[304] Paris, § 109; Bédier, 31. A fabliau is properly a ‘conte à rire en vers’; the term dit is applied more generally to a number of short poems which deal, ‘souvent avec agrément, des sujets empruntés à la vie quotidienne.’ Some dits are satirical, others eulogistic of a class or profession, others descriptive. But the distinction is not very well defined, and the fabliaux are often called dits in the MSS.
[305] Montaiglon-Raynaud, i. 1; ii. 257. The dit is also called La Jengle au Ribaut et la Contrejengle.
[306] Rutebeuf (ed. Kressner), 99.
[307] Barbazan-Méon, i. 356. Bédier, 33, considers Courtois d’Arras as the oldest French comedy, a jeu dramatique with intercalated narrative by a meneur de jeu. But the fact that it ends with the words Te Deum leads one to look upon it as an adaptation of a religious play; cf. ch. xix.
[308] On the débats in general, see Hist. Litt. xxiii. 216 sqq.; Paris, Litt. fr. §§ 110, 155; Arthur Piaget, Littérature didactique in Lang. et Litt. ii. 208; Jeanroy, 48; R. Hirzel, Der Dialog, ii. 382; Literaturblatt (1887), 76. A full list is given by Petit, Rép. Com. 405-9. The débats merge into such allegorical poems as Henri d’Andeli’s Bataille des Vins (Barbazon-Méon, i. 152) or Le Mariage des Sept Arts et des Sept Vertus (Jubinal, Œuvres de Rutebeuf, ii. 415); cf. Paris, Litt. fr. 158.
[309] Ten Brink, i. 215; Hubatsch, 24; Gummere, B. P. 200, 306. The Débat de l’Yver et de l’Esté has the nearest folk-lore origin; cf. ch. ix. Paris, Origines, 28, mentions several Greek and Latin versions beginning with Aesop (Halm, 414). The most important is the ninth-century Conflictus Veris et Hiemis (Riese, Anth. Lat. i. 2. 145), variously ascribed to Bede (Wernsdorff, Poetae Latini Minores, ii. 239), Alcuin (Alc. Opera, ed. Froben, ii. 612) and others. French versions are printed in Montaiglon-Rothschild, Anc. Poés. fr. vi. 190, x. 41, and Jubinal, N. R. ii. 40. There are imitations in all tongues: cf. M. Émile Picot’s note in Mont.-Rothsch. op. cit. x. 49; Hist. Litt. xxiii. 231; Douhet, 1441.—La Disputoison du Vin et de l’Iaue is printed in Jubinal, N. R. i. 293; Wright, Lat. Poems of Walter Mapes, 299; Carmina Burana, 232. It is based on the Goliae Dialogus inter Aquam et Vinum (Wright, loc. cit. 87); cf. Hist. Litt. xxiii. 228; Romania, xvi. 366.—On the complicated history of the Débat du Corps et de l’Âme, see T. Batiouchkof in Romania, xx. 1. 513; G. Kleinert, Ueber den Streit von Leib und Seele; Hist. Litt. xxii. 162; P. de Julleville, Répertoire Comique, 5, 300, 347; Wright, Latin Poems, xxiii. 95, 321. Latin, French and other versions are given by Wright, and by Viollet-Leduc, Anc. Thé. fr. iii. 325.—Phillis et Flora, or De Phyllis qui aime un chevalier et de Flora qui aime un prêtre, is also referred by Paris, Orig. 28, to a folk-song beginning; cf. H. L. xxii. 138, 165; Romania, xxii. 536. Latin versions are in Carmina Burana, 155; Wright, Latin Poems of W. Mapes, 258.—A possible influence of the Theocritean and Virgilian eclogues upon these débats, through their neo-Latin forms, must be borne in mind.
[310] Wülker, 384; Brooke, i. 139, ii. 93, 221, 268; Jusserand, i. 75, 443. The passages of dialogue dwelt on by these writers mostly belong to the work of Cynewulf and his school. It has been suggested that some of them, e.g. the A.-S. Descent into Hell (Grein, iii. 175; cf. Anglia, xix. 137), or the dialogue between Mary and Joseph in Cynewulf’s Christ, 163 (ed. Gollancz, p. 16), may have been intended for liturgical use by half-choirs; but of this there is really no proof. Wülker, loc. cit., shows clearly that the notion of a dramatic representation was unfamiliar to the Anglo-Saxons.
[311] Ten Brink, i. 312. Several English versions of the Debate between Body and Soul are given by Wright, loc. cit. 334. An English Debate and Stryfe betwene Somer and Wynter is in W. C. Hazlitt, Early Popular Poetry, iii. 29.
[312] Cf. ch. xx.
[313] Ten Brink, i. 214, 309. The Owl and the Nightingale (c. 1216-72), was printed by J. Stevenson (Roxburghe Club); the Thrush and the Nightingale and the Fox and the Wolf, by W. C. Hazlitt, Early Popular Poetry, i. 50, 58. There are also a Debate of the Carpenter’s Tools (Hazlitt, i. 79) and an English version of a Latin Disputacio inter Mariam et Crucem (R. Morris, Legends of the Holy Rood, 131); cf. Ten Brink, i. 259, 312. An A.-S. version of the Debate between Body and Soul is in the Exeter Book (Grein, ii. 92).