SOURCE: "Res / Verba: Ambivalence in Jeu de Saint Nicolas," in Res / Verba: A Study in Medieval French Drama, E. J. Brill, 1985, pp. 47-91.

[In the following excerpt, Dane analyzes the structure of Le Jeu de Saint Nicolas and places it within the context of French literature, arguing that the meaning of the play is ambivalent.]

No other twelfth- or thirteenth-century French play is as complex in its action and as difficult to interpret as Jean Bodel's Jeu de saint Nicolas (1200)¹. As in the case with many of the fourteenth-century Miracles de Notre Dame, it is difficult to assess just what Jean expected his audience to take seriously in his play and what (if anything) is no more than sheer comic relief. Here, it is not so much a question of determining what Jean might mean or intend; he may well have meant nothing at all. Rather, it is a question of just where we are to begin to look for such a potential meaning. By drawing on diverse traditions, Jean has produced an often bewildering mélange of ingredients whose chief coherence seems to lie in the simple fact that they are collected into a single play. The play has been accused of thematic incoherence and (worse) defended on the grounds of aesthetic tastes peculiar to its medieval audience. A brief summary of the major action is as follows:

A pagan king hears that Christians have invaded his land and consults his idol (Tervagan) as to the future. Tervagan laughs and cries non-committally and the undaunted king prepares for battle. He summons three emirs from outre-mer and the pagan host massacres the Christians. The sole survivor is an old man (Preudom) and his icon of St. Nicolas (Preudom, however, seems to have no connection with the defeated Christian army). The king wishes to test the power of Preudom's icon and places it in charge of his treasure. Three thieves steal the treasure and the king threatens vengeance on Preudom. Preudom prays to St. Nicholas who then visits the thieves in their tavern hide-out and forces them to return the treasure. With his treasure restored, the king smashes the idol Tervagan, and (with some reluctance) the entire pagan court is converted to Christianity.

Such a summary is of course inadequate. The action is not that simple. The thieves' dicing games at the tavern and their dealings with the Taverner occupy nearly one-third of the play. A mysterious messenger to the pagan king, Auberon, moves between the worlds of the pagan court, the land outre-mer, and the tavern, then disappears less than halfway through the play. A spirited debate between a royal crier and a wine-crier must be mediated by the Taverner, and a sadistic jailer is introduced for no apparent reason other than to bully Preudom while the pagan king decides what to do with him. To account for all the details in Jean's play is impossible, despite its short length (1500 lines); and I do not think that the modern reader's impression of a confused mélange of plots, subplots, and digressions can be declared illegitimate because it is not in accord with hypothesized aesthetic theories and tastes peculiar to the Middle Ages. As we shall see below, Jean is well aware of generic decorum; the elusiveness of the play's meaning, and more importantly for the present study, the ambivalence of the play's frame of reference are features its contemporary audience would certainly have sensed, and there is no reason to believe the play would have been any less disturbing to its intended audience than it is to us. Is the Christian army's heroic oratory before battle a parodic allusion to a literary genre (the chanson de geste), or is it a serious satiric attack of a social attitude (militarism)? Or perhaps a serious expression of militarism and thus propagandistic? Is St. Nicolas a Christian saint, a piece of wood, or a literary motif? What world does Jean's play refer us to? A world of doctrine, historical events, social and political things? Or a purely literary world?

Jean's play, like many of the miracle plays to which it is closely related, gives us no clear answer to such questions. We are left in a neutral zone between the worlds of things and words throughout our reading or experience of the play, and to see its structure as intelligible, we are forced to grasp at straws. The following discussion, then, offers no single interpretation of Jean's play; it is premised on the assumption that any such interpretation would be a gross distortion of the play and of our experience of that play. The models of coherence I identify below do not supply a meaning for the play; they merely permit us to read further. How does Jean's Jeu de Saint Nicolas make its inexplicable sense?

Genre and Mélange

N'en sont que trois materes à nul home
 entendant:
De France et de Bretaigne et de Romme la
 grant;
Ne de ces trois materes n'i a nule samblant.
Li conte de Bretaigne s'il sont vain et plaisant
Et cil de Romme sage et de sens aprendant,
Cil de France sont voir chascun jour aparant².

[Everyone knows there are only three matters:
Of France, of Breton, and of Great Rome;
And these three matters are in no way similar.
The tales of Breton are nugatory and pleasant,
Those of Rome are wise and full of high
 sentence;
Those of France are true, as manifested every
 day.]

In the opening laisse to his Chanson des Saisnes, Jean Bodel lists the three matières that can serve as subject matter for narrative poetry. These three divisions can be correlated with three gradations of truth³ (or perhaps three gradations of verisimilitude). The "conte de Bretaigne" are marvelous and fantastic; those of Rome are oriented toward doctrinal and moral truth; those of France are based on historical truth and pertain to the role of French kings in Christian history. Although Jean is not entirely clear what texts he would include under each heading (any more than he is clear about the precise thematic characteristics of each genre), it is clear that he expects his reader to bring to his work some sense of generic propriety and to interpret the work accordingly. When we consider the wide variety of metrical schemata used in Jeu de Saint Nicolas and their association with specific characters and situations, it seems that Jean's classification of the "three matters" may correspond to metrical types in Old French poetry; in other words, not only does each subject matter have an attendant and appropriate thematic orientation, it also is associated with a particular metrical form.

Of the three matters, the first and third might be identified and differentiated on such a metrical basis. Chrétien's romances are in octosyllabic couplets, the chanson de geste in epic laisses such as those in Jean's own Chanson de Saisnes. The matter of Rome is the only one in which a variety of meters is permitted: it could include any quasi-historical work written either in couplets or in hexameters or in formal stanzas, e.g., Roman de Thèbes, Eneas, Brut, Amis et Amille, Roman d'Alexandre, and possible Saints' lives. "Sage" would simply mean "information-bearing" rather than "edifying"; "Rome" would simply mean "neither French nor Celtic."

The implied relation of the three matters to metrical form is significant. Particularly if one accepts the Roman d'Alexandre as part of the matter of Rome, each particular verse type alone implies a particular theme and genre. The octosyllable is associated with the vain et plaisant—a definition of sufficient vagueness to include not only the romances of Chrétien but also the more overtly frivolous fabliaux, which are also written in this meter. The two higher genres are marked with two types of "long line": the epic laisse and the Alexandrine quatrain. Again, without the explicit testimony of Bodel, it cannot be proved that he considered a particular verse type to have a particular generic or thematic force. But in Jeu de Saint Nicolas, there is at least as strong a correlation between different verse types and different stage locations (e.g., the court, the Tavern, and the land outre-mer) as there is between particular verse types and genres in twelfth-century French literature as a whole. The thieves employ the octosyllabic couplet exclusively and remain almost exclusively within the tavern. In the pagan court, the octosyllable is also employed, but only in six-line stanzas. The Christian soldiers and occasionally the pagan court employ a form of long line: either in rhyming quatrains (lines 239-50, 384-95) or assonanced Alexandrine quatrains (used by the Christians in lines 395-411)⁴. These verse types may be classified according to two binary divisions: short line vs. long line; stanzaic vs. non-stanzaic.…

The stanzaic octosyllables are ambiguous, in that they may be classed either with the couplets on the basis of line length, or with the long lines on the basis of stanzaic form. The employment of different meters in the play then creates a series of potential relations and oppositions between various stage loci and stage personages; these relations are variable depending on what we perceive as the distinguishing characteristic of each verse; and the ease with which Jean changes his apparent theme in Saint Nicolas without a total loss of coherence could be related to the potentially conflicting classifications possible for each verse type (e.g., an octosyllabic stanza in the above schema could both support an opposition between octosyllabic couplet and long-line and mediate that opposition).

