The profile of the medieval working class is completed in these short stories with the limited presence of the blacksmith and the miller, two key artisans in the medieval rural life.