Enciclopedia Cattolica

BODEL, JEAN

Volume II · p. 1005 · 1949

English translation · Testo originale italiano

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

BODEL, JEAN. - A French poet from Arras, who lived between the end of the 12th century and the beginning of the 13th, whose writings are of a very varied nature.

Among his works are remembered a short poem on the war of Charlemagne against the Saxons (based on historical fact but with extensive and personal reworkings compared to earlier sources), five pastourelles, a religious drama, and a kind of sorrowful and resigned farewell to the world in verse, written around 1202 when B. was struck by leprosy (Li Congiè de menue poi molto da altri poeti, who made it the prototype of a "literary genre"). The sacred drama, Jeu de St Nicolas, revolves around the conversion of a man from Reggio by the Saint, and is rich in secular and popular elements. It is one of the first examples of the genre, treated with notable variety and liveliness.

BIBL.: E. Raymond, Les Congés de J. B., in Romania, 9 (1880), pp. 216 ff.; the Chanson des Suisses was edited by F. Menzel and Z. Stengel, Marburg 1906-1909; the Jeu de Saint Nicolas by A. Jeanroy, Paris 1925. Cf. also D. Rohustrám, Étude sur J. B., Upsala 1900; L. I. N. Monmerqué and F. Michel, Théâtre français au moyen-âge, Paris 1885; 2nd ed., ibid. 1939, pp. 187 ff.; and G. Cohen, Le théâtre en France au moyen-âge, 1914 (larger edition with the same title, in 2 vols., ibid. 1925-31).