In Jeu de Saint Nicolas, Jean does not permit any character or group of characters to be unambiguously "tagged" with a specific verse type. But the implied characterization of stage locus and personage is certainly suggested and would be borne out by examination of Jean's other work. In addition to Saint Nicolas and the Chanson de Saisnes quoted above, Jean has also been credited with several fabliaux, a Congé (a poetic "farewell" and quasi-Testament), and at least one pastourelle⁵. The subject matter and theme of each work is distinct, and each genre has a particular metrical form associated with it. The Chanson de Saisnes employs epic laisses; the fabliaux employ octosyllabic couplets; the congé employs a twelve-line octosyllabic stanza found nowhere else in Jean's work; and the pastourelle is in a stanzaic form of variable line length, again, a form found nowhere else in Jean's work. With the exception of the Chanson de Saisnes, all of these poems are among the earliest extent examples of what became well-defined genres in Old French literature⁶. And Jean's consciousness of generic propriety and the material determinants of each genre is in every case clear.

Both Gustave Cohen and Jean Frappier argue against the imposition of classical genre theory on medieval drama and insis that mélange is the primary fact of this literature; separation of genre by theme and form is secondary and reflects classical, not medieval taste and expectations⁷. But the above discussion would suggest that this is not the case at all. Jean's specific comments at the opening of Chanson de Saisnes and the formal distinctions observed between the genres in his other work indicate that he expected his audience to have some sense of generic decorum and propriety. If Jean does produce a mélange of form and theme in a single work, it is in direct violation of the expectations of coherent generic propriety that he seems to have taken great pains to set up. A modern reader's objection that Jean does not observe the rudiments of classical generic decorum may or may not prove useful; but such a reaction is in no way illegitimate or anachronistic.

Jeu de Saint Nicolas demands of us that we try to classify it, but it systematically defies all our efforts to do so. The attempts by modern literary historians to classify the play generically and the sometimes unsatisfactory solutions that result are inevitable. LeRoy's consideration of Saint Nicolas as a "national tragedy" may be usefully compared with Grace Frank's exclusive concern with the comic portions of the play⁸. And in both cases, one wonders what has happened to the Saint's legend announced in the opening prologue. In Cohen's Le Théâtre en France au Moyen Age, discussion of Saint Nicolas is divided between two volumes: the scenes from the miracle legend and the crusading episodes are considered in his volume on religious drama; the dicing and tavern scenes taken up in his volume on comedy⁹. What this requires, of course, is that the "religious" aspects of a chanson de geste are conflated with the "religious" aspects of Saint Nicholas legends. And indeed, two recent American notes, which define the dicing and tavern scenes as the "center" of the play, consider all else as mere "epico-religious" background¹⁰. But Jean's audience might not have made such an easy connection between "epic" and "religious," and Jean himself would have had little precedent for associating Saint Nicholas with a battlefield conversion. Both chanson de geste and Saint Nicholas plays deal with the theme of conversion, it is true, but the converts in the Saint Nicholas plays contemporary with Jean are not kings and princes as here; they are consistently lower class: a barbarus, a Jewish merchant, three daughters of a poor man, scholars and innkeepers¹¹. Similarly, there is nothing in the Latin Saint Nicholas plays comparable to the global military conflicts in Jean's play and the one pagan court that appears in these plays is in the Fleury Filius Getonis—a play dealing with the sole dramatized variant of the Saint Nicholas legend not specifically alluded to in Jean's play¹². The apparent incompatibility of details in Jeu de Saint Nicolas is too jarring and distracting to permit an audience to dismiss two-thirds of the play as pure background for a highlighted central concern—whatever that concern might be. There simply is no convincing center of interest.

The written Prologue contained in the single manuscript of the play (whether genuine or not) is a record of expectations a contemporary audience would have brought to a performance of the play, and the same function could have been served by a title alone or by performative setting (Saint Nicholas' Eve)¹³. That details in the Prologue contradict those in the play indicates only that normal audience expectations following the announcement of a Saint Nicholas play are systematically violated. And the contemporary audience would hardly have needed a prologue to tell them that a chanson de geste pagan court or 500 lines of dicing scenes were disturbingly out-of-place in a Saint Nicholas play. Disparate elements are indeed violently yoked together in Jean's play and the questions raised are disturbing. When played as it is against the extended "low-life" scenes in the tavern, is the Angel's exhortation of the milites christiani and their subsequent massacre to be taken as a sincere glorification of God, the State, and the Crusading spirit? a condemnation of militaristic zeal? or as nothing more than a literary spoof? That differences of opinion on such an apparently crucial issue are even possible is indicative of the trap Jean has set for us. We read the play; therefore it is intelligible. But how? Jean simply combines; he does not explicate. His message is not that certain religious beliefs are good, others are bad, nor that certain genres are profound, others silly, but rather that a thing exists (in this case a play) whereby diverse literary motifs and conflicting social attitudes are logically compatible and coherent.

In the previous chapter, I analyzed Representacio Ade as a play firmly grounded in res: the res of Christian history, the res of doctrine, and the res of society. Robin et Marion (ca. 1283) represents the opposing pole of words and signs; it has an explicit literary and verbal source which determines its structure. Jean's play is conveniently located chronologically (ca. 1200). For it is a play of both res and verba, things and signs. Our inability to determine what the play is about and our inability to classify it as a particular type of play are reflections of the play's ambivalent relation to the poles of words and things. Do we look for coherence on the level of content here? or is it coherent only on the plane of expression—the plane defined by metrical schemata and literary genre?

This aspect of Saint Nicolas is significant from the standpoint of literary history; for Jean's play is the only play of the three discussed here that can be usefully considered in the mainstream of a continuous dramatic tradition. Robin et Marion bears no relation either to the pastoral interludes of later Mystères or to the idyllic classical or neo-classical bucolic¹⁴. Adam shows idiosyncracies that have not been convincingly related to any dramatic text that has come down to us. In the fourteenth century, however, a considerable body of dramatic texts exists, which includes a few Passion and Resurrection plays as well as the famous Cangé collection of Miracles de Notre Dame'¹⁵. Although the preservation of this latter group of plays may be an accident, it offers proof of a coherent conception of dramatic action that can be traced without gap through the thirteenth century (Rutebeuf's Miracle de Théophile is dated 1261). The relation of this tradition to Jean's play is important. The characteristics of Jean's play most striking to the modern reader are not those of the Latin plays of Saint Nicholas. The combination of "genres" and high/low characters is not sanctioned by the plays of Hilarius nor by the plays of Fleury. Jean's play follows the pattern suggested by the later vernacular Miracles of the Virgin: matter may be accepted from any genre—a chanson de geste (Amis et Amille, no. 23), Saints' lives (Valentine, no. 25, Alexis, no. 40), or Sacred history (Nativité Nostre Seigneur Jhesu Christ, no. 5). The appearance of the Virgin surrounded by rondeau-singing angels is a stable motif asserting the coherence and compatibility of diverse types within each play and within the tradition as a whole. As pointed out by Noomen¹⁶, the characters of the Miracles tend to fall into distinct types; when certain characters of the sources are not analyzable into categories permitting conversion (i.e., good—evil; receptive—non-receptive), they tend to disappear or to move from the center of action. In this sense, the Miracles of the Virgin or the literary tendency they represent may be thought of as a test of literary types and motifs. What has the literary tradition offered the dramatist that would permit a coherent conversion from negative to positive, bad to good—a conversion that turns on the pivot of the appearance of Our Lady?

The second dramatic genre that remains vital and stable over the fourteenth century is that of the Resurrection. Despite the variations, additions, and reworkings, the rules of the genre remain relatively fixed: at the moment of Christ's death or His Resurrection, the world is inverted. Like the miracle plays, the Passion and Resurrection plays serve as a repository for diverse literary types: boasting soldiers, dicing scenes, laments and various forms of the Sublime. Serious scholastic debates in Heaven may take place nearly simultaneously with the social disorder of Hell.

