"To judge accurately a medieval fabliau or an eighteenth-century satire, a Romantic ode or a Victorian novel, we have to condition ourselves to think and feel as their intended audiences did," (Keesey 14).
Like Erica, and many other people last week did, I had to choose a word not defined in Hamilton's Essential Literary Terms, as I couldn't seem to find one in the readings. I chose "fabliau" because, upon reading it, I had the hint of a memory from Chaucer last semester, where it was mentioned at least a few times in lecture.
Dictionary.com defines "fabliau" as "a short metrical tale, usually ribald and humorous, popular in medieval France." This would make sense to me now, as to the reason it was mentioned in Chaucer, especially during our section of The Canterbury Tales. I never felt Father Honeygosky explained it clearly enough, but basically any of the the tales could be called a fabliau.