April 2, 2025 • 44 mins
When it comes to influential writers of the Middle Ages, there are big names that are probably familiar to a lot of us. But who was it who influenced them? It’s time to get to the deep cut of medieval literature, and look at a writer whose worked crossed genres from epic, to drama, to heartfelt notes, to raunchy humour. This week, Danièle speaks with Lynn Ramey about the incredible Jean Bodel, his massive influence on other medieval writers, and some of his unforgettable works.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Hi everyone, and welcome to episode two hundred and eighty
five of the Medieval Podcast. I'm Danielle Sabelski, also known
as the five Minute Medievalist. When it comes to influential
writers of the Middle Ages, there are big names that
are probably familiar to a lot of us crecentotoins Marie
de France, Christine de Pisan, Giovanni Boccaccio, or Jeffrey Chaucer,
(00:38):
for instance, But who was it who influenced them? It's
time to get to the deep cut of medieval literature
and look at a writer whose work cross genres from
epic to drama, to heartfelt notes to raunchy humor. This
week I spoke with doctor Lynn Raymie about the incredible
Jean Bodell. Lynn is Professor of French and Cinema and
(00:59):
Media are It's at Vanderbilt University. She's the author of
Christian Saracen and Genre in Medieval French Literature and Black Legacies,
Race and the European Middle Ages, as well as being
the co editor of Teaching Games and Game Studies in
the Literature Classroom alongside Tyson Hugh. Her new book is
an Introduction to Jean Bodel. Our conversation on who this
(01:22):
prolific writer was, his massive influence on other medieval writers,
and some of his unforgettable works is coming up in
just a moment. But because some of Jahanbodell's work is
unforgettable for very, very adult reasons, I wanted to let
you know that while you won't want to miss this story,
if you're listening at work or with kids, you may
(01:43):
want to save this episode for later. For those of
you ready to hear more about the father of the Fablio,
it's all right here right after this. Well, welcome Lynn
to talk about Jean Valdel today. I am so excited
about this. I've really enjoyed the book and I can't
wait to talk about it. Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Well, thank you, Danielle. I'm excited to talk about it.
It's still in my mind.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Yay. Well, I can see why. I can see why.
So let's start at the beginning. When is he writing?
Who is this guy? When? And where is he writing?
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Well, there's a lot we don't know for sure about him,
but we can pretty much date his works too, like
eleven ninety to about twelve oh two, So kind of
a key period right there at the end of the
twelfth early thirteenth centuries. AHAs is where he's known to
have lived, but we also think he probably traveled around
(02:36):
some based on various things about his biography, so as
in case people don't know where that is at that time,
it was in one of the what we would call
a Belgian county, so kind of from northern France now,
but then a different part of the world didn't belong
to the French king at the time.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Yeah, so we're talking about Flanders right now, and you
spend some time in the book really setting the scene
in Flanders for Gen's work and his life. Why did
you want to spend so much time setting this scene
for us? There was so important about Flanders and Neras
at this moment.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Well for me, I mean, I think with all my scholarship,
it's really been important to think about where the author
was and what's the context around what they're writing about,
what they're thinking, what they're doing, just to kind of
help people understand better why they would have written the
way they wrote, or you know, what influenced them. And
for him, I think it is central to his writing
in different ways in different works, but this area of
(03:32):
Flanders was very prosperous economically, and it was also a
center for literary production. So knowing that about him, I
think makes a lot of difference when you think about
why he wrote the way he wrote and the things
he chose to write about.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
And I think also not just you know, okay, so
that's the economic.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Side of it, but then from the social side of it,
just the political atmosphere at the time. We did have
the King of France at least especially towards the end,
trying to to assert himself over this area, and then
knowing that the rulers of this area were very interested
in Crusade, I think just adds even more to kind
of what is his worldview, like, what was it like
(04:14):
for him to live at this period, and who were
his audiences and so that to me, that's always an
important part of what I write about, but I think
with him in particular, I think it made a big difference.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Yeah, I think you're right, and I think that'll come
out more as we start to talk about his actual
works themselves. I mean, the camp Friend's always starting to
take over Flanders, but it seems to really bother Jean
Vodell at some moments. So the last thing I wanted
to mention when we're situating jan in his world and
his life, is that in one of his major works
and perhaps his final work, he talks about being involved
(04:48):
in a community of other artists and writers. So can
you tell us a little bit about what that was
like working within this community of writers within Ara.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
Sure, others have written were on this community, and I'll
give some references in a minute, But what I think
about is kind of like a writer's club, and it
seems like that's how they they define themselves. There were
other professional societies at the time, other kinds of guilts
and writers had their own guild and so in this
(05:18):
particular area, they had a choice of two writers' guilds,
and he shows up on the roles of one of them,
And so we know that he was a part of that,
and what it meant to him and how he used
that in his writing and his work is really hard
to know. But for me, it's just very appealing to
think of him being in this kind of writer's club
(05:38):
where it was seen as a profession. But also maybe
they went out drinking together and had fun.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Times and you know it wasn't just it's.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Clear in his You were talking about his final point
le cong where he says goodbye to everybody, all its friends,
and I think that says something that he mentions this
group as kind of an important part of his worldly
his earthly existence is this group of friends that have
a similar interest.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Yeah. I love this because this is an idea that
often gets attributed to much later periods or people talk
about like this being an idea of a Renaissance type man.
He has a group of writers that he writes with,
and of course it's happening in the Middle Ages as well,
So I think this is an important part not only
of his biography, but talking about widely what's going on
(06:24):
in the Middle Ages among artists. And you had a
sense that he had a career where he was a jungler,
perhaps like he was wandering around. Tell us a little
bit about what that might have been.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Like, Yeah, sure, yeah, we think that a lot of
the writers, probably because you could not spread your literary
works very effectively through the written page.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
That was just not possible.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
So how did people hear these stories and how did
they listen to the poems and.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
See the plays and things?
Speaker 3 (06:52):
It was all oral and there was a different community
of people that sometimes overlap. So you would have these
menstreuls or who would go around performing and they didn't
have to be the same people that wrote the works,
so that was that was pretty clear. And their income
is based on it's almost like a typ economy, but
it's also you know, you've got a patron who brings
(07:14):
you in, you do your performance, and then they pay
you according to how well you do it. So you
can well imagine that there were some people that were
good writers, but they weren't necessarily good performers.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
But there were quite a few.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
That did both, it seems, and you know, it could
be anyone from different levels in society, from kind of
like a Duke William of Aquitaine, who could have performed.
We think his some of his poetry, and we do
know that some of the other nobles did perform their
poetry in courts. And by perform, I would I tend
to picture something and that is, you know, we think
(07:48):
of these plays and these a play of course that
we know that that was put on by a troop
of people, but if it was something like a poem,
I would imagine more of a dramatic reading. You know,
the FAO probably had some gestures in them, So those
kind of scandalous stories, you know, when you talk about epic.
I'm really interested in how they did epic because I
(08:10):
did they actually have people kind of acting it out
in the background with kind of a narrator figure, which
I think is quite possible, or did the narrator figure
just tell the story as engagingly as they could, maybe
with some actions or I don't know, something to elaborate it.
But I did kind of think of this as it
was the entertainment for the Middle Ages.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
This kind of performed whether it was.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
Poetry or epic, So you've got to imagine that it
was accompanied by some something of interest and not just
people sitting in chairs listening to someone reading something rather boringly.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
That's how we do it, but that's I just don't
think that's how they did that.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Yeah, well, there are so many ways that you could
make something dramatic when you're reading it, but so many
of those things it wouldn't come down to us, right,
like things like puppets or a shadow was like, you're
never going to see that, right, But I think you're
right that the performances if we were to time travel
would be pretty spectacular and engaging, not just as you say,
(09:12):
people just sitting there and droning on. You would get
enough of that in church, which is something that people
made fun of quay a lot in the Middle Ages, although.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
They did, they did, And even there we think that
the early drama and probably Kola and some other like
that was there to spice up what happened in church,
So even church was not you know, the same kind
of boring kind of thing you might imagine. And you
asked about Jean Baudell in particular, and I, you know,
we don't know for sure. He does make some kind
(09:40):
of offhanded comments about bad junglaars out there and how
they are giving a bad name to the profession.
Speaker 4 (09:47):
But I think from some of reading closely some of
his works that he probably did do some travel and
go to different courts and at least perform somewhat his
own work and others.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Probably yeah, yeah, well, I mean you got to start somewhere.
And I was totally going to say, yeah, the early
plays start to appear within the church or with the
Holy Contacts, and we're going to get to that in
just those seconds. But to what you were saying about
him probably having traveled around and performed this makes a
lot of sense to me because he starts to appear
(10:18):
or we start to notice him, around eleven ninety, and
that's pretty late. He's about what twenty five years old,
and for somebody who's been working on a career like
this for the Middle Ages, this is getting to be
a bit late. So we see him around eleven ninety,
how does he show up? What does the context in
what she shows up?