That both these dramatic genres deal with conversion of character types, that both combine diverse types that in other genres are separated, and that both remain vital and coherent genres through the entire period represented by medieval vernacular drama suggests that the relation between the two is closer than the broad category "religious drama" might suggest. In his structural analysis of the Visitation of the tomb by the three Marys, L. Marin has emphasized that the actual moment of Christ's Resurrection is nowhere represented in the Gospels¹⁷. The quest of the three Marys for the body of Christ leads to the discovery of the absence of the body; the inadvertent object of their quest turns out to be an angel who tells them to recall an earlier message and to propagate the message they now have received. In other words, the true message of Christ's Resurrection is "another message"; the central res—the body itself or the content of the message—is simply not there.

The central moment of the Resurrection is thus a moment defined only by what occurs both before and after it. The center is an empty center; its significance is defined by peripheral events. The supposed "excrescences" in medieval drama, then, are legitimate reactions to what constitutes the myth; the true contents of the myth are those peripheral events. Dramatic elaboration of the Resurrection and of the Passion is thus two-fold: through spectacle, it attempts to fill the empty center of the myth with a graphic representation of the suffering Christ on the Cross; through the inclusion and expansion of apocryphal legends, it attempts to elaborate the verbal legends that themselves define that center.

The structure of a miracle play of the Virgin is similar; each narrative legend is climaxed by a center that has less explicit content than the legend itself. The angels sing a rondeau at the appearance of the Virgin—a verse form that is repetitive and controlled more by rules governing the expression plane (material sound and rhythm) than by rules concerning the content plane (the rondeau need not say anything).

Both types of play deal in conversion and both represent attempts to define and to fill a central moment on which narrative continuity turns. And in both cases, the center has less explicit meaning than "what changes." Christ's Passion is no more the meaning of a Passion Play (or of Christian history) than the rondeau sung by the angels is the meaning of a Miracle play. Only what changes is significant, and in Christian history, what changes is the world. The center of both myths is the moment when a motif, moving from its positive toward its negative expression, is neither the one nor the other—when that same motif is suddenly indefinable and thus incapable of being represented.

Jeu de Saint Nicolas has a structure similar to that of both Passion and Miracle plays. There are appearances by angels and by Saint Nicholas himself which seem to be turning points in the action. But none serves as an absolute center for the play. During one sequence, we have a conversion turning on the appearance of a Saint. During another, all turns on a treasure—a treasure that is significant to its owner (the king) only in its absence. Conversion itself becomes simple exchange; dicing games redistribute wealth, but a wealth whose value is never defined and which is finally superseded by a greater wealth; debts are contracted but never collected.

Also like the Passion and Miracle plays, Jeu de Saint Nicolas combines a wide variety of subject matter, but we do not have the assurance as we do in a Passion or Miracle play that all relates to a single dominant center (the Virgin's appearance, the death of Christ or His Resurrection). The uneasy juxtaposition of types in Miracle or Passion plays is identical to what we find in Jean's play; but Saint Nicolas intensifies the problematic nature of this structure by giving us no final assurance that all, in the end, is perfectly serious. Saint Nicholas, after all, is neither Christ nor the Virgin and according to some of the personages in the play, he is merely a piece of wood.

The ambivalence in tone, definition, and in the notion of possession itself in Jeu de Saint Nicolas is supportive of a more basic ambivalence between res and verba What is Jean's point in constructing this text for us? And does he have a point at all? It is never clear (at least to me) even how he intends us to interpret his play, let alone what conclusion such an interpretation might reach. Are we to think of a chanson de geste in the opening scenes and regard the whole spectacle as a parody, or are we to think of the Crusade and consider those scenes satiric? Jean points us in both directions, and even if we decide that a single model dominates (say, contemporary events and the Fourth Crusade) we are little better off: what is Jean telling us about such things?

Jean's play remains firmly non-committal on all such issues; and I undertake the following analysis with full awareness that any explication of his text is necessarily either wrong or, at best, annoyingly inadequate. I will discuss the play by focusing on two elements in the play that (at times) lend it coherence. The first is the motif of the messenger—the carrier of the word and the personification of metonymic exchange. The second is a larger model that functions to structure the play as a whole: this is the model of the Resurrection, in which exchange is no longer a meaning nor represented by a specific motif (such as the messenger) but rather a determining structure that is itself void of specific contents. Through the messenger, verbal signs become personified as a res—a concrete personage on stage. Through the Resurrection, the staged res of action and events become simply a structure of signs, determined not even by the potential meaning of the Resurrection but only by its form.…

The Resurrection

The various scenes and units of action in Jeu de Saint Nicolas can all be seen as derived from or originating in the legends of Saint Nicholas, particularly those of the Iconia, although no single text is sufficiently close to Jean's play to be considered a source. A motif in the legends may generate an entire scene; the thieves' role in the dramatic texts of Fleury and Hilarius is expanded into an entire sphere of action comprising one-third of the length of Jean's play. But the expansion of such motifs yields a different thematic structure—one that the original motif alone cannot explain. The five-hundred lines of tavern scenes in Jeu de Saint Nicolas are not merely there to introduce the thieves who must steal the treasure.

The legends of Saint Nicholas, then, when translated from narrative into drama, or from Latin drama into vernacular drama, undergo a radical change, which is manifested both on the lower level of expression and form and on the higher levels of content and theme. In the discussion below, I shall argue that what results is essentially a Resurrection myth; and it is finally this myth (common in drama of the period) that organizes various elements of the play and functions to make the entire play coherent³⁶.

The Resurrection model is to a certain extent a privileged one: it is relatively stable in structure and supplies the subject matter for a large percentage of the dramatic texts of the Middle Ages. In Petit de Julleville's catalogue of dramatic performances in France, over three hundred representations of religious plays are cited from the period 1300-1603. Nearly ninety are listed under "Passion de Christ" or "Resurrection de Christ". More than fifty of these performances fall between the years 1398 and 1500³⁷. Earlier texts (not included in Petit de Julleville's list of performances) include the early fourteenth-century Palatine Passion, the fourteenth-century Passion and Resurrection plays included in the Ste. Geneviève collection and the twelfth-century Le Seinte Resureccion. Although Germany and England develop distinct variants—the Easterplay in Germany and the pageant in England—differences between these plays and the French mystère are often purely formal and technical. The dominance of the Passion and Resurrection cycle outside France is, if anything, even more pronounced³⁸.

Two points should be stressed. First, I do not consider Jean's play in any way an allegory of the Passion or Resurrection. My definition of "myth" in terms of subject matter excludes Jean's play as a possible variant. The shema derived from the Resurrection plays is also an empty schema unless it contains the distinctive nominal components of Sacred history. The specific details in Jean's play that could be used to support an allegorical reading act only to signal and to valorize the schema itself. Secondly, the dramatic form itself is a signal of the Resurrection myth. For the audience of drama in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the high percentage of plays on the Passion and Resurrection make "Resurrection" always a good generic guess.

The following model is derived largely from later German Easterplays, and was originally designed to apply solely to this tradition³⁹. None of the motifs and themes essential to defining such a model cannot be found in the French plays and narratives preceding Jean. The myth is international, and variations are only variations of specific detail, not of basic structure. In the discussion below, by "myth" I mean the logical structure that binds together each realization of specified material and includes all variants: "myth" is that component of a given body of stories and texts that enables us to see them as variants. The "specific material" here includes narrative and dramatic texts dealing with the Passion and Resurrection of Christ. The myth, here named by its subject matter, is composed of the motifs outlined below, motifs which in turn are ordered into various themes, particularly the theme of "conversion"⁴⁰.

