A fabliau (French pronunciation: [fabljo]; plural fabliaux) is a comic, often anonymous tale written by jongleurs and clerics in France between c. 1150 and 1400. They are generally characterized by sexual and scatological obscenity, and by a set of contrary attitudes generally critical or mocking of the church and nobility. While most fabliaux were anonymous, we do know some authors like Jean Bodel or Guèrin, who wrote during the peak of the genre's popularity. Several of them were reworked by Giovanni Boccaccio for the Decameron and by Geoffrey Chaucer for The Canterbury Tales. Some 150 French fabliaux are extant, the number depending on how narrowly fabliau is defined. According to R. Howard Bloch, fabliaux are the first expression of literary realism in Europe.

Some nineteenth-century scholars, most notably Gaston Paris, argue that fabliaux originally came from the Orient and were brought to the West by returning crusaders.

The time that the fabliaux were most popular in France was during the 13th and 14th centuries. During this time, France faced a lot of change and devastation. In the 1200s the most notable king was King John. With continuous bad weather leading to massive famines at the end of the 13th century and into the 14th century. Along with other diseases and sicknesses, the black death came to France during this time.

It is believed that Fabliaux derived from Courtly Love, which was a popular genre at the time. Jongleurs and troubadours were French poets who are thought to have created some of the stories that started the genre. They would tell these stories in front of Kings and courts as entertainment. Although it is also believed that some of the stories were written by peasants for peasants. It is now often agreed upon that the tales were for everyone. Many people at this time were illiterate, and the stories were told to the community by some who could read or by someone who memorized the tales.

The first of these tales tells stories that are dirty yet entertaining, from a modern view it can be shocking that these tales were written in a primarily Christian culture. When the tales were rediscovered in the 1800s, people were appalled at them and believed that they were embarrassing and wanted to distance France as far as possible from the tales. It turned into anti-semitisim propaganda as stories like these existed in Latin and Arabic before Old French. They blamed the Jews as the reason for the stories because they knew multiple languages.

The fabliau is defined as a short narrative in (usually octosyllabic) verse, between 300 and 400 lines long, its content is often comic or satiric. In France, it flourished in the 12th and 13th centuries; in England, it was popular in the 14th century. Fabliaux are often compared to the later short story; Douglas Bush, longtime professor at Harvard University, called it "a short story broader than it is long." ven though serving as short bawdy poetry, Fabliaux reflected the social disorder during its time. The time period underwent many changes marked by political instability, religious disputes, crusade wars, and the decline of a feudal system. Through humor and explicit language fabliaux was a medieval entertainment that mocked the flaws of society.

The fabliau is remarkable in that it seems to have no direct literary predecessor in the West, but was brought from the East by returning crusaders in the 12th century. Fabliaux were most famous in the courts. Popular amongst knights, noblemen, lords, and ladies, a very aristocratic group of individuals. Those accompanying those in the courts would be entertainers. Troubadours, who were poets and musicians. They sang love songs in Occitan poetry that was influenced by Arabic and Hebrew poetry. Fabliaux started as courtly love, where poets would express overwhelming love for a married noblewoman; yet she would be unattainable. As knights and nobles began to merge into one class, knights began to examine moral issues that came with their role. They begin to value chivalry, celebrating the arms of war, yet also exploring aspects of love and courting women Chivalry tales and epic poetry morphed into romance literature. Starting as an oral tradition, but began to be written down. Courtly love spread from Southern France to Italy, Northern France, England, and Germany. The translations changed minnesinger (love singer) in Germany, and the trouvere sang in old French in France. Actual fabliaux derived from northern France poetry. Fabliaux provided a more realistic aspect of human life.

The closest literary genre is the fable, as found in Aesop "and its eastern origins or parallels," but it is less moral and less didactic than the fable. The word is a northern French diminutive from fable.." In terms of morality it is suggested to be closer to the novel than to the parable: "the story is the first thing, the moral the second, and the latter is never suffered to interfere with the former." Still, according to Robert Lewis, "some two-thirds of the French fabliaux have an explicit moral attached to them."