Speaker 3 (10:37):
I'm trying to think exactly where we first see him,
but in certain manuscripts that we have, he's listed as
the author, so I'm not going to get the chronology
exactly right on what came first. But basically, if you
look through these manuscripts, most of them it definitely wasn't
the epic that came first.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
So the Fablio have some dates to them.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
We know more or less because they were in collections
about what time some of them were made. And since
we know he's one of the earliest, then if not
the earliest, really, then we know it had to be
around this time. And then we know and he died,
So I feel pretty comfortable with the accuracy of the
dating that other people have done.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
So it seems about.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Right to me, and that's important. I mean, it's always
a team effort academia. You're just doing it yourself, right.
You look at the facts and you decided you agree,
and so you've agreed on these dates for him, and
they make sense. It makes sense. And what's interesting in
something that you noticed was that Jean Vaudelle starts to
let you know that he's the author, which is unusual
(11:43):
for the time, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Yes, it is.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
That's one thing I always have to talk to my
students about and enjoy talking about. It's kind of this
idea of what is an author and when did people
start to care that they were writing something? And to
us it seems very obvious, you know, you would want
to be recognized for putting in that much work to
come up with something, But it seemed early on a
lot of the writers really didn't want to be recognized.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
In particular.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
You know, they might give this story was inspired by
and give some even false kind of etymologies sort of
for the text where it might have come from. And
then when you you know, when scholars go and try
to find that supposed text, it actually never existed, and
so the authors are just trying to connect themselves to
some famous work that may never have existed in order
(12:30):
to give themselves some credibility. So I think there was
that sense that maybe came from Plato and others, that
you know, writing was to be an author, to be
a poet is partly to lie, partly to not be
entirely truthful in the stories that you're telling.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
So you can kind of see where.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
They might not want to associate their names with that,
But then it wasn't too.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Long before they did. I mean, I kind of think.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Of it also like with acting, because it seemed like
for so many centuries acting was just considered to be
what people did who were the lowest classes of society.
That was the profession that was not looked at honorably,
and so maybe that was true as well with writing.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Only a fiction, not of nonfiction.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
So these kind of truth claims, you know, oh this
is actually the you know, the story of Lancelot is
actually true or what. These kinds of things, I think
we're pretty common. Just to kind of take that stigma
off of being an author.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
By Jean Boudell's team and I mean there were others.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
I mean, Mamie de Frans gives her name, But the
same is true with with Jean Boudell.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
He he seems.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
To recognize this is a lot of work. I'm crossing
over a bunch of different genres. Some of it true,
you know, some of it more historical. I mean, none
of it is really truly truly historical, but some of
it more historical than others.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
And I want to be recognized. And I think that.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
Shows up also in his Courge poem. You know, the
sense that I am a person. I'm an individual, so
in a period where individualism isn't an important thing, I'm
an indie. I have done something, and I want to
be remembered and remember my friends. And I don't know,
seems forward thinking to me, which is I think that's
(14:09):
one of the things that really attracted.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Me to him, his being forward thinking or his being
an individual out loud.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Maybe both.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
I mean, in some ways they kind of go together,
because I can see where writing something that kind of
fit in with whatever the political situation, and by fit in,
I mean really go along with whatever the king or
your community was already doing as a dominant discourse. I
can see that being easy. But Jean Boudell didn't do that.
(14:39):
You know, he wrote things that kind of were against
some norms, and then he was also willing to say
I wrote this. And so between those two things, I
think it's kind of I don't know, it.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Feels to me.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Yes, I did notice that he does write against a
lot of norms in different ways. So let's start with
some of his writings. So the fabliau are some of
his perhaps most well known works. Although a lot of
them I knew from different contexts, right, I didn't know
that they were attached to Jean Waldell. So this is
learning for me. But he's writing fabliau that are kinder
(15:16):
in some ways than a lot of the familio elsewhere.
So one of the people who works on the series
of which your book is a part is Tyson Hugh,
and I had him on the podcast talking about how
some of like Chaucer's stories are pretty cruel, but Jeanvaldell's
stories are not as cruel. So tell us a little
bit about some of Joam Waldell's fablau.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
Sure he kind of does run the gamut, and that
that is interesting and it's interesting also that you brought
up Tyson and Chaucer, and because it's thought that you know,
Jean Bodell did influence him. Some of his fabio were
probably influential, but I think not all of them are
even I know that one on the Wolf and the Goose,
for instance, is not even considered to be a fabdo.
(15:57):
A lot of times it's left out of collections entirely. Well,
it is left out of all collections that I know
of a fabio, but also not even talked about with
Jean Bodell and his fabio because it's an animal story,
and so if you have an animal.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Story like that, it doesn't fit.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
We have that tass Arian kind of really scandalous, I
would say, view of what a fabo should be.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
And then when you see something that was clearly from
the time.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Period, so maybe we should reconsider what our conception of
what a fabio is rather than say, you know, oh,
that can't be a fabio. And that one, the Wolf
and the Goose, you know, it's more of a morality story,
and he does that with other ones too. The Wolf
and the Goose is about gluttony, eating too much, also
a lying and tricking others. But there's one on a horse.
(16:49):
Two people want the same horse, so once a monk
and one's a farmer, and they have a bet to
see who's going to win this horse, and the farmer
outwits the monk, which is that's pretty standard for a
Fablio type of outcome. But it really isn't about anything,
I guess, other than just saying you can win something
(17:11):
by strategically waiting, knowing the situation and outsmarting the other person.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
I mean, I guess that's the moral from that story.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
I'm not tired, sure, But there are ones where it's
really kind of more of what you might see elsewhere
where there's a visiting person, a young person who comes
to a house and sneaks into bed with the husband's wife,
and then his friend sneaks into the daughter's bed, and
so you've got this kind of story about sex.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
It's about sex, but it's also.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
About tricking older established men, which I you know, it
is fun.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
So he really does kind of do a little bit
of everything.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
It's not mean, it's not mean spirited, and I think
that was one thing I talked about in that particular one,
but also in general, it doesn't strike me as misogynistic
as many of the other ones do.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
I'm not going to say he was a feminist.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
But on the other hand, when the man is cuckolded
and his daughter is having her fun too, it seems
to me more like the message there is pay attention
to what's going on in your house or even you know,
you're too old to be worried about sex. Let the
women have their fun or something.
Speaker 5 (18:23):
You know.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
It's more like that is the moral of the story
rather than some of these ones that are just like
you can't trust women, you can't Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Yeah, Well there are so many times when you read
some fabiori Reed Shauser and to Eat and you think
is the right person being punished here? Like what is
this about? And it seems like a cruel sense of humor.
But I'm not saying this as much like I was expecting.
So there's one fablio that Jean Mordell did called the
Three Thieves, or that's one of the names that is
(18:52):
attributed to it. So this is one where the third
thief decides he's not as good as the other two,
so he's going to quit thieving. And I thought that
things were gonna turn out very badly for him, but
in the end they ended up just sharing a meal
together and everything was fine, and so like, this is
a surprise to me because you kind of brace yourself.
(19:13):
I think when you read some of these medieval stories,
thinking like this is gonna be very unkind in the end,
but these they don't turn out that way, or at
least many of them don't.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
No, I agree with you.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
That story is kind of fun because it's almost like
a reunion of friends by the end. The story is
named after the three friends I made, Bought and trevi R.
So you've got these three characters that were thieves and
you know, had a good life together. But then one decides,
you know, yeah, exactly, I can't be as good at
thieving as these two, so I'm going to give it
(19:46):
up and I'm going to be an honest person, and
then trying to kind of out with them when they
come to to take something from him.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Instead, he just realizes, hey, let's.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
Join forces again and enjoy this ham that they've been
trying to steal.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
So, I don't know, it's kind of a sweet ending, almost.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
Yeah, yeah, which is unexpected to me. I thought for
sure that the person who ducked out of thieving was
going to get some sort of come up, and so
that was going to be cruel and he didn't. And
the one, the other one that we need to talk about,
because of course everyone wants to talk about, is going
to be the Penis Dream. And this is another one
that I thought was going to be cruel or at
least super misogynistic, and it has like a whiff of misogyny,
(20:27):
as they all do, right, but it's actually pretty nice
in the end.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Yeah, it is. Yeah, that one.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
It came to my mind the other day just to
get me in a weird way, you know, as things
as things kind of do, just thinking about this kind
of variety of penises in this market that is so
much more objectifying of men in some.
Speaker 6 (20:46):
Ways than it is of women. And it so the
woman shows up at the well, it's a dream. But
you know, at this market of penises and there's big ones,
fat ones, small ones.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
You know, like the descriptions are hilarious of all the
different sizes and possibilities for.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
Penises, and I think as you're reading through it, you
know you're kind of like, oh my gosh, this is hilarious.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
He could represent, you know, just kind of a reality.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
That men also experience, and I'm sure that's kind of
what made it fun for them was just you know, look,
there's a great variety in what we see in the world,
and then for women, I just think that the ability
to say, you know, what would it be like to
just go and select your ideal penis?