I

• Prostitute
• Disciple
• False disciple
• Pilate
• Virgin-mother
• Soldiers
• Centurion or blind stranger
• Nicodemus
• Fallen angels
• Named and unnamed disciples
• younger victor of race
• Marys with no husbands but with dead son
• Doubting disciple

II

• meets
• receives
• betrays
• condemns
• approaches
• cut/roll
• kills
• takes
• guard
• run
• waits
• confront
• touches

III

• Christ
• money
• Christ
• Christ
• Cross
• cloth/dice
• Christ (with) spear;
• body
• Patriarchs
• to tomb
• at tomb
• overpriced unguent, merchant
• wounds

IV

• and is converted
• and betrays master
• and hangs himself
• and repents
• loses son/gains son
• earth splits and dead rise
• Centurion is converted;
• Longinus gains sight
• which he loses
• who escape
• which is empty;
• older loser enters first
• successful purchase;
• exchange of wives (German variant)
• and believes

The four-column diagram above outlines the basic structure of the Resurrection myth. Each horizontal sequence contains two nominal units (columns 1 and 3), a verbal unit (column 2) and a conclusion (column 4). Each of the nominal units is composed of disparate elements that combine to form a potential contradiction. A column 1 unit presents these disparate elements as incompatible; a column 3 unit presents its disparate elements as compatible. For example, Pilate (column 1) is presented as problematic: he is supposedly the political head of a society, but his power is dependent upon his subordinates and he is often under their complete control; he both is and is not a King. Similarly, soldiers (column 1) should represent the seat of physical power; but in the Resurrection plays, soldiers rarely escape ridicule and are presented as singularly inept at carrying out their assigned functions. Units in column 1, then, always pose a paradox or logical contradiction. In a column 3 unit, on the other hand, the contradiction is only potential; disparate elements are presented as compatible. For example, the opposition between horizontal and vertical is mediated in the image of the Cross; the particular Tomb in the Resurrection contains a live body despite the logical function of a tomb; Christ combines both God and Man.

The difference between a motif from column 1 and its counterpart in column 3 depends upon points of view and on the position of the motif within a narrative sequence. For example, the name "Mary" in the context of Christian mythology combines a number of personages within the single lexical unit. If defined as the logically impossible Virgin-mother, "Mary" may be analyzed as a column 1 motif. But as a mediatrix between Heaven and earth (as in the Miracles de Notre Dame) or between man and the devil (as in Rutebeuf's Le Miracle de Thgophile), "Mary" is a column 3 motif. The Resurrection plays and Passion plays adopt a relatively consistent point of view: Mary is presented as a subject of a sequence (column 1) not as an object (column 3). Such a point of view is the reverse of that adopted in the miracle plays, where the appearance of Mary is the climax of the action.

The verbal units in the myth (column 2) serve to link columns 1 and 3 and to force some sort of conclusion, which appears then in column 4. The verb in column 2 asserts either an action of a column 1 motif (killing, stabbing, running) or passivity of a column 3 motif (suffering on the Cross, rolling away of the tombstone). Columns 2 and 3 predicate the subject in column 1 and constitute the mechanism of conversion that controls the myth. Column 4 expresses the result, but the conclusions in column 4 are themselves only adequate from a particular point of view; contained within each conclusion is a motif that can be analyzed as belonging to column 1. The process of conversion, then, yields a conclusion that produces only another column 1 motif—a problematic motif which in turn can generate a second mythic sequence.

The above table stresses repetition, but repetition and episodic structure are less qualities of the myth itself than qualities of certain of its variants. In the English cycle plays, for example, episodic structure is determined partially by the mechanics of production: one play per guild. These plays are then linked as discrete units in a processional or chronological continuum. The German Easterplays of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are short and as a corpus, form a series of discrete variations on the same theme and events.

The thematic base both for the Resurrection and Passion plays and for the miracle plays is the same: both involve conversion, but each conversion is to some extent inconclusive. In the Passion cycles, the problematic conclusions lead to the introduction of new motifs which will continue the play. In the miracle play, the unsatisfactory conclusion requires the creation of an entirely new play. Jeu de Saint Nicolas, viewed in the context of this tradition, permits its own problematic conversions to stand as definitive conclusions. The indecisive conversion of the pagan court is potentially the base of a repeated sequence such as those outlined in the diagram above.

The Resurrection myth as a model can be applied to two other plays of the thirteenth century; like Jeu de Saint Nicolas, neither deals with the actual subject matter of the myth. In Rutebeuf's Le Miracle de Thèophile (ca. 1261)⁴¹ the protagonist is problematic: he is legitimately a successor to the bishop is not chosen for the position; he is supposed to be a man of God, but he makes a pact with the Devil. When he signs the contract in blood, all changes (writing is column 3—a fluid continuous language is fixed on paper and represented with a series of discrete strokes). He advances socially, but he is damned spiritually. The intercession of the Virgin represents the introduction of the major column 3 motif. She too combines logically incompatible elements: she is a Virgin; she is not of the tree of Jesse, and she gives birth to God. She makes the historical continuity of Christianity possible by defying historical continuity at every point.

In the thirteenth-century Courtois d'Arras⁴² a similar analysis is possible. The Biblical prodigal son is given money (column 3) and changes his station (from home to the world). He loses money at a tavern and again changes his station (he literally loses his shirt). He works for a medieval bourgeois (an anachronism) and in a one-hundred line monologue renounces his ways. Most important in this play, however, is the reaction of his elder brother when Courtois returns:

Por moi ki vous sierf et descauce,
nuit et jor, en liu de varlet,
ne tueriés pas un poulet.
Tos jors avés amé le pire.
(lines 650-53)

[I, who serve and wait on you,
Night and day, as a valet,
Will not let you kill even a chicken for me.
You have always loved evil.]

The father's conciliatory words which end the play do no particular good; fraternal hostility remains. Courtois' conversion (his return home) is itself somewhat unconvincing: he is no more enthusiastic about manual labor that he was earlier. His inability to survive when employed by the bourgeois was due to his inability to make a living by working with his hands. Courtois' various conversions—from the tavern to the bougeois and from the bourgeois back to his father—are all forced by poverty, just as the conversion of the fourth Emir in Jeu de Saint Nicolas is forced by the zeal of the once-pagan King. In Courtois, a rule similar to that noted for the Resurrection play obtains: conversion is the essential theme, but no single conversion is decisive.

All these plays—Théophile, Courtois, and Saint Nicolas—employ a structure close to that of the Resurrection myth outlined above; furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, the subject matter of each of the three plays is largely fictitious—none deals with canonical Sacred events⁴³. Like the fourteenth-century miracles and the later mysteres, they are plays of both res and verba. A relation to literature (a system of verbal signs) is guaranteed because each play is based on a literary precedent; the legends are not necessarily things that happened (as would be the case with a Creation play or a Resurrection play) but rather things that are said to have happened (the prodigal son legend is a parable spoken by Christ, not an historical event). A relation to contemporary society (res) is guaranteed by anachronism and the often mundane concerns of the principal personages. Unlike Representacio Ade and unlike Jeu de Robin et Marion, the plays are not dominated by either pole. Although this ambivalence between res and verba produces works which are difficult for a modern audience to interpret, it may indeed be precisely this ambivalence that permits a play to partake of a vital dramatic tradition itself largely determined by a performative opposition between a symbolism of words (dialogue) and a symbolism of things (the spectacle).

Jeu de Saint Nicolas is based on previous Saint Nicholas legends, and in these legends, many of the motifs and themes of the Resurrection myth are already present. Even in those texts that do not deal with the Iconia legend (the particular variant used in Jean's play), certain of those motifs and themes are noteworthy here. The Tres Filiae is represented by plays from Hildesheim and from Fleury. The most important version for our purposes is the version from Fleury (Young, II, 316-21). Here, the personages include a father, Saint Nicholas, three suitors, and three daughters. The play consists of three scenes; each begins with the poverty of the father; each includes the intervention of Saint Nicholas and his gift of money to the father for his daughter's dowry, and each concludes with the marriage of one of the daughters. Clearly, neither marriage nor the intervention of the Saint does any particular good; as long as there is another daughter (another available subject of conversion) the play can continue. Young's comment seems particularly appropriate:

One is moved to inquire whether, after the marriage
of the third daughter,
Pater is left in the destitution in which he began.
(II, 323)

One problematic situation (marriageable daughter but no dowry) is remedied through the intervention of a Saint and a monetary gift; the situation is resolved, but apparently to no purpose. The father is still left with a marriageable daughter and there is still no dowry.

