cantefablen.
/ˈkɒ̃tfɑːbl(ə)/, /ˈkɒntfɑːbl(ə)/, U.S. /ˈkɑntˌfɑbl/ 1. A medieval French ballad, in which passages in spoken prose alternate with passages in sung verse; this as a literary genre; = chantefable n. 1.Often with reference to the 13th-cent. text Aucassin et Nicolette, in which the term occurs in Old French (see the etymology).
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society > leisure > the arts > literature > poetry > poem or piece of poetry > narrative poem > [noun] > ballad > types of ballad
romance?1548
riding ballad1800
derry1860
chantefable1879
cantefable1883
1883 Cornhill Mag. June 667 Formerly the same style of composition bore the name of cantefable.
1887 Pall Mall Gaz. 6 Oct. 13/2 (advt.) A Cante fable of the early thirteenth century, edited in the original, with a translation, notes, &c.
1925 Jrnl. Eng. & Germanic Philol. 24 128 In effect, this is most pleasing, removing any feeling of monotony, and bringing so very curious a reminiscence of the cante-fable form of Aucassin and Nicolette.
2002 A. Butterfield Poetry & Music in Medieval France v. xiv. 227 The term cantefable from Aucassin et Nicolette, a word which although highly apt to its own context seems not to occur anywhere else.
2. Any text or work, esp. a folk tale, consisting partly of prose and partly of (sung or recited) verse. Cf. chantefable n. 2.Frequently associated with African-American or Caribbean culture.
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society > leisure > the arts > literature > a written composition > [noun] > other spec.
defence1546
paradox1594
secret history1650
pentaglot1727
morceau1748
murdering piece1797
pièce de circonstance1830
national epic1841
scholarly edition1850
cantefable1903
chantefable1937
1903 Jrnl. Amer. Folklore 16 68 ‘The Courtship of Ferb’ is a cante fable (interwoven song and story).
1937 R. Smith Amer. Anthol. Old-World Ballads in B. A. Botkin Treasury Amer. Folklore (1944) 823 The ballad drama [sc. The Hangsman's Tree]..also exists as a cante-fable among the Negroes of the West Indies.
1971 Jrnl. Amer. Folklore 84 271 Mickle is creative in his own right, as demonstrated in his cantefables, which move from song to reminiscence to song.
1996 Publishers Weekly 19 Feb. 214/1 The stories are told in the cante fable tradition, with plenty of rhyming and singing and apparently artless ease.
2008 D. Ó Hógáin in D. Haase Greenwood Encycl. Folktales & Fairy Tales I. 158 Often the cante fable is a deliberate composition in this form, with the import of the story being told in prose and the interspersed stanzas of verse representing the speech of characters at the high points of drama or of special insight.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, June 2017; most recently modified version published online December 2021).
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n.1883