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Which would I find it? Hilarious?
Speaker 1 (21:31):
But you know, yeah, it is hilarious. Okay, So to
clue everyone in, there's a story. There's this couple and
the man has been away for two months. He comes
back and he's welcomed by his wife. She's so happy
to see him. They're happy to see each other, but
he gets a little bit too drunk and he can't
make it that evening. So she has a dream of
a marketplace just full of penises. She gets to pick
(21:51):
whichever one she wants, and there's something for everybody, which
is what I love. There's like a range of styles
and prices and it's amazing. Anyway, she went to seal
a deal with the merchant and ends up hitting her
husband in the face and wakes him up, and when
he wakes up, they ends up getting it on together.
But instead, like she does, insult him, she does say
(22:12):
that his wouldn't be worth very much, but he takes
this very well and they enjoy each other, as they say,
all night, and then he thinks it's so funny that
he tells people in the marketplace in the square like
the next day, so like this is a happy story.
It seems like it's just teasing, Like even when she's
criticizing his own equipment, it doesn't seem mean spirited. It
(22:35):
just seems hilarious.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
It is it is, and I like, you know, we
talked earlier about how Jean Videl mentions himself, and this
is one of those places where he mentions himself and
he's like, I heard the story when the guy told
it in the marketplace, which is unlikely, but you know,
but nonetheless I love that kind of truth seeming that
he tells.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
You know, I could have heard this somewhere. This could
actually have happened, which is just a lot of fun.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
And it also does kind of make you think about
what the conversations were like at the marketplace.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
You know, what were people talking about To me?
Speaker 3 (23:10):
This kind of stuff makes the Middle Ages seem so
much more present, more like something you would see, You
could theoretically see today.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
That's like what.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Yeah, I mean hilarious stories being told in the marketplace
to somebody like Jean Mordell saying I heard this story.
I'm stealing it. I'm retelling it because this is great.
There's a lot, a lot of juice in this story.
But also it seems so ordinary in some ways, like
it is obviously fantastic and embellished and stuff, but a
type of thing where someone says, I had a dream
(23:42):
and it was funny. I think you're right. I think
this is the type of thing that people would be
talking about in the marketplace. So Jean Bdell is known
as maybe the first person to write this type of story,
which you now call fablio. But this isn't the only
thing that he wrote. One of the things he wrote
was a huge, mutually long epic poem which I need
(24:02):
to ask you about because it is called the Song
of the Saxons, and it's almost it's almost the Song
of Roland. So I need to ask you why do
you think he wrote this? If it's going to be
so similar to the Song of Roland? What do you
think the reasons for writing this are?
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Why would you have written it? I think it does
show us.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
I believe that the Song of Roland was really well
known and performed, and so kind of it acted as
that touchdown. He may have been thinking, I want to
try my hand at something, you know, like I want
to I've done these other genre I want to try
this one and see how that goes. And I also
think the focus for the Song of Roland is definitely Christians,
(24:42):
risus Muslims. It fits into the early Crusading time, but
by moving the focus from Spain but definitely further south
now moving it north to even the areas above Ras
does fit into different crusis that were going on at
that time, and it also brings in a different group.
(25:05):
This wasn't uncommon for medieval people to see Muslims where
they weren't necessarily there.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Not to say that there weren't.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
Muslims in all areas of society in different ways, in
different cultures, but seeing these people as what he would
have called, you know, Saracens is not you're talking about
people from the north, so Danes or I mean, it's
hard to really put a.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Group that he was thinking about.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
But if he was thinking about kind of the Windish
Crusades to the north that. I think he's kind of
trying to transpose that same I guess optic that made
Charlemagne such a compelling emperor in the Crusades to the
south and then take it to the north. So I
think that may have been what he was thinking was,
I'm going to rewrite it and make it more relevant
(25:57):
for today. He could have still done a crusade, because
there were clearly crusades going on, but this one maybe
is a bit more relevant even and it does seem
like he does go out of his way to to
say this is a truer story. You know, this is
really talking about the kings of France and how they
established themselves. So he may have been doing it to
(26:19):
kind of if the Song of Roland is talking about
kind of the spread of Christianity and its pre eminence
towards Jerusalem, I think this might be kind of talking
about France and the origins of the French Empire as
it were at this point, and how it also has
claims to other areas for the north and west and east.
(26:44):
So that may have been his motivation, you know, an
alternate historiography of some short and it's hard to know.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
Yeah, it's an interesting one because it has elements of crusading,
like you're saying saying that the Saxons are Muslim, which
is pretty ludicrous, but okay, we'll go with that, like
as a community, as they're saying. But then also while
he recounts the kings of France and how Charlemagne came
to be King of Friends or Emperor Holy Roman Emperor,
(27:12):
he's very critical of the French at the same time.
And so this is an interesting poem and that it's
meant to be praising the French, but it is really
backhanded in a lot of ways.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Yeah, And the same could be said for the Song
of Roland.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
So it makes sense in some ways if he's following
the Song of Roland as his kind of model to
actually spell it out, because I think for students of
the Song of Roland, it's not usually obvious that this
is kind of an unusual optic through which to see Charlemagne,
who's losing crying, you know, like all of the things
(27:46):
that you might not think of as a hero today
don't fit Charlemagne in the Song of Rolin, and here
even more so. But he says it out loud at
the beginning of the story, he talks about the origin
story for this is coming from and how it relates
to the entire rights that the empire has on different people,
so it becomes like a story of kings, and then
(28:10):
he does set that aside.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
But what you see from the.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
Story is, yeah, it's it's really unclear who the good
guys are.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
And again, this is something that's not often attributed to
the Middle Ages, that subtlety of not knowing who the
good guys are, but it does appear in a lot
of medieval works. This one it ends, which just kind
of ends, and they're still peril involved, but it just
kind of stops there. So maybe he was like, I'm
done with this subject.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
I wonder that too. Yeah, he just kind of left
it off.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
And again it's unclear who finished it and what it
even should have been or what it might have been
in his mind, And was it lost, you know, where
our parts lost? Or is it just he just kind
of got tired of it.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
Yeah, he's like, I'm just gonna put the pen down now. Well,
and we're not really sure, as you say, of the chronology,
but near the end of his life he starts to
write or he finishes writing something that he's best known for, perhaps,
which is the Play of Saint Nicholas. So this is
fascinating for me. I came up studying drama and I
had never come across this work. And so tell us
(29:21):
a little bit about the Play of Saint Nicholas and
why it is so revolutionary.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
Yeah, it's revolutionary on a few points. One is just
the fact that he wrote this story.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
That is Okay, I feel like I'm medieval explaining this
to you, but well, for the purposes for people who
might not know, drama was kind of lost.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
It was a lost art in the West.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
So at the very early part of the Middle Ages,
there were not we don't believe that there were plays,
and since it was so popular in antiquity, that was
one of the major genres than what happened. And so
when we look at how it started to reappear, it
really did seem to start to reappear as little things
that people acted out in church or on the front
(30:03):
steps of the church, because maybe not inside the most
sacred parts of the church, but at any rate, you know,
people couldn't read, they didn't know necessarily what was going on,
especially anything in Latin as the texts were, how were
they supposed to know what happened in the Bible. So
they had the stained glass windows, but they also had
and sculptures and things like that.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
But they also had.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
These little we think many plays that were put on
during services and around services. And what happened with Jean
Boudell and then later is a sense of moving that
play outside.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
Of the church setting. Now it doesn't mean it wasn't
nearby or you know.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
So it's not entirely and wildly it is talking about
a saint. It is nothing that is in the Bible.
This is just a story about a saint that does
not appear anywhere in the Bible. It has morality lessons
to it, and it does treats some serious topics, but
it's also funny at times. You know, there are bar scenes,
(31:04):
there are things that are definitely not taking place in
what we would have thought a biblical story, anything having
to do with a biblical story. There's there's gambling, there's
you know, all sorts of things that take place in
this play.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
So that's I think that's what he's kind of revolutionary for.
Speaker 3 (31:21):
And clearly with his brothers, you know, the other members
of his guild that did plays at the time, so
it's a new thing.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
It's a movement away from kind of.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
Strictly religious plays towards something that's more fun and longer,
but also religious adjacent.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
Yeah, well, this is really interesting and it makes me
lean towards your theory that he was just trying things out.
Let's just see if I can do this. I've already
written an epic poem it went okay, I'm going to
try and write this play and see how it goes.
And I think that that is so interesting having this
play of Saint Nicholas appearing, because, as you say this,
this is not something that the type of drama that
(32:02):
we're seeing around this time is doing, where there are
bar scenes and things like that, where the dialogue is
pretty snappy, it's not just moralizing, and that this is
very unusual and it's cool to see that's happening right
here in front of us at such an early date.