In the Tres Clerici, represented by plays from Hildesheim and Fleury and by a dramatic fragment from Einsiedeln (Young, II, 324-37), several of the same motifs reappear. The students are destitute. An innkeeper kills them for money and gets (of course) no money. Saint Nicholas intervenes and resurrects the students; the innkeeper's murder has changed nothing⁴⁴. The students proceed to their next inn and presumably to their next Saint Nicholas play. Although there is no evidence that Jean knew these specific texts, he certainly knew the legends and expected his audience to know them. Preudom specifically alludes to both legends:

Il consilla les trois pucheles,
Si resuscita les trois clers;
(lines 1424-25)

[He (Saint Nicholas) counselled the three girls;
He revived the three students.]

Jeu de Saint Nicholas is based primarily on the Iconia legend, represented by two Latin plays: one by Hilarius (supposedly a student of Abelard) and one in the Fleury collection (Young, II, 337-51). Again, certain features of these plays accord with the Resurrection model outlined above. The moneylender (a Judeus or barbarus) leaves his money under the protection of an icon in which he has little or no faith. The money is stolen by thieves and returned by Saint Nicholas; the protagonist undergoes immediate (if not convincing) conversion to Christianity. Either of these two plays could be analyzed in accordance with the Resurrection model outlined above, although the relation is perhaps less clear than in the case of a play such as the Tres Filiae. It is significant that where Jean's version of the Iconia differs from these plays, however, his version tends to stress elements that relate it more closely to particular motifs in the Resurrection myth and to the structure of that myth. Jeu de Saint Nicolas could be analyzed on the basis of the Resurrection model as in the diagram below.

I

Li Rois (Pilate figure) dependent on
 subordinates; pagan ruler
Emirs (obedient to King, but murderers of
 Christians)
Invading Christians (soldiers/clerics)
Durand
stolen treasure (oxymoron)
abandoned treasure
Pagan with faith in a reliable idol
Thieves place royal wealth in care of Tavern
 and fall asleep

II

• confronts
• confront
• confront
• pray to
• tortures
• in care of
• gives up
• confront

III

• miracle
• Preudom
• pure soldiers;
• angel
• Preudom;
• Saint Nicolas;
• secular
• treasure to Christian icon;
• Saint Nicholas;

IV

• and is converted
• and are converted
• they are killed and gain Heaven
• Tervagan is maligned
• retention of treasure
• retention of treasure
• wealth is lost

If compared with similar motifs in the Iconia plays of Hilarius and Fleury, the motifs in Jeu de Saint Nicolas suggest a stronger emphasis on aspects of problematic incompatibility (column 1) and compatibility of opposing elements (column 3)—the characteristic features of the motifs defining the Resurrection myth. For example, there is nothing socially problematic about the wealthy Judeus of the Fleury play nor the wealthy barbarus of Hilarius. The problematic nature of this character is entirely religious: the Jew or barbarus is a non-Christian, but his concern for wealth is logically consistent with his social status. This figure is taken out of the third estate by Jean and transformed into a king; the result is a greater incompatibility between ideal social role and actual concerns. The ostensible military ruler (the King) has excessive wealth (a third-estate bourgeois attribute); in his capacity as a priest (he is closest in rank to the god or idol Tervagan), he is a non-Christian. The King's concerns for religion and knowledge (first estate), military power (second estate) and wealth (third estate) blur clear class distinctions.

Similarly, the Christian army in Jean's play has no parallel in the Latin dramatic texts⁴⁵. Again, a contradiction is emphasized. The Christians are presented as soldiers and as military aggressors. But representatives of Christianity, as clerici, are supposed to pray, not to prey (these two meanings of the word proier are rhymed by Jean in lines 119-20); they are supposed to be distinct from pillaging soldiers⁴⁶. The loss of the Christian soldiers' military aspect (they are easily dispatched by the non-problematic pagan soldiers) results in the restoration of their proper social definition (they are no longer violent aggressive soldiers) and the reward is Heaven.

Preudom himself is also a seemingly gratuitous addition to the basic Iconia legend. He is a preudhomme (a word which has no specific class connotation but which might be taken as "gentleman" in the sense of "socially inoffensive"); he is neither militant nor wealthy. As a poor and defenseless man, he poses no social contradiction in his capacity as a priest and as one who prays to a religious icon. Preudom is thus categorized within column 3—a stable if somewhat mysterious motif in the structure of the play.

Valorization

In order for the Resurrection myth to operate as a model of coherence, the crucial horizontal sequences must be maintained (see the diagram above …). That is, the sequence column 1 to column 2 to column 3 to column 4 (conclusion) is more important than the vertical ordering of those sequences (in the Passion and Resurrection narratives, this vertical disposing of incidents would amount to "general chronology"). Here, in Jeu de Saint Nicholas, it is not significant that a dice game, for example, precedes a reference such as the jailor Durand's "Je vou ferai ja un capel / D'une corde plaine de neus" (lines 1254-55) ("I will make you a headpiece / Of a knotted cord"), even though in the narrative of the Passion, references to the scourging or to the Crown of Thorns would precede references to the dice games at the foot of the Cross. Such motifs in Saint Nicolas function to signal the mythic structure itself, and do so even when only the general movement of the play, and not the order of specific motifs, can be usefully organized by its perplexed viewer through the model of the Resurrection myth. Valorization of this model can occur on various levels: there is formal valorization simply in the presentational mode of drama itself, which in 1200, had a limited range of expected subject matter. Lexical valorization might consist of a high density of words for "conversion", "suffering", or "rebirth" (e.g., "resuscite", line 525; "resuscita", line 1425). The principal signals discussed below are on the level of motif and theme. For the resurrection myth in Jean's play does not act simply to color the play with religious overtones; rather, it offers the audience a framework within which the details of the play can be seen to cohere and to make sense.

The first connection with the Resurrection is a thematic one. In Jean's play, the military defeat of the Christians could be described in the following formula:

1. collective militant Christians are killed by pagans and gain Heaven;
2. the single passive Christian (Preudom) is not killed;
3. the sole survivor (Preudom) is thrown into jail;
4. pagans are converted.

Such a formula is a negative variation of the events of the Passion and Resurrection:

1. the single passive Christian (Christ) is killed;
2. the collective active followers of Christ (nominally non-Christian) are unharmed;
3. the sole victim (Christ) releases souls from prison (Harrowing of Hell);
4. patriarchs are moved from Hell to Heaven.

But this negativization is not a denial of the myth. In both cases, what seemed like a defeat (the defeat of the Christian army and the crucifixion of Christ) turns out to be a victory (pagans are converted; Patriarchs are released from Hell). The Christians in Jean's play go straight to Heaven following their defeat and Preudom causes mass conversion, again through an apparent defeat. In both cases, a miraculous event is required to turn Christian defeat into Christian victory. The failure of Preudom's passive icon to protect the King's treasure from the thieves is important here; for without the actual theft, there would be no necessary intervention of the Saint, and thus no miracle.

Whether this structural relation between the events on Calvary and the military defeat in Saint Nicolas is recognized by the audience of the play is questionable. However, the underlying logic of the Resurrection myth could make the scene in the play coherent and logically plausible in such a way as to avoid forcing the audience to make decisions as to Jean's precise meaning and intent. Since Jean's own specific statements of intent (such as the announcement of a Saint Nicholas play and references to other genres such as the chanson de geste) tend to be misleading, such a mythic logic might indeed be useful to an audience. And it is significant here that Jean's additions and transformations of the motifs in previous versions of the Iconia tend to move in the direction of the Resurrection model.

In lines 482-87, Preudom prays for his salvation; if related to the time scheme of the Passion, this prayer could coincide with Christ's prayer in the garden, that is, at the point where the collective Christians and the isolated Christian are separated by the capture and punishment of the single isolated Christian. Preudom is no more confident in his personal ability to survive than is Christ:

Apparuit autem illi angelus de caelo, confortans eum. Et factus in agonia, prolixius orabat. Et factus est sudor eius, sicut guttae sanguinis decurrentis in terram. (Luke, XXII, 43-44)

[And an angel appeared to him from heaven, comforting him. And being in agony, he prayed longer. And his sweat became like drops of blood, running down onto the earth.]

