Jean de Meun embodied the mocking, sceptical spirit of the fabliaux. The audience for fabliaux is estimated differently by different critics. It also appears in Medieval fabliaux, and was used in school exercises of rhetoric. 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.