So we don't really have the evidence or do we
have the evidence of his community writing these plays as well,
(32:25):
or is this kind of our sole example later.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
Yeah, Adam de la Ale was also from the same
area and part of his CONFROI, but others.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
Too, but this is the first one we know that fits.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
This kind of secular model, and then others shortly thereafter.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
So it seems like they were talking about In my mind,
they're talking about it, you know.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
Yeah, Well, I mean a play doesn't just exist in
evacumini people to perform it, which means he probably had
an idea of who could perform it or how it
would be performed, and so actually I think it gives
us a lot of clues about what's happening in terms
of drama at this time. And this is much earlier
than the stuff that I had known about. So this
is fabulous, no good.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Good good.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
As you said, this is probably his best known work,
and it's the one that people are most likely to
know about it, and it's got the most scholarship around
it as well. Carol Science has done a book on
it that's really well, not on it, but the play
writing atmosphere NRS at the time. So it's not really
about Jean Bardell, but it's about a lot of different people.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
I think it's called the World in its stage.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
It really puts you in that kind of sense that
there's a movement that theater and social changes. Theater is
very much reflecting social change at the same time that
it's being changed by what's going on in the societies,
particularly in Ahras.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
Yeah, that's awesome. I think this is just sort of
a reflection of how much work has happened in the
last twenty years since I was really looking at as closely.
It just shows how much is changing and how much
is being brought forward, including your own book. So I
really want to before we wrap this up, talk about
the fact that Jean Baldelle stepped away from an amazing
career and he wrote a farewell poem about it, which
(34:10):
is really heartbreaking. So what happened to jam Baldell?
Speaker 3 (34:15):
Yeah, it's pretty clear from reading his lecon, which again,
this is why I love his work is it's the
first one we know that it's like this, but we'll
see it later with others who write these kind of
like last Will and Testament poems. So le con means,
you know, saying goodbye to people or taking my leave,
and he's just talking about different aspects of his life,
(34:37):
but largely, you know, saying thank you to people in
various ways for having helped him. A few little digs
at others who may not have been so helpful, but
also be talking about how he feels I guess and
what's going on. We know he got leprosy and he
talks about it in this poem. What it made him
(34:58):
feel like? I yes, but also not unwell, kind of
a pariah in many ways, and he talks about having
to leave society.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
So he's saying goodbye. He's not dying yet, but he.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
Can't do the things that he wanted to do, in
one of which was to go and crusade apparently, and
this might be his only way to really kind of
say goodbye to people through the written words. So it
is tragic to think about, but it's also cool that
he managed to set up this type of storytelling and
goodbye telling that others will emulate, some hilariously.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
But his isn't quite.
Speaker 3 (35:35):
Maybe it's of a piece with some of his other stuff,
Like you mentioned, you know, it's not mean, you know
Philosophiel his some of his is really mean but hilarious.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
And you enjoy his goodbye.
Speaker 3 (35:48):
Point is this is more kind of a heartfelt saying
it in a poetic way.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
The best that he could.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
And this is one of the reasons I think it's
it was not translated before and still is a little
hard to read.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
Is that, and I mean technically hard to read.
Speaker 3 (36:06):
Is that it's talking about specific people at a specific.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Time and you don't know who they are.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
So I kind of have this dream of if we
get enough things out there that people have translated, or
that we can identify some of the people in the
and some we can probably identify already, but identify more
about the society at the time, just by these little
comments about various figures that he's.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
Talking about, Yes, because sometimes it's hard to trace them,
Like is this hyperbolic when he says this person can
never be bested a tournament? I want to know about
that guy.
Speaker 5 (36:40):
Who's this guy?
Speaker 1 (36:41):
Is he actually somebody who's going out it's a tournament
or are we just being nice to him? I always
want to find out more about these people, like you're saying.
But I think it's also rare to get such a
detailed look at what it was like to have leprosy, when,
as you mentioned in the book, this is probably the
height or just on the decline of what was the
(37:01):
height of leprosy in the Middle Ages. So to see
somebody who's experiencing it and having that explained to us,
and what it's like to retreat from society because of it.
It's very valuable, I think as a work, I think
so too. So do we know that anything else came out?
Like he could still be writing in a lepresarium, but
we haven't seen anything else that's his or this is
(37:23):
kind of the true farewell?
Speaker 2 (37:25):
It appears to be.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
Yeah, Like I said, I kind of looked at this
over the dating that people have done for the different manuscripts.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
That makes sense to me. And this appears to really
be the last thing he wrote. So people do.
Speaker 3 (37:38):
Die eventually, it's usually not that fast, but it does
seem like he may have stuck it out as long
as he could and then once he went to the Leprosarium,
that was it.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
Yes, Well, I mean how often do you get that
last word anyway? I mean, famously we're talked about Chaucer.
He just disappears and we don't know what happened, And
here we may know what happened sort of kind of maybe,
which is better than we have in most cases. Well,
I want to thank you so much for coming on
and telling us about John Budell. He's such an interesting figure,
(38:10):
and I'm glad I came across this book, and I
hope other people will come across this as well. Thank
you so much for coming on and telling us about him.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
Sure, thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 3 (38:19):
It's great to kind of get out the word that
there's this. I wouldn't call him exactly little known, but
I think to the English speaking audience he is less
known than he should be, and so he's definitely someone
to pay attention to.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
To find out more about Lind's work, you can visit
her faculty page at Vanderbilt University. Her new book is
an introduction to Joan Bodel. Well, welcome back to the podcast, Peter.
It's good to see you back again virtually. Glad you
are feeling better. Welcome back, indeed.
Speaker 5 (38:51):
Adda feel attle lot better. Ready to go back to
the grind?
Speaker 1 (38:54):
Yes, well, I mean you need to keep this website running.
Speaker 5 (38:58):
Right indeed, indeed, and there's always like news and stuff happening,
so it keeps me busy.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
Keeps you busy. And the Middle Ages are in the
news this week.
Speaker 5 (39:09):
Indeed. Indeed, we don't often talk about polls here on
the Medieval Podcast, but you gov as a British organization.
But this is an international poll that they did of Americans,
and they'd survey twenty two hundred Americans about their opinions
of the Middle Ages. Yeah, it was kind of interesting.
So there's some highlights that I can share with you.
(39:29):
The words that they associate with the Middle Ages. Top
three were violent, dark, and dirty.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
Despite how many years have we put in, I mean,
nothing has changed there.
Speaker 5 (39:43):
Yeah, there are many views that I think that would
have been there now or like back, you know, fifty
years ago. Things they liked about the Middle Ages. Things
that they have favorable view of are castles, ye, chivalry,
and Gothic architecture.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
I mean these are all fun things for sure.
Speaker 5 (40:03):
But the Americans held a negative view of the Black Death.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
I think we all hold a negative view of the
Black Death, you know, the most devastating pandemic in human history.
Speaker 5 (40:14):
Yeah, yeah, it was. It was mostly disliked. So overall,
three four percent of Americans hold favorable view of the
Middle Ages and an equal number of Americans hold an
unfavorable view of the Middle Ages, with the rest kind
of in between. So the most important for us is
(40:34):
that eleven percent of Americans think about the Middle Ages
at least once per week.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
Yes, when they listen to the Medieval podcast or when
they visit your website.
Speaker 5 (40:43):
That's right. We may able to get eleven percent of
Americans to listen to this podcast.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
Yes, absolutely, and maybe then it'll change their thinking about
the Middle Ages. But you know what was interesting is
that people apparently, according to this survey, think about the
Middle Ages more often than they think about the Roman Empire.
As it turns out.
Speaker 5 (41:01):
That's right, that's right. All those TikTok bemes could have
been for us.
Speaker 1 (41:07):
No, I think that's fine. I think we could just
leave those alone. Maybe don't ask for that.
Speaker 5 (41:11):
Anyways, We have a news piece on it, but I
also encourage everyone to check out this you have, Paul.
It's got like a ton of the questions that they asked,
you know, certainly something like that, Like any medievali scholar,
what you want to just understand this is the going view,
at least in the United States towards the medieval past.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
Yes, and it includes who are people's favorite named characters,
like favorite figures from history. Includes also the people who
they have no idea who they are, Like most people
don't know who Saladin is. Yeah, but most people know
who Richard the Lionheart is, which is interesting but not surprising.
Speaker 5 (41:47):
I think, yeah, I think a lot of you know,
we kind of see is like this is stuff that
you know would be broad like it's like fifty years
ago to both habits diehard. Right.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
Yes, we still have work to do, which is good
because it means that there is still work for us,
and that's what we want. We want to keep getting
all this information that we know about the Middle Ages
further out there, and it turns out that there is
more to.
Speaker 5 (42:10):
Do exactly exactly. So we've been working pretty hard on
medelists that my writers have been doing some good work.