In Jeu de Saint Nicolas, a similar angel "Li Angeles" appears to comfort Preudom at lines 488-95, immediately following his own prayer.

As this scene progresses, further signals are given suggesting the model of the Passion and the Resurrection. Preudom's eulogy of Saint Nicholas in lines 518-31, while suggesting certain legends of the Saint, could only literally be applied to Christ:

Sire, chou est sains Nicolais,
Qui les desconsilliés secourt.
Tant sont ses miracles apertes!
Il fait ravoir toutes ses pertes,
Il ravoie les desvoiés,
Il rapele les mescreans,
Il ralume les non voians,
Il resuscite les noiiés.
Riens qui en se garde soit mise
N'iert ja perdue ne maumise

Tel grasse li a Dieus donnee.
(lines 518-31)

[Sire, that is Saint Nicholas,
Who helps the disconsolate.
How his miracles are manifest!
He makes all losses recovered,
He returns the lost man to the right way,
He recalls miscreants,
He gives the blind sight,
He resuscitates the drowned.
Nothing placed in his care
Will ever be lost or harmed.
… Such grace has God given him.]

At this point, Saint Nicholas' miracles are by no means manifest; no Saint has the power to retrieve all losses; and Preudom's assertion that nothing placed in the Saint's care can be lost is flatly contradicted by the loss of the treasure itself Preudom's speech is introduced as follows:

Li Rois:    Di, va, vilains, se tu i crois.
Li Preudom: Oïl, sire, par saint crois;
          Drois est que tous li mons l'auort.
(lines 515-16)

[King:      Tell me now, varlet, if you
            believe (in the icon).
Preudom:    Yes, sire, by the Holy Cross.
            All the world should adore him.]

Again, that "all the world" has the obligation to pray to Saint Nicholas is not true. The Saint is a local quasideity integrated into a hierarchy of which God is the head. One may be indifferent to a Saint who has no connection with one's particular locale; "all the world" is required only to pray to God. The rhyme on crois "to believe" / "Cross" suggests the true recipient of Preudom's praise.

Another seemingly gratuitous addition to the legends is the character of the jailor, Durand, whom the King refers to as "Men tourmenteour, men tirant" (line 540) ("my torturer"). When the seneschal takes Preudom to prison, he calls Durand as follows:

Durant, Durant, oevre le chartre;
Tu aras ja ches piaux de matre.
(lines 541-42)

[Durand, Durand, open the prison;
You will have these weasel's hides.]

The chanting repetition, "Durant, Durant", means that language is not "ordinary"; it is not simple discourse. And "oevre le chartre" is a virtual translation of "Tollite portas" of the liturgy⁴⁷. This scene at the prison door is hardly essential to the action of the play. All that is necessary is that Preudom end in jail with the opportunity to pray. The second time the seneschal visits Durand, no such elaborate call is needed (lines 1209-11). The particular words here, thus, are not reducible to expected clichés nor to the mechanics of production.

This tendency toward over-eulogistic praise and the inclusion of incidents with a more logical relation to the Resurrection than to the dramatic narrative continues:

Car recouvrés sont nos pertes.
Les granges Dieu sont aouvertes
(lines 772-73)

[For our losses are all recovered;
The granges of God are wide open.]

Non sui, voir, ains sai tés nouveles
Dont grans biens nous porra venir.
(lines 767-68)

[No indeed; rather, I know such news
By which great good can come to us.]

These lines, spoken by Rasoir, supposedly refer to the King's treasure. But how can our losses be recovered through such news? and in what way is the exposure of the King's treasure equivalent to the opening of God's coffers? Again, to make sense on the narrative level, these lines must be taken as grossly hyperbolic, and it is significant that Rasoir is somewhat reluctant to explain precisely what he means. We, the audience, are asked to interpret these lines ourselves without a clear context; the preceding lines offer nothing to explain Rasoir's enthusiasm, and even Pincedé and Cliquet don't know what he is talking about. If we take these lines literally, there is only one possible referent: the Resurrection of God and the recovery of our lost innocence which depends on it. The Good News (the Gospel) tells of such an event, and perhaps that is Rasoir's "nouveles" "Nouveles" is indeed an odd choice of words when what Rasoir means is Connart's cri of the King's ban in lines 576-87:

Or cha, Connart! Criés le ban
Que li tresors est a lagan.
(lines 573-74)

[Now, Connart. Cry the ban
That the treasure is there for the taking.]

This intrusion of the Resurrection and Passion into the tavern may offer a basis for accepting the dice games of the tavern as something more than a curious joke Jean plays on his future exegetes. Again, the inclusion of such games seems entirely gratuitous: all that the logic of the story requires is that the thieves steal the King's treasure⁴⁸. Furthermore, the dicing itself has no significant financial consequence; each game ends in violence and a redistribution of stakes. All that is lost or gained in all these gaming scenes is Cliquet's cloak, which is left as payment for the Taverner (Cliquet notes, however, that the Taverner loses his sack in exchange, lines 1343-45). But the soldiers of the Passion plays also gamble, and in that dice game, all that seems to be at stake is a piece of cloth. It is possible that Jean's dicers and even the cloth, which is all that is finally exchanged, are there in his play because the dicers are there at the Passion. On the basis of such a myth, Jean's gratuitous gamblers and the futile games they play at least are coherent.

The dicing scenes are unique in the play in that they are the only scenes that must be presented almost entirely in metaphoric language. Technical expressions, with few exceptions (one is the word dés itself), must be drawn from the literary lexicon, which does not contain language specific to the game of dice. Dicing must be expressed in language that is "open"; that is, language that will bear a variety of meanings and interpretations—the most difficult being those meanings specifically related to the game itself⁴⁹. Despite the accuracy of the text (or of the exegesis), there will always be a discrepancy between things (the dice game itself and the action of the actors representing the game) and words (the lexical value of the words employed in the course of the game).

Clikés:    A quel jeu?
Pincedés:    A quel que tu veus.
Clikés:    A plus poins?
Pincedés:    Soit, si m'aït Dieus.
Rasoirs:   Jou giet, Dieus le meche en mon
            preu!
(lines 870-72)

[Cliquet: What game?
Pincedé:    Whatever you wish.
Cliquet: The most points?
Pincedé:    So be it, God help me.
Rasoir: I'll throw; may God make it
           profitable.]

Clikés:   Or seroient treize de pris,
         S'il voloient venir a nous!
Pincedés: A! sains Lienars, chu desous!
         Si seroit li affaires plains.
Clikés:   Sains Nicolais, un tout seul mains!
(lines 1131-35)

[Cliquet: Then let it be thirteen,
         If they wish to be good to us.
Pincedé:   Ah! Saint Liénard, give me a lower
            throw!
         Thus this business will be well run.
Cliquet:   Saint Nicholas, a single point at
           least!]

Since we are in a situation where we know that Saints can and will appear, none of these mock prayers is a simple oath. If something of value does "wish to come" to Cliquet, it is unlikely to be a point count on dice. The motif of monetary exchange thus becomes the linguistic exchange between meanings related to dicing and meanings related to religion; among these latter are the literal values of the prayers and names used by the dicers as simple expletives. And just as the individual conversions in the Resurrection do not conclude the myth, in Saint Nicolas all the violence, meticulous rule-making, concern for cheating, and careful tabulation of debts and points in the dice game finally does no good:

   Or sommes nous yevel;
Comme devant resoit communs.
Or en prengne se part chascuns.
(lines 1175-77)

   [Now we are all equal;
Let everything be in common, as before.
And let each take his share.]

As mentioned earlier, the final scene of the forced conversion of the fourth Emir has been related to similar conversions in the chanson de geste⁵⁰. At the opening of the play, the chanson de geste aspect and the religious aspect are kept separated; one is represented by the court's relation to the Christian invaders, the other by the court's relation to the thieves. Now, at the conclusion of the play, these two aspects are conflated. The Resurrection myth demands that conversion be inconclusive; but the chanson de geste conversion is absolute and final. In Fierabras, one either accepts Christianity (as do the son and daughter) or one is killed (as is Fierabras' father, Courtain)⁵¹:

Qui ne veut croire en Dieu s'ot la teste
 caupée.
(Fierabras, line 6032)

[He who will not believe in God will have his
  head chopped off.]

