SOURCE: "The Court and the Tavern: Bourgeois Discourse in Li Jeus de Saint Nicolai," in Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Vol. 19, 1988, pp. 177-92.

In the essay below, Raybin argues that Bodel creates two distinct settings in Jeu de Saint Nicolas and, by juxtaposing them, creates a new form of discourse.

If there is one point on which readers of Jehan Bodel's late twelfth-century play, Li Jeus de Saint Nicolai (1191-1202), traditionally have agreed, it is on the logical incongruity of Bodel's inserting the scenes of his contemporary Arras in the midst of an African land and ostensibly Saracen setting. In the nineteenth century, Bodel (d. 1210?) was taken to task for this artistic ineptitude. Otto Rohnström, in a typical view, judged Bodel forgetful and, like his contemporaries in northern France, ignorant both of "notions ethnographiques" and of the techniques for importing "couleur locale" to a foreign ambience.¹

With...