So we have a piece on ten musical instruments tore
played in Medieval Europe. We also have this fun piece
on ten forgeries, Ten famous forgeries from the Middle Ages
beyond the donation of Constantine.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
Yes, there are a lot of them. That was an
interesting article. I mean, all of the articles are good ones, right,
so people should go and check them out on medievalis
dot net.
Speaker 5 (42:40):
Indeed, indeed, thanks Peter for.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
Stopping by and telling us what is on the website.
Thanks thank you to all of you who support my
work by letting the ads play, through sharing your favorite
episodes on social media, reading, borrowing and lending my books,
and becoming patrons on patreon dot com. Patrens can access
also of goodies like medievalist dot net's book club, extensive
(43:03):
lists of open access articles, and access to this podcast
ad free. To find out more or to become a patron,
please visit patreon dot com slash Medievalists for everything from
writers to fighters. Follow Medievalist dot net on Instagram at
medievalist net or blue Sky at Medievalists. You can find
(43:23):
me Danielle Sibalski across social media at fiven Medievalist or
five Minute Medievalist, and you can find my books at
all your favorite bookstores. Our music is Beyond the Warriors
by Geefrog. Thanks for listening, and have yourself a wonderful day,
Hi everyone, and welcome to episode two hundred and eighty
five of the Medieval Podcast. I'm Danielle Sabelski, also known
as the five Minute Medievalist. When it comes to influential
writers of the Middle Ages, there are big names that
are probably familiar to a lot of us crecentotoins Marie
de France, Christine de Pisan, Giovanni Boccaccio, or Jeffrey Chaucer,
(00:38):
for instance, But who was it who influenced them? It's
time to get to the deep cut of medieval literature
and look at a writer whose work cross genres from
epic to drama, to heartfelt notes to raunchy humor. This
week I spoke with doctor Lynn Raymie about the incredible
Jean Bodell. Lynn is Professor of French and Cinema and
(00:59):
Media are It's at Vanderbilt University. She's the author of
Christian Saracen and Genre in Medieval French Literature and Black Legacies,
Race and the European Middle Ages, as well as being
the co editor of Teaching Games and Game Studies in
the Literature Classroom alongside Tyson Hugh. Her new book is
an Introduction to Jean Bodel. Our conversation on who this
(01:22):
prolific writer was, his massive influence on other medieval writers,
and some of his unforgettable works is coming up in
just a moment. But because some of Jahanbodell's work is
unforgettable for very, very adult reasons, I wanted to let
you know that while you won't want to miss this story,
if you're listening at work or with kids, you may
(01:43):
want to save this episode for later. For those of
you ready to hear more about the father of the Fablio,
it's all right here right after this. Well, welcome Lynn
to talk about Jean Valdel today. I am so excited
about this. I've really enjoyed the book and I can't
wait to talk about it. Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Well, thank you, Danielle. I'm excited to talk about it.
It's still in my mind.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Yay. Well, I can see why. I can see why.
So let's start at the beginning. When is he writing?
Who is this guy? When? And where is he writing?
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Well, there's a lot we don't know for sure about him,
but we can pretty much date his works too, like
eleven ninety to about twelve oh two, So kind of
a key period right there at the end of the
twelfth early thirteenth centuries. AHAs is where he's known to
have lived, but we also think he probably traveled around
(02:36):
some based on various things about his biography, so as
in case people don't know where that is at that time,
it was in one of the what we would call
a Belgian county, so kind of from northern France now,
but then a different part of the world didn't belong
to the French king at the time.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Yeah, so we're talking about Flanders right now, and you
spend some time in the book really setting the scene
in Flanders for Gen's work and his life. Why did
you want to spend so much time setting this scene
for us? There was so important about Flanders and Neras
at this moment.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Well for me, I mean, I think with all my scholarship,
it's really been important to think about where the author
was and what's the context around what they're writing about,
what they're thinking, what they're doing, just to kind of
help people understand better why they would have written the
way they wrote, or you know, what influenced them. And
for him, I think it is central to his writing
in different ways in different works, but this area of
(03:32):
Flanders was very prosperous economically, and it was also a
center for literary production. So knowing that about him, I
think makes a lot of difference when you think about
why he wrote the way he wrote and the things
he chose to write about.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
And I think also not just you know, okay, so
that's the economic.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Side of it, but then from the social side of it,
just the political atmosphere at the time. We did have
the King of France at least especially towards the end,
trying to to assert himself over this area, and then
knowing that the rulers of this area were very interested
in Crusade, I think just adds even more to kind
of what is his worldview, like, what was it like
(04:14):
for him to live at this period, and who were
his audiences and so that to me, that's always an
important part of what I write about, but I think
with him in particular, I think it made a big difference.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Yeah, I think you're right, and I think that'll come
out more as we start to talk about his actual
works themselves. I mean, the camp Friend's always starting to
take over Flanders, but it seems to really bother Jean
Vodell at some moments. So the last thing I wanted
to mention when we're situating jan in his world and
his life, is that in one of his major works
and perhaps his final work, he talks about being involved
(04:48):
in a community of other artists and writers. So can
you tell us a little bit about what that was
like working within this community of writers within Ara.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
Sure, others have written were on this community, and I'll
give some references in a minute, But what I think
about is kind of like a writer's club, and it
seems like that's how they they define themselves. There were
other professional societies at the time, other kinds of guilts
and writers had their own guild and so in this
(05:18):
particular area, they had a choice of two writers' guilds,
and he shows up on the roles of one of them,
And so we know that he was a part of that,
and what it meant to him and how he used
that in his writing and his work is really hard
to know. But for me, it's just very appealing to
think of him being in this kind of writer's club
(05:38):
where it was seen as a profession. But also maybe
they went out drinking together and had fun.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Times and you know it wasn't just it's.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Clear in his You were talking about his final point
le cong where he says goodbye to everybody, all its friends,
and I think that says something that he mentions this
group as kind of an important part of his worldly
his earthly existence is this group of friends that have
a similar interest.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Yeah. I love this because this is an idea that
often gets attributed to much later periods or people talk
about like this being an idea of a Renaissance type man.
He has a group of writers that he writes with,
and of course it's happening in the Middle Ages as well,
So I think this is an important part not only
of his biography, but talking about widely what's going on
(06:24):
in the Middle Ages among artists. And you had a
sense that he had a career where he was a jungler,
perhaps like he was wandering around. Tell us a little
bit about what that might have been.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Like, Yeah, sure, yeah, we think that a lot of
the writers, probably because you could not spread your literary
works very effectively through the written page.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
That was just not possible.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
So how did people hear these stories and how did
they listen to the poems and.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
See the plays and things?
Speaker 3 (06:52):
It was all oral and there was a different community
of people that sometimes overlap. So you would have these
menstreuls or who would go around performing and they didn't
have to be the same people that wrote the works,
so that was that was pretty clear. And their income
is based on it's almost like a typ economy, but
it's also you know, you've got a patron who brings
(07:14):
you in, you do your performance, and then they pay
you according to how well you do it. So you
can well imagine that there were some people that were
good writers, but they weren't necessarily good performers.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
But there were quite a few.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
That did both, it seems, and you know, it could
be anyone from different levels in society, from kind of
like a Duke William of Aquitaine, who could have performed.
We think his some of his poetry, and we do
know that some of the other nobles did perform their
poetry in courts. And by perform, I would I tend
to picture something and that is, you know, we think
(07:48):
of these plays and these a play of course that
we know that that was put on by a troop
of people, but if it was something like a poem,
I would imagine more of a dramatic reading. You know,
the FAO probably had some gestures in them, So those
kind of scandalous stories, you know, when you talk about epic.
I'm really interested in how they did epic because I
(08:10):
did they actually have people kind of acting it out
in the background with kind of a narrator figure, which
I think is quite possible, or did the narrator figure
just tell the story as engagingly as they could, maybe
with some actions or I don't know, something to elaborate it.
But I did kind of think of this as it
was the entertainment for the Middle Ages.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
This kind of performed whether it was.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
Poetry or epic, So you've got to imagine that it
was accompanied by some something of interest and not just
people sitting in chairs listening to someone reading something rather boringly.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
That's how we do it, but that's I just don't
think that's how they did that.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Yeah, well, there are so many ways that you could
make something dramatic when you're reading it, but so many
of those things it wouldn't come down to us, right,
like things like puppets or a shadow was like, you're
never going to see that, right, But I think you're
right that the performances if we were to time travel
would be pretty spectacular and engaging, not just as you say,
(09:12):
people just sitting there and droning on. You would get
enough of that in church, which is something that people
made fun of quay a lot in the Middle Ages, although.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
They did, they did, And even there we think that
the early drama and probably Kola and some other like
that was there to spice up what happened in church,
So even church was not you know, the same kind
of boring kind of thing you might imagine. And you
asked about Jean Baudell in particular, and I, you know,
we don't know for sure. He does make some kind
(09:40):
of offhanded comments about bad junglaars out there and how
they are giving a bad name to the profession.