Jeu de Saint Nicolas ends rather with a series of conversions that result in the same types of motifs that follow the conversions in the Resurrection myth—they are all analyzable as problematic (column 1 in the diagram above). The King's loyalty to Saint Nicholas is based solely on the return of his treasure; there is no evidence that it will be any more firm than his loyalty to Tervagan. The children in Fierabras accept Christianity with such fervor they are willing to agree to the execution of their own father who will not be converted. In Jeu de Saint Nicolas, however, the fourth Emir is only nominally converted; his faith is explicitly superficial, but he is not willing to die for any belief. And whether or not the jailor Durand is converted at all is something critics of the play have been unable to determine⁵².

If the Resurrection model is seen as functional in the play, these and other details that otherwise are obscure or superfluous can be accepted as coherent, and coherent within a single frame of reference. The souls of the Patriarchs are temporarily in the wrong hands (they have been stolen by Lucifer); the King in Jean's play also has allowed his treasure to be stolen. Both the pagan King (in charge of treasure) and God (in charge of souls) are heads of society. And following a global conversion, each is more acceptable in this role. The King in Saint Nicolas is now a Christian. God, in the Resurrection myth, has ended the seemingly unjust punishment of his major spokesmen, the prophets; the mystery is no longer "why does He permit such injustice?" but only "why did He let the treasure go to the devil in the first place?" Yet neither the dramatic nor the cosmic upheaval is decisive. The thieves in Jean's play are not hanged, they merely go into exile, much like many of the Jews and incompetent soldiers of the Resurrection plays. And like the devils following the binding of Lucifer in those same Resurrection plays, there is every indication that Jean's thieves intend to remain active (see lines 1359-77).

Conclusion

Jean's meaning in Jeu de Saint Nicolas is never clear, and the above discussion has dealt only with the mechanics of the play that suggest to its audience that some sort of meaning is possible. Saint Nicolas indeed may mark a step in the "secularization" of medieval drama; the Sacred history presented in Representacio Ade is here the local history of the Saint and the national history of the chanson de geste. But the crucial difference between these two plays lies less in the existence of the intrusive comic elements in Saint Nicolas than in the nature of the models upon which each play relies. Representacio Ade never permits a literary structure to override an historical theory of Sacred history or a social one (the required stability of the Three Estates). The movement from doctrine to the tavern in Jean's play is less a movement toward res than a movement away from res. For the tavern scene is never simply a mimesis of real tavern scenes (whatever those might have been); it is set within the context of a literary chanson de geste and within the context of a literary miracle; only within such literary contexts does the activity in the tavern make any sense at all. Realistic detail only balances these literary models, and thus in a sense emphasizes those models. The true addition to the stage is not a realistic character, it is the fantastic messenger Auberon; for Auberon as a bearer of verbal messages personifies both language and the literary system dependent on language. Repetitions in Representacio Ade have doctrinal and typological significance; repetitions in Saint Nicolas are simply that—verbal repetitions that form a grid of coherence that implies a message but never states one. The models that finally emerge as intelligible within the structure of the play are equally ambivalent: the Resurrection is not an event at all; it is the recollection of an event as recorded and renewed within the literary dramatic tradition. The miracle too is a non-event; it is determined less by "what happens" than by what the rules of the miracle genre dictate. But the Christian audience must in no way believe this.

These models then mediate between words and things, and as long as the structure of thought that produces such a model remains vital, so will the literature based on that model remain vital. A later expression of the vitality found in Jean's play are the fourteenth-century miracles and fifteenth-century mystères—texts with little appeal for a modern audience. But a further development from Jean's play, assuming as a base a play of res such as Representacio Ade, will lead to a purely literary and parodic text such as Adam de la Halle's Jeu de Robin et Marion.…

Notes

¹ Text and line references are to the edition of Henry, Jeu de Saint Nicolas.

²Jean Bodels Saxenlied, ed. F. Menzel and E. Stengel, 2 vols. (Marburg: Elwert, 1906-09), lines 6-11.

³ Robert Guiette, "Li conte de Bretagne sont si vain et plaisant," Romania, 88 (1967), 1-12. This opinion is shared by Hans Robert Jauss, "Theorie der Gattungen und Literatur des Mittelalters," GRLMA, 1 (1972), 127-28 and Zumthor, Essai, p. 160.

⁴ The angel's speech (lines 550-57) is problematic and requires substantial emendation to conform to any verse type; see Henry's notes to these lines, JSN, pp. 209-11 and T. B. W. Reid, "On the Text of the Jeu de Saint Nicolas," in Studies in Medieval French Presented to Alfred Ewert in Honour of his Seventieth Birthday (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961), pp. 110-11. I omit these lines from consideration here. The angel's decasyllabic quatrains (lines 1262-73) are also unique but could be considered a variant of the long line. Willem Noomen, "Remarques sur la versification du plus ancien théâtre français: l'Enchaînement des répliques et la rime mnémonique," Neophilologus, 40 (1956), 187-93 notes the difference in tone between monorimed quatrains and octosyllabic couplets but denies such a tonal difference between Alexandrines and octosyllabic stanzas.

⁵ Editions of Jean's work are as follows: Karl Bartsch, ed., Altfranzösische Romanzen und Pastourellen (1870; rpt. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1967), II, 14 and III, 37-40 (citations to Bartsch are to section and number); Pierre Nardin, Les Fabliaux de Jean Bodel (Dakar, 1959); Pierre Ruelle, ed., Les Congés d'Arras (Jean Bodel, Baude Fastoul, Adam de la Halle) (Bruxelles: Presses Universitaires, 1965). In matters of attribution, I have followed Charles Foulon, L 'Oeuvre de Jehan Bodel (Paris: Rennes, 1958), pp. 11-18, a work basic to any study of Jean Bodel.

⁶ Jean's five pastourelles are roughly contemporary with the two of Richart de Semilli, the first northern French examples of the genre. Marcabru (fl. 1130-47) has left one pastorela and Cercamon is said to have written "pastoretas en l'antiga guiza" (whatever this might mean). See Jean Frappier, La Poésie lyrique en France aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles, (Paris: CDU, n.d.), pp. 57-73 and Pierre Bec, La Lyrique française au Moyen-Age (XIIe-XIIIe siècles): Contribution à une typologie des genres poétiques médiévaux, vol. I; Etudes (Paris: Picard, 1977), pp. 119-36. Similarly, Jean's fabliaux must be dated at the earliest period of the fabliau; see Foulon, L'Oeuvre, pp. 41-65 and Per Nykrog, Les Fabliaux (1957; new ed. Genève: Droz, 1973), p. 246. His congé, the base for the congé of Baude Fastoul and Adam de la Halle, has only an extremely weak parallel in Hélinant's Vers de la Mort (itself perhaps later than Jean's poem); see Ruelle, Les Congès, pp. 37-38, 72-74.

⁷ Gustave Cohen, Le Théâtre en France au Moyen Age, 2 vols. (Paris: Rieder, 1928-31), vol. II: Le Théâtre profane, p. 15. Jean Frappier, Le Théâtre profane en France au Moyen Age (XIIIe et XIVe siècles) (Paris: CDU, 1959), p. 8.

⁸ Onésime LeRoy, Etudes sur les mystères (Paris: Hachette, 1837), pp. 15-32; Frank, Medieval French Drama, pp. 93-105. Despite his remarks on the a priori nature of mélange, Frappier, Le Théâtre profane, pp. 35-52, discusses only the comic portions of the play (perhaps because of his title).

⁹ Vol. I: Le Théâtre religieux, pp. 33-39 and II, 14-15.

