ABSTRACT
If temporal and spatial settings provide recipients with frames of reference to help them in their evaluation of actions and events, the spark which ignites the overall comic effect of these tales is frequently supplied by speech and dialogue within the narrative world. In terms of medieval Christian ethics diction constituted 'turpiloquium' or vulgar speech, one of a number of sins of the tongue, and it was also transgressive of the aesthetic norms of most other forms of vernacular narrative. Foolish talk can of course assume other forms, including unwitting self-contradiction or travesty, where solemn ideals are articulated in an excessively familiar key, and base, physical concerns are given priority over moral or ethical ones. The priest's religious and spiritual concerns are met throughout by a defiant insistence on the mean, the earthly and the crudely physical, as epitomized by the inevitable scatological jokes.
