Corpus numérique de fabliaux d'auteur

This PhD thesis aims at identifying the defining characteristics of a genre that has rejected any form of classification: the Old French fabliaux. In order to do so, we created a digital annotated corpus of a sample of texts (critical editions). As a matter of fact, scholars have had a tendency to study the fabliaux as a whole, whereas our purpose is to analyse the tales of well-known authors – i. e. meaningful literary figures of French Medieval literature – thus circumscribing our field of research in order to propose a definition of “authorial fabliaux”. We selected poets belonging to different periods, that is to say from the origins of the genre to its final phase. This choice allowed us to focus on the personal characteristics and poetics of each writer, and to study the genre both in a synchronic and a diachronic perspective. As a consequence, we gave a particular relevance to text variance, to the critical apparatus and its visualisation online, relying on the possibilities offered by the digital medium.