SOURCE: "Critics of the Jeu," in The "Jeu de Saint Nicolas" of Jean Bodel of Arras: A Literary Analysis, The Johns Hopkins Press, 1954, pp. 3-14.

In the excerpt below, Vincent provides an overview of critical scholarship on Jeu de Saint Nicolas, arguing that critics have focused on small aspects of the play at the expense of viewing it as a whole.

The Jeu de saint Nicolas,¹ composed by Jean Bodel,² jongleur and poet of Arras, between the years 1199 and 1201, and therefore by many years the first vernacular French miracle play extant,³ was brought to the notice of the modern world from the sheltered obscurity of the library of the duc de la Vallière in 1779 by Pierre Jean-Baptiste le Grand d'Aussy.⁴ This ardent, but in this instance critically undiscerning, collector of fabliaux and contes of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries adjudged Bodel's play a precious monument in the...