Bodel, Jehan (d. 1210). Professional jongleur and trouvère, active at the very end of the 12th c. in Arras, of whose Confrérie des Jongleurs et Bourgeois he was a member. Its records show that he died in 1210, but already by 1202 he had withdrawn from society owing to leprosy. He probably took part in the Fourth Crusade from 1199 to 1201. He was one of the first of a line of distinguished writers who benefited from the particularly favourable circumstances in Arras. Bodel worked in a variety of genres, producing fabliaux,
His nine fabliaux are typical examples of the genre and include the usual stories of greed, stupidity, and lechery. In Le Vilain de Bailleul, a wife who is caught in flagrante by her peasant husband convinces him that he is not only ill, but dead, and thus can do nothing to prevent her making love to the priest. The five pastourelles are also typical, though the genre was still very new in northern France. In ‘L'autre jor, les un boschel’, the courtly narrator tells how he came across a shepherdess weeping, because she had lost a lamb and her peasant lover had abandoned her. The knight finds it only too easy to console the shepherdess and to seduce her.
Like most chansons de geste, the Chanson des Saisnes results from multiple authorship, and only the first 3, 300 lines can confidently be attributed to Jehan Bodel; even they probably result from the reworking of an earlier text. The main subject is Charlemagne's war against the Saxon Guitaclin, and the poem, in its longest (c.8, 000-line) versions, ends with the conversion of Saxony. But its interest, like that of other epics of its day, lies in the confrontation between an older, feudal model of social organization, and the rising current of chivalry and individualism. This latter element is manifested by Charlemagne's nephew Baudouin, and his love affair with the Saxon queen Sebile. While the feudal army stagnates on the banks of the Rune (the Rhine?), Baudouin swims back and forth having galant adventures. Glamour aside, his early death suggests a certain reluctance on the part of the poet to embrace social change. The song is remarkably well-written, its alexandrine lines maintaining real power and resonance.
The Jeu de Saint Nicolas (1, 540 lines) is undoubtedly Bodel's masterpiece and most original work, even if traces of his earlier writings appear in it; it is in effect the earliest surviving example of a French miracle play, though no later miracle is like Bodel's. Using Latin and vernacular sources, he creates a play out of the legend of St Nicolas of Myra, in which the saint proves his ability to guard treasure left in his protection; but Bodel sets the action in an unusual and ambiguous context. After a battle between Christians and Saracens, in which all the Christian soldiers are killed, the Saracens find a ‘preudom’ (a simple Christian) praying to a wooden statue of Nicolas. They reprieve him when he says the statue will protect any treasure entrusted to it and decide to test the ‘preudom’'s claim. Whilst all are asleep, three Arras thieves, who have heard about the situation, steal the treasure. When this is revealed, the ‘preudom’, his life now threatened, prays again to Nicolas, who visits the terrified thieves and forces them to put the treasure back. Next day the Saracens find it not only safe but multiplied, and they are converted to Christianity. Into this fundamentally religious drama, Bodel introduces not only epic and crusading elements (topoi, vocabulary, versification) but also the humour of the fabliaux (drinking, cheating, swearing), as well as many local references to Arras. This mixing of the genres, which baffled earlier critics, is now seen as the play's most original feature. According to a possibly inauthentic prologue, it was performed before an Arras confrérie on a 5 December in the early 1200s.
The congé, probably Bodel's last work, can also lay claim to originality, as it is the oldest surviving example of a genre in which the poet, faced with his real or imaginary death or departure, looks back over his life. Congés were written by Baude Fastoul and Adam de la Halle; Villon's Testament is also a form of congé. In Bodel's poem (540 lines, 45 stanzas), the poet takes leave of his friends, wishes them well in the future, and prays to our Lady for his own salvation as he departs for the leper-house.
[Graham Runnalls]
Bibliography
- C. Foulon, L'Œuvre de Jehan Bodel (1958)
- A. Henri, Le Jeu de Saint Nicolas (1965)
- A. Brasseur, La Chanson des Saisnes (1989)