Speaker 4 (09:47):
But I think from some of reading closely some of
his works that he probably did do some travel and
go to different courts and at least perform somewhat his
own work and others.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Probably yeah, yeah, well, I mean you got to start somewhere.
And I was totally going to say, yeah, the early
plays start to appear within the church or with the
Holy Contacts, and we're going to get to that in
just those seconds. But to what you were saying about
him probably having traveled around and performed this makes a
lot of sense to me because he starts to appear
(10:18):
or we start to notice him, around eleven ninety, and
that's pretty late. He's about what twenty five years old,
and for somebody who's been working on a career like
this for the Middle Ages, this is getting to be
a bit late. So we see him around eleven ninety,
how does he show up? What does the context in
what she shows up?
Speaker 3 (10:37):
I'm trying to think exactly where we first see him,
but in certain manuscripts that we have, he's listed as
the author, so I'm not going to get the chronology
exactly right on what came first. But basically, if you
look through these manuscripts, most of them it definitely wasn't
the epic that came first.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
So the Fablio have some dates to them.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
We know more or less because they were in collections
about what time some of them were made. And since
we know he's one of the earliest, then if not
the earliest, really, then we know it had to be
around this time. And then we know and he died,
So I feel pretty comfortable with the accuracy of the
dating that other people have done.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
So it seems about.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Right to me, and that's important. I mean, it's always
a team effort academia. You're just doing it yourself, right.
You look at the facts and you decided you agree,
and so you've agreed on these dates for him, and
they make sense. It makes sense. And what's interesting in
something that you noticed was that Jean Vaudelle starts to
let you know that he's the author, which is unusual
(11:43):
for the time, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Yes, it is.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
That's one thing I always have to talk to my
students about and enjoy talking about. It's kind of this
idea of what is an author and when did people
start to care that they were writing something? And to
us it seems very obvious, you know, you would want
to be recognized for putting in that much work to
come up with something, But it seemed early on a
lot of the writers really didn't want to be recognized.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
In particular.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
You know, they might give this story was inspired by
and give some even false kind of etymologies sort of
for the text where it might have come from. And
then when you you know, when scholars go and try
to find that supposed text, it actually never existed, and
so the authors are just trying to connect themselves to
some famous work that may never have existed in order
(12:30):
to give themselves some credibility. So I think there was
that sense that maybe came from Plato and others, that
you know, writing was to be an author, to be
a poet is partly to lie, partly to not be
entirely truthful in the stories that you're telling.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
So you can kind of see where.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
They might not want to associate their names with that,
But then it wasn't too.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Long before they did. I mean, I kind of think.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Of it also like with acting, because it seemed like
for so many centuries acting was just considered to be
what people did who were the lowest classes of society.
That was the profession that was not looked at honorably,
and so maybe that was true as well with writing.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Only a fiction, not of nonfiction.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
So these kind of truth claims, you know, oh this
is actually the you know, the story of Lancelot is
actually true or what. These kinds of things, I think
we're pretty common. Just to kind of take that stigma
off of being an author.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
By Jean Boudell's team and I mean there were others.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
I mean, Mamie de Frans gives her name, But the
same is true with with Jean Boudell.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
He he seems.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
To recognize this is a lot of work. I'm crossing
over a bunch of different genres. Some of it true,
you know, some of it more historical. I mean, none
of it is really truly truly historical, but some of
it more historical than others.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
And I want to be recognized. And I think that.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
Shows up also in his Courge poem. You know, the
sense that I am a person. I'm an individual, so
in a period where individualism isn't an important thing, I'm
an indie. I have done something, and I want to
be remembered and remember my friends. And I don't know,
seems forward thinking to me, which is I think that's
(14:09):
one of the things that really attracted.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Me to him, his being forward thinking or his being
an individual out loud.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Maybe both.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
I mean, in some ways they kind of go together,
because I can see where writing something that kind of
fit in with whatever the political situation, and by fit in,
I mean really go along with whatever the king or
your community was already doing as a dominant discourse. I
can see that being easy. But Jean Boudell didn't do that.
(14:39):
You know, he wrote things that kind of were against
some norms, and then he was also willing to say
I wrote this. And so between those two things, I
think it's kind of I don't know, it.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Feels to me.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Yes, I did notice that he does write against a
lot of norms in different ways. So let's start with
some of his writings. So the fabliau are some of
his perhaps most well known works. Although a lot of
them I knew from different contexts, right, I didn't know
that they were attached to Jean Waldell. So this is
learning for me. But he's writing fabliau that are kinder
(15:16):
in some ways than a lot of the familio elsewhere.
So one of the people who works on the series
of which your book is a part is Tyson Hugh,
and I had him on the podcast talking about how
some of like Chaucer's stories are pretty cruel, but Jeanvaldell's
stories are not as cruel. So tell us a little
bit about some of Joam Waldell's fablau.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
Sure he kind of does run the gamut, and that
that is interesting and it's interesting also that you brought
up Tyson and Chaucer, and because it's thought that you know,
Jean Bodell did influence him. Some of his fabio were
probably influential, but I think not all of them are
even I know that one on the Wolf and the Goose,
for instance, is not even considered to be a fabdo.
(15:57):
A lot of times it's left out of collections entirely. Well,
it is left out of all collections that I know
of a fabio, but also not even talked about with
Jean Bodell and his fabio because it's an animal story,
and so if you have an animal.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Story like that, it doesn't fit.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
We have that tass Arian kind of really scandalous, I
would say, view of what a fabo should be.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
And then when you see something that was clearly from
the time.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Period, so maybe we should reconsider what our conception of
what a fabio is rather than say, you know, oh,
that can't be a fabio. And that one, the Wolf
and the Goose, you know, it's more of a morality story,
and he does that with other ones too. The Wolf
and the Goose is about gluttony, eating too much, also
a lying and tricking others. But there's one on a horse.
(16:49):
Two people want the same horse, so once a monk
and one's a farmer, and they have a bet to
see who's going to win this horse, and the farmer
outwits the monk, which is that's pretty standard for a
Fablio type of outcome. But it really isn't about anything,
I guess, other than just saying you can win something
(17:11):
by strategically waiting, knowing the situation and outsmarting the other person.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
I mean, I guess that's the moral from that story.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
I'm not tired, sure, But there are ones where it's
really kind of more of what you might see elsewhere
where there's a visiting person, a young person who comes
to a house and sneaks into bed with the husband's wife,
and then his friend sneaks into the daughter's bed, and
so you've got this kind of story about sex.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
It's about sex, but it's also.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
About tricking older established men, which I you know, it
is fun.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
So he really does kind of do a little bit
of everything.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
It's not mean, it's not mean spirited, and I think
that was one thing I talked about in that particular one,
but also in general, it doesn't strike me as misogynistic
as many of the other ones do.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
I'm not going to say he was a feminist.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
But on the other hand, when the man is cuckolded
and his daughter is having her fun too, it seems
to me more like the message there is pay attention
to what's going on in your house or even you know,
you're too old to be worried about sex. Let the
women have their fun or something.
Speaker 5 (18:23):
You know.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
It's more like that is the moral of the story
rather than some of these ones that are just like
you can't trust women, you can't Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Yeah, Well there are so many times when you read
some fabiori Reed Shauser and to Eat and you think
is the right person being punished here? Like what is
this about? And it seems like a cruel sense of humor.
But I'm not saying this as much like I was expecting.
So there's one fablio that Jean Mordell did called the
Three Thieves, or that's one of the names that is
(18:52):
attributed to it. So this is one where the third
thief decides he's not as good as the other two,
so he's going to quit thieving. And I thought that
things were gonna turn out very badly for him, but
in the end they ended up just sharing a meal
together and everything was fine, and so like, this is
a surprise to me because you kind of brace yourself.
(19:13):
I think when you read some of these medieval stories,
thinking like this is gonna be very unkind in the end,
but these they don't turn out that way, or at
least many of them don't.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
No, I agree with you.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
That story is kind of fun because it's almost like
a reunion of friends by the end. The story is
named after the three friends I made, Bought and trevi R.
So you've got these three characters that were thieves and
you know, had a good life together. But then one decides,
you know, yeah, exactly, I can't be as good at
thieving as these two, so I'm going to give it
(19:46):
up and I'm going to be an honest person, and
then trying to kind of out with them when they
come to to take something from him.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Instead, he just realizes, hey, let's.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
Join forces again and enjoy this ham that they've been
trying to steal.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
So, I don't know, it's kind of a sweet ending, almost.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
Yeah, yeah, which is unexpected to me. I thought for
sure that the person who ducked out of thieving was
going to get some sort of come up, and so
that was going to be cruel and he didn't. And
the one, the other one that we need to talk about,
because of course everyone wants to talk about, is going
to be the Penis Dream. And this is another one
that I thought was going to be cruel or at
least super misogynistic, and it has like a whiff of misogyny,
(20:27):
as they all do, right, but it's actually pretty nice
in the end.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Yeah, it is. Yeah, that one.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
It came to my mind the other day just to
get me in a weird way, you know, as things
as things kind of do, just thinking about this kind
of variety of penises in this market that is so
much more objectifying of men in some.
