Contes en vers
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Contes en vers is a French literary genre which has much in common with fabliaux. Jean La Fontaine's Contes et nouvelles en vers is generally held to be the first example in this category. Seventeenth century scholars did not consider Fontaine's works because of their obscene nature. However, Fontaine's bawdy motifs of folktales signaled the beginning of a new genre in French folklore in the succeeding centuries.
Gershon Legman argued that the method of indexing by tale-type and categorization of folk motifs provided by Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson should be expanded to include Contes et nouvelles en vers and other works which have contributed a vital role to folkloristic literature. In the words of Legman
- "The conte-en-vers is therefore the real connecting link between the earlier folktale collections and the modern scientific collections, and is the real repository of the native and original humorous material for nearly two centuries (1650-1850), where little of an original nature and almost nothing native will be found in the jestbooks. The entire literature of the conte-en-vers, whether dated from the burlesque and Aretinesque academies of the 1550's in Italy, or from La Fontaine's contes, "tirés de Boccace" as he perfectly frankly admits, in the 1660's ... represents in sum an exceptionally large repertory of jokes and tales, purposely sought from the folk at a period when the jestbooks were already forgetful or contemptuous of folk sources, and far gone in sterile mutual plagiarism (Legman 1962, 237). "
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