SOURCE: "A Note on the Ideology of Bodel's Jeu de Saint Nicolas," in Studi Francesi, No. 58, April, 1976, pp. 67-72.

In the following essay, Hunt reevaluates Bodel's intent in writing Jeu de Saint Nicolas.

Whilst the multiformity of Bodel's dramatized miracle has always secured recognition, the idea of a unified point of view informing its apparently incongruous components has been less easily accepted. Robertson has detected a comic intention throughout,¹ whilst Payen has emphasized the crusading appeal.² Adler sees in the play the pursuit of an ideal social harmony based on by which the miracle becomes >,³ whilst Heitmann argues that Bodel, far from being aristocratic in attitude as Payen would have it, gives expression to a , which confronts the audience with

ein einziger Geist, der der eigenen niederen Wirklichkeit, der es in diesem Stück unternimmt, das, was in der Realität unerreichbar über ihm liegt, zu 'degradieren', zu...