¹⁰ Howard S. Robertson, "Structure and Comedy in Le Jeu de Saint Nicolas," SP, 64 (1967), 551-63; Walter H. Lemke, Jr., "The Angel in Le Jeu de Saint Nicolas," Romance Notes, 11 (1969), 420-26. A more careful distinction between these terms can be seen in the chapter divisions of "Epic and Crusade," "Iconia," and "The Tavern" in Patrick R. Vincent, The Jeu de Saint Nicolas of Jean Bodel of Arras: A Literary Analysis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1954), see esp. pp. 40-65.

¹¹ Noted by Otto Rohnström, Etude sur Jehan Bodel (Uppsala: Almquist and Wiksell, 1900), p. 42.

¹² For texts of Latin Saint Nicholas plays, see Young, II, 307-60. Both the Tres Clerici and Tres Filiae legends are alluded to in JSN lines 1424-25 (see also, lines 518-31). The Fleury plays may not precede JSN; see Charles W. Jones, The Saint Nicholas Liturgy and Its Literary Relations (Ninth to Twelfth Centuries) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963), pp. 90-116. They are dated in the twelfth-century by Otto E. Albrecht, ed., Four Latin Plays of St. Nicholas (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1935), pp. 3-4. The only other dramatic precedent for the pompous pagan court in JSN would be the eleventh- and twelfth-century Herod plays (Young, II, 50-99; discussion in Frank, Medieval French Drama, pp. 31-39) or Pilate's court and the boasting soldiers in the Passion cycles (see e.g., Le Seinte Resureccion).

¹³ Henry's argument against the authenticity of the prologue (JSN, pp. 9-16), while not entirely convincing, is considerably more persuasive than its defense on aesthetic grounds by Tony Hunt, "The Authenticity of the Prologue of Bodel's Jeu de Saint Nicolas," Romania, 97 (1976), 252-67. Contrary to what Hunt implies, no audience contemporary with Jean would need an orthodox prologue to sense Jean's drastic alterations of the Saint Nicholas legend in his play. For further discussion of a supposed tradition of dramatic prologues see Gilbert Dahan, "Notes sur les prologues des dramas religieux (XIe-XIIIe siècles)," Romania, 97 (1976), 306-26.

¹⁴ See Omer Jodogne, "La Pastourale dramatique française du XVe siècle," Studi Fracesi, 8 (1964), 201-13.

¹⁵ Gaston Paris and Ulysse Robert, ed., Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnages, 8 vols. SATF, 4 (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1876-93) (my citations are to the number assigned to each play in this edition). A more manageable selection can be found in L. J. N. Monmerqué and Francisque Michel, Théâtre franćais au Moyen Age (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1842), pp. 216-668 with modern French translation.

¹⁶ Willem Noomen, "Pour une typologie des personnages des 'Miracles de Nostre Dame'," in Mélanges de linguistique et de littérature offerts à Lein Geschiere (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1976), pp. 71-89.

¹⁷ L. Marin, "Les Femmes au tombeau: Essai d'analyse structurale d'un texte évangélique," Langages, 22 (1971), 29-50.…

³⁶ For convenience, I do not distinguish here between Passion and Resurrection; the rules governing both types of play are largely the same. The significance of subject matter per se, however, has been vigorously argued in the influential work of Rainer Warning, esp. Funktion und Struktur.

³⁷ L. Petit de Julleville, Les Mystères, 2 vols. (Paris: Cerf, 1880), II, 183-85.

³⁸ For French plays, see discussion in Frank, Medieval French Drama, pp. 86-92, 124-53. For convenient survey of German plays from the same period, see Rolf Steinbach, Die deutschen Oster- und Passionsspiele des Mittelalters (Köln: Böhlau, 1970), pp. 12-25, 104-30.

³⁹ Joseph A. Dane, "The Aesthetics of Myth in the Redentin Easterplay," Germanic Review, 53 (1978), 89-95.

⁴⁰ For distinctions between subject matter, theme, and motif, see Jean Rychner, La Chanson de geste: Essai sur l'art èpique des jongleurs (Genève: Droz, 1955), pp. 126-27 and Zumthor, Essai, pp. 147-53. A theme is an organization of particular motifs. I use "myth" to describe the analogous organization of particular themes.

⁴¹ Edmond Faral and Julia Bastin, ed., Oeuvres complètes de Rutebeuf 2 vols. (Paris: Picard, 1959-60), II, 167-203.

⁴² Edmond Faral, ed., Courtois d'Arras: Jeu du XIIIe siècle, 2nd. ed., CFMA, 3 (Paris: Champion, 1922). There are four surviving MSS of the play, three dated by Faral in the second half of the thirteenth century (p. v). None of the MSS, however, contains indications of speaker, scenes, nor action and none appears to be a copy of a surviving MS. Although the text is generally considered in surveys of drama, there is no indication that its scribes considered it a dialogued text.

⁴³ The Prodigal Son (Courtois d'Arras, from Luke XV, 11-32) is a story told by Christ, not an historical event. Its moral is literal (the scholastic sensus parabolicus) not allegorical. See de Bruyne, Etudes, II, 311-13 and references above.…

⁴⁴ Saint Nicholas' revealing of his identity to the Senex (the innkeeper) (lines 60ff. in the Fleury version) may be related to his appearance at the tavern in Jean's play. I assume "Li Tavreniers" (or "Li Ostes" as he is called here) is present during Saint Nicholas' appearance to the thieves (JSN, lines 1274-99). For the psychological and dramatic subtleties consequent on assuming he is not, see Wane, JSN, p. xviii.

⁴⁵ Global conflict is, however, a common motif in the prose versions, although the pagans, not the Christians, are the aggressors; see references in Albrecht, Four Latin Plays, pp. 43-47.

⁴⁶ This pun on "to pray"/"to prey" may reflect the ambivalent social attitudes to the Crusades themselves; see Pierre Jonin, "Le Climat de croisade des chansons de geste," CCM, 7 (1964), 279-88.

⁴⁷ Cf. Grace Frank, ed., La Passion du Palatinus: Mystère du XIVe siècle, CFMA, 64 (Paris: Champion, 1922), line 1396: "Ovrez les portes infernaus!" See also, the Ludus Paschalis of Klosterneuberg (Young, I, 428) and on the early history of the Harrowing of Hell in the liturgy, Young, I, 149-77. See also JSN, line 1016: "Ostes, ostes, ouvrés nous l'uis"; normally, when the tavern is open (it is night here) one need not ask for permission to enter.

⁴⁸ In Courtois d'Arras, the financial losses incurred at the tavern are the logical basis for the poverty that requires that Courtois seek employment with the bourgeois and ultimately return home. "Hé! Dicus, ceste povrete me tort a penitanche, / et en tel liu m'amaint u j'aie ma sustanche!" (lines 449-50), "Oh God, this poverty makes me repentant, and directs me to a place where I might have sustenance."

⁴⁹ For the difficulties this language has caused both commentators and the scribe, see e.g., Henry's notes to lines 1054-1109 (JSN, pp. 246-56).

⁵⁰ Jeanroy, "Reminiscences," pp. 435-38.

⁵¹Fierabras, lines 5919-90.

⁵² Against Foulon, L'Oeuvre, pp. 611 and 662, Reid, "Text," p. 119 argues that Durand is not converted. He emends lines 1154-55 from "duel ai / De chou que tant ai respite" to "que tant t'ai respité" and translates "I am sorry that I have spared you so long." Contrary to what Henry's note, JSN, p. 273, seems to suggest, Reid does not say what he thinks the MS reading means, only what he thinks Foulon thinks it means: "that I have delayed so long [to become a Christian]." Henry, JSN, p. 273 translates the MS reading: "j'ai grand dépit de ce que j'ai tant différé de te mettre à mort," thus refusing to Durand the honor of conversion and to Reid the honor of supplying an essential emendation. Unfortunately, even if Durand does give a precise statement of his position here, the whole matter of his possible conversion is completely ignored by his dramatic companions. Neither the King, the Seneschal, Preudom, nor the Emirs pay his remarks the slightest attention.