Roman de Fauvel

The Roman de Fauvel is a 14th-century French allegorical verse romance of satirical bent, generally attributed to Gervais du Bus, a clerk at the French royal chancery. The original narrative of 3,280 octosyllabics is divided into two books, dated to 1310 and 1314 respectively. In 1316–7 Chaillou de Pesstain produced a greatly expanded version.

The romance features Fauvel, a fallow-colored horse who rises to prominence in the French royal court, and through him satirizes the self-serving hedonism and hypocrisy of men, and the excesses of the ruling estates, both secular and ecclesiastical. The antihero's name can be broken down to mean "false veil", and also forms an acrostic F-A-V-V-E-L with the letters standing for the human vices: Flattery, Avarice, Vileness, Variability (Fickleness), Envy, and Laxity. The romance also gave birth to the English expression "curry fauvel", the obsolete original form of "". The work is reminiscent of a similar tract in the 13th-century Roman de la Rose, though owes more to the animal fabliaux of Reynard the Fox.

Chaillou's own handwritten manuscript (Paris, BN fr. 146) is splendid work of illuminated art, as well as being of considerable musicological interest due to interpolations of 169 period pieces of music, which span the gamut of thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century genres and textures. Some of these pieces are linked to Philippe de Vitry and the nascent musical style referred to as Ars Nova.

The poem revolves around the central figure, an ambitious and foolish horse (or ass), called Fauvel. The horse's name itself is rife with symbolism. "Fauvel" comes from the color of its coat, which is "muddy beige" (or fallow-colored.) and symbolic of Vanity. The name breaks down to fau-vel, or "false veil", and is furthermore an acronym F-A-V-V-E-L taken from the head letters of these vices: Flattery, Avarice, Vileness, Variability (Fickleness), Envy, and Laxity (Flaterie, Avarice, Vilanie, Varieté, Envie, Lascheté).

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