Rêves érotiques : humour, désir et anxiété sexuelle dans les fabliaux Li Sohait des Vez et Le Moigne

Résumé 0

Erotic Dreams : humor, sexual desire and anxiety in the fabliaux Li Sohait des Vez and Le MoigneBoth Jean Bodel’s Li Sohait des Vez and the anonymous Le Moigne are fabliaux which explore how erotic dreams can somewhat compensate for an intense sexual frustration. Both feature a dream-induced fantasy of autonomous genitalia sold by merchants in specialized sex fairs. However, beyond these shared narrative stock and dream typology, fundamental differences loom large between them: they include differences in the status of the main protagonists (a married woman in the former and a Cluniac monk in the later), but also and more subtly, differences in the narrative tone and in the moral purposes of the fabliaux. After comparing how female and male sexual desires and anxieties are respectively depicted, this study explores how through various fictional and historical contexts medieval audiences may have encountered the notion and even the images of autonomous genitalia, male in particular. Finally, as an additional context for the dreamed sex fairs, I proposed that fertility pilgrimages where sexual wax ex-votos were sold may also have furnished an original point of departure and contribution for these erotic tales.