Speaker 6 (20:46):
Ways than it is of women. And it so the
woman shows up at the well, it's a dream. But
you know, at this market of penises and there's big ones,
fat ones, small ones.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
You know, like the descriptions are hilarious of all the
different sizes and possibilities for.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
Penises, and I think as you're reading through it, you
know you're kind of like, oh my gosh, this is hilarious.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
He could represent, you know, just kind of a reality.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
That men also experience, and I'm sure that's kind of
what made it fun for them was just you know, look,
there's a great variety in what we see in the world,
and then for women, I just think that the ability
to say, you know, what would it be like to
just go and select your ideal penis?
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Which would I find it? Hilarious?
Speaker 1 (21:31):
But you know, yeah, it is hilarious. Okay, So to
clue everyone in, there's a story. There's this couple and
the man has been away for two months. He comes
back and he's welcomed by his wife. She's so happy
to see him. They're happy to see each other, but
he gets a little bit too drunk and he can't
make it that evening. So she has a dream of
a marketplace just full of penises. She gets to pick
(21:51):
whichever one she wants, and there's something for everybody, which
is what I love. There's like a range of styles
and prices and it's amazing. Anyway, she went to seal
a deal with the merchant and ends up hitting her
husband in the face and wakes him up, and when
he wakes up, they ends up getting it on together.
But instead, like she does, insult him, she does say
(22:12):
that his wouldn't be worth very much, but he takes
this very well and they enjoy each other, as they say,
all night, and then he thinks it's so funny that
he tells people in the marketplace in the square like
the next day, so like this is a happy story.
It seems like it's just teasing, Like even when she's
criticizing his own equipment, it doesn't seem mean spirited. It
(22:35):
just seems hilarious.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
It is it is, and I like, you know, we
talked earlier about how Jean Videl mentions himself, and this
is one of those places where he mentions himself and
he's like, I heard the story when the guy told
it in the marketplace, which is unlikely, but you know,
but nonetheless I love that kind of truth seeming that
he tells.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
You know, I could have heard this somewhere. This could
actually have happened, which is just a lot of fun.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
And it also does kind of make you think about
what the conversations were like at the marketplace.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
You know, what were people talking about To me?
Speaker 3 (23:10):
This kind of stuff makes the Middle Ages seem so
much more present, more like something you would see, You
could theoretically see today.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
That's like what.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Yeah, I mean hilarious stories being told in the marketplace
to somebody like Jean Mordell saying I heard this story.
I'm stealing it. I'm retelling it because this is great.
There's a lot, a lot of juice in this story.
But also it seems so ordinary in some ways, like
it is obviously fantastic and embellished and stuff, but a
type of thing where someone says, I had a dream
(23:42):
and it was funny. I think you're right. I think
this is the type of thing that people would be
talking about in the marketplace. So Jean Bdell is known
as maybe the first person to write this type of story,
which you now call fablio. But this isn't the only
thing that he wrote. One of the things he wrote
was a huge, mutually long epic poem which I need
(24:02):
to ask you about because it is called the Song
of the Saxons, and it's almost it's almost the Song
of Roland. So I need to ask you why do
you think he wrote this? If it's going to be
so similar to the Song of Roland? What do you
think the reasons for writing this are?
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Why would you have written it? I think it does
show us.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
I believe that the Song of Roland was really well
known and performed, and so kind of it acted as
that touchdown. He may have been thinking, I want to
try my hand at something, you know, like I want
to I've done these other genre I want to try
this one and see how that goes. And I also
think the focus for the Song of Roland is definitely Christians,
(24:42):
risus Muslims. It fits into the early Crusading time, but
by moving the focus from Spain but definitely further south
now moving it north to even the areas above Ras
does fit into different crusis that were going on at
that time, and it also brings in a different group.
(25:05):
This wasn't uncommon for medieval people to see Muslims where
they weren't necessarily there.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Not to say that there weren't.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
Muslims in all areas of society in different ways, in
different cultures, but seeing these people as what he would
have called, you know, Saracens is not you're talking about
people from the north, so Danes or I mean, it's
hard to really put a.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Group that he was thinking about.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
But if he was thinking about kind of the Windish
Crusades to the north that. I think he's kind of
trying to transpose that same I guess optic that made
Charlemagne such a compelling emperor in the Crusades to the
south and then take it to the north. So I
think that may have been what he was thinking was,
I'm going to rewrite it and make it more relevant
(25:57):
for today. He could have still done a crusade, because
there were clearly crusades going on, but this one maybe
is a bit more relevant even and it does seem
like he does go out of his way to to
say this is a truer story. You know, this is
really talking about the kings of France and how they
established themselves. So he may have been doing it to
(26:19):
kind of if the Song of Roland is talking about
kind of the spread of Christianity and its pre eminence
towards Jerusalem, I think this might be kind of talking
about France and the origins of the French Empire as
it were at this point, and how it also has
claims to other areas for the north and west and east.
(26:44):
So that may have been his motivation, you know, an
alternate historiography of some short and it's hard to know.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
Yeah, it's an interesting one because it has elements of crusading,
like you're saying saying that the Saxons are Muslim, which
is pretty ludicrous, but okay, we'll go with that, like
as a community, as they're saying. But then also while
he recounts the kings of France and how Charlemagne came
to be King of Friends or Emperor Holy Roman Emperor,
(27:12):
he's very critical of the French at the same time.
And so this is an interesting poem and that it's
meant to be praising the French, but it is really
backhanded in a lot of ways.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Yeah, And the same could be said for the Song
of Roland.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
So it makes sense in some ways if he's following
the Song of Roland as his kind of model to
actually spell it out, because I think for students of
the Song of Roland, it's not usually obvious that this
is kind of an unusual optic through which to see Charlemagne,
who's losing crying, you know, like all of the things
(27:46):
that you might not think of as a hero today
don't fit Charlemagne in the Song of Rolin, and here
even more so. But he says it out loud at
the beginning of the story, he talks about the origin
story for this is coming from and how it relates
to the entire rights that the empire has on different people,
so it becomes like a story of kings, and then
(28:10):
he does set that aside.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
But what you see from the.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
Story is, yeah, it's it's really unclear who the good
guys are.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
And again, this is something that's not often attributed to
the Middle Ages, that subtlety of not knowing who the
good guys are, but it does appear in a lot
of medieval works. This one it ends, which just kind
of ends, and they're still peril involved, but it just
kind of stops there. So maybe he was like, I'm
done with this subject.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
I wonder that too. Yeah, he just kind of left
it off.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
And again it's unclear who finished it and what it
even should have been or what it might have been
in his mind, And was it lost, you know, where
our parts lost? Or is it just he just kind
of got tired of it.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
Yeah, he's like, I'm just gonna put the pen down now. Well,
and we're not really sure, as you say, of the chronology,
but near the end of his life he starts to
write or he finishes writing something that he's best known for, perhaps,
which is the Play of Saint Nicholas. So this is
fascinating for me. I came up studying drama and I
had never come across this work. And so tell us
(29:21):
a little bit about the Play of Saint Nicholas and
why it is so revolutionary.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
Yeah, it's revolutionary on a few points. One is just
the fact that he wrote this story.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
That is Okay, I feel like I'm medieval explaining this
to you, but well, for the purposes for people who
might not know, drama was kind of lost.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
It was a lost art in the West.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
So at the very early part of the Middle Ages,
there were not we don't believe that there were plays,
and since it was so popular in antiquity, that was
one of the major genres than what happened. And so
when we look at how it started to reappear, it
really did seem to start to reappear as little things
that people acted out in church or on the front
(30:03):
steps of the church, because maybe not inside the most
sacred parts of the church, but at any rate, you know,
people couldn't read, they didn't know necessarily what was going on,
especially anything in Latin as the texts were, how were
they supposed to know what happened in the Bible. So
they had the stained glass windows, but they also had
and sculptures and things like that.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
But they also had.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
These little we think many plays that were put on
during services and around services. And what happened with Jean
Boudell and then later is a sense of moving that
play outside.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
Of the church setting. Now it doesn't mean it wasn't
nearby or you know.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
So it's not entirely and wildly it is talking about
a saint. It is nothing that is in the Bible.
This is just a story about a saint that does
not appear anywhere in the Bible. It has morality lessons
to it, and it does treats some serious topics, but
it's also funny at times. You know, there are bar scenes,
(31:04):
there are things that are definitely not taking place in
what we would have thought a biblical story, anything having
to do with a biblical story. There's there's gambling, there's
you know, all sorts of things that take place in
this play.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
So that's I think that's what he's kind of revolutionary for.
