Ten Bourdes

Adopting a fourteenth-century Middle English word referring to an amusing story or incident, Ten Bourdes collects ten humorous poems from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries for enjoyment and study by a broader readership. Though not as well-attested or well-established as their French counterparts, the bawdy and often violent fabliaux of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the poems presented here demonstrate common features definitive of a potential genre: signaled demands for laughter from the audience, punishment for characters who exploit the innocent, and morality’s triumph over the wicked. In these corrective comedies, wandering spouses are returned to their marriages, adulterers punished, cruel stepmothers humiliated, victims defended, hospitality repaid, and virtue rewarded. This updated edition of Furrow’s poems, published earlier in Ten Fifteenth-Century Comic Poems, is designed specifically for students, pairing marginal glosses and a comprehensive Middle English glossary with extensive explanatory notes, textual notes, and contextual introductions for each work.