Speaker 3 (31:21):
And clearly with his brothers, you know, the other members
of his guild that did plays at the time, so
it's a new thing.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
It's a movement away from kind of.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
Strictly religious plays towards something that's more fun and longer,
but also religious adjacent.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
Yeah, well, this is really interesting and it makes me
lean towards your theory that he was just trying things out.
Let's just see if I can do this. I've already
written an epic poem it went okay, I'm going to
try and write this play and see how it goes.
And I think that that is so interesting having this
play of Saint Nicholas appearing, because, as you say this,
this is not something that the type of drama that
(32:02):
we're seeing around this time is doing, where there are
bar scenes and things like that, where the dialogue is
pretty snappy, it's not just moralizing, and that this is
very unusual and it's cool to see that's happening right
here in front of us at such an early date.
So we don't really have the evidence or do we
have the evidence of his community writing these plays as well,
(32:25):
or is this kind of our sole example later.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
Yeah, Adam de la Ale was also from the same
area and part of his CONFROI, but others.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
Too, but this is the first one we know that fits.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
This kind of secular model, and then others shortly thereafter.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
So it seems like they were talking about In my mind,
they're talking about it, you know.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
Yeah, Well, I mean a play doesn't just exist in
evacumini people to perform it, which means he probably had
an idea of who could perform it or how it
would be performed, and so actually I think it gives
us a lot of clues about what's happening in terms
of drama at this time. And this is much earlier
than the stuff that I had known about. So this
is fabulous, no good.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Good good.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
As you said, this is probably his best known work,
and it's the one that people are most likely to
know about it, and it's got the most scholarship around
it as well. Carol Science has done a book on
it that's really well, not on it, but the play
writing atmosphere NRS at the time. So it's not really
about Jean Bardell, but it's about a lot of different people.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
I think it's called the World in its stage.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
It really puts you in that kind of sense that
there's a movement that theater and social changes. Theater is
very much reflecting social change at the same time that
it's being changed by what's going on in the societies,
particularly in Ahras.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
Yeah, that's awesome. I think this is just sort of
a reflection of how much work has happened in the
last twenty years since I was really looking at as closely.
It just shows how much is changing and how much
is being brought forward, including your own book. So I
really want to before we wrap this up, talk about
the fact that Jean Baldelle stepped away from an amazing
career and he wrote a farewell poem about it, which
(34:10):
is really heartbreaking. So what happened to jam Baldell?
Speaker 3 (34:15):
Yeah, it's pretty clear from reading his lecon, which again,
this is why I love his work is it's the
first one we know that it's like this, but we'll
see it later with others who write these kind of
like last Will and Testament poems. So le con means,
you know, saying goodbye to people or taking my leave,
and he's just talking about different aspects of his life,
(34:37):
but largely, you know, saying thank you to people in
various ways for having helped him. A few little digs
at others who may not have been so helpful, but
also be talking about how he feels I guess and
what's going on. We know he got leprosy and he
talks about it in this poem. What it made him
(34:58):
feel like? I yes, but also not unwell, kind of
a pariah in many ways, and he talks about having
to leave society.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
So he's saying goodbye. He's not dying yet, but he.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
Can't do the things that he wanted to do, in
one of which was to go and crusade apparently, and
this might be his only way to really kind of
say goodbye to people through the written words. So it
is tragic to think about, but it's also cool that
he managed to set up this type of storytelling and
goodbye telling that others will emulate, some hilariously.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
But his isn't quite.
Speaker 3 (35:35):
Maybe it's of a piece with some of his other stuff,
Like you mentioned, you know, it's not mean, you know
Philosophiel his some of his is really mean but hilarious.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
And you enjoy his goodbye.
Speaker 3 (35:48):
Point is this is more kind of a heartfelt saying
it in a poetic way.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
The best that he could.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
And this is one of the reasons I think it's
it was not translated before and still is a little
hard to read.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
Is that, and I mean technically hard to read.
Speaker 3 (36:06):
Is that it's talking about specific people at a specific.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Time and you don't know who they are.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
So I kind of have this dream of if we
get enough things out there that people have translated, or
that we can identify some of the people in the
and some we can probably identify already, but identify more
about the society at the time, just by these little
comments about various figures that he's.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
Talking about, Yes, because sometimes it's hard to trace them,
Like is this hyperbolic when he says this person can
never be bested a tournament? I want to know about
that guy.
Speaker 5 (36:40):
Who's this guy?
Speaker 1 (36:41):
Is he actually somebody who's going out it's a tournament
or are we just being nice to him? I always
want to find out more about these people, like you're saying.
But I think it's also rare to get such a
detailed look at what it was like to have leprosy, when,
as you mentioned in the book, this is probably the
height or just on the decline of what was the
(37:01):
height of leprosy in the Middle Ages. So to see
somebody who's experiencing it and having that explained to us,
and what it's like to retreat from society because of it.
It's very valuable, I think as a work, I think
so too. So do we know that anything else came out?
Like he could still be writing in a lepresarium, but
we haven't seen anything else that's his or this is
(37:23):
kind of the true farewell?
Speaker 2 (37:25):
It appears to be.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
Yeah, Like I said, I kind of looked at this
over the dating that people have done for the different manuscripts.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
That makes sense to me. And this appears to really
be the last thing he wrote. So people do.
Speaker 3 (37:38):
Die eventually, it's usually not that fast, but it does
seem like he may have stuck it out as long
as he could and then once he went to the Leprosarium,
that was it.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
Yes, Well, I mean how often do you get that
last word anyway? I mean, famously we're talked about Chaucer.
He just disappears and we don't know what happened, And
here we may know what happened sort of kind of maybe,
which is better than we have in most cases. Well,
I want to thank you so much for coming on
and telling us about John Budell. He's such an interesting figure,
(38:10):
and I'm glad I came across this book, and I
hope other people will come across this as well. Thank
you so much for coming on and telling us about him.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
Sure, thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 3 (38:19):
It's great to kind of get out the word that
there's this. I wouldn't call him exactly little known, but
I think to the English speaking audience he is less
known than he should be, and so he's definitely someone
to pay attention to.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
To find out more about Lind's work, you can visit
her faculty page at Vanderbilt University. Her new book is
an introduction to Joan Bodel. Well, welcome back to the podcast, Peter.
It's good to see you back again virtually. Glad you
are feeling better. Welcome back, indeed.
Speaker 5 (38:51):
Adda feel attle lot better. Ready to go back to
the grind?
Speaker 1 (38:54):
Yes, well, I mean you need to keep this website running.
Speaker 5 (38:58):
Right indeed, indeed, and there's always like news and stuff happening,
so it keeps me busy.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
Keeps you busy. And the Middle Ages are in the
news this week.
Speaker 5 (39:09):
Indeed. Indeed, we don't often talk about polls here on
the Medieval Podcast, but you gov as a British organization.
But this is an international poll that they did of Americans,
and they'd survey twenty two hundred Americans about their opinions
of the Middle Ages. Yeah, it was kind of interesting.
So there's some highlights that I can share with you.
(39:29):
The words that they associate with the Middle Ages. Top
three were violent, dark, and dirty.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
Despite how many years have we put in, I mean,
nothing has changed there.
Speaker 5 (39:43):
Yeah, there are many views that I think that would
have been there now or like back, you know, fifty
years ago. Things they liked about the Middle Ages. Things
that they have favorable view of are castles, ye, chivalry,
and Gothic architecture.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
I mean these are all fun things for sure.
Speaker 5 (40:03):
But the Americans held a negative view of the Black Death.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
I think we all hold a negative view of the
Black Death, you know, the most devastating pandemic in human history.
Speaker 5 (40:14):
Yeah, yeah, it was. It was mostly disliked. So overall,
three four percent of Americans hold favorable view of the
Middle Ages and an equal number of Americans hold an
unfavorable view of the Middle Ages, with the rest kind
of in between. So the most important for us is
(40:34):
that eleven percent of Americans think about the Middle Ages
at least once per week.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
Yes, when they listen to the Medieval podcast or when
they visit your website.
Speaker 5 (40:43):
That's right. We may able to get eleven percent of
Americans to listen to this podcast.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
Yes, absolutely, and maybe then it'll change their thinking about
the Middle Ages. But you know what was interesting is
that people apparently, according to this survey, think about the
Middle Ages more often than they think about the Roman Empire.
As it turns out.
Speaker 5 (41:01):
That's right, that's right. All those TikTok bemes could have
been for us.
Speaker 1 (41:07):
No, I think that's fine. I think we could just
leave those alone. Maybe don't ask for that.
Speaker 5 (41:11):
Anyways, We have a news piece on it, but I
also encourage everyone to check out this you have, Paul.
It's got like a ton of the questions that they asked,
you know, certainly something like that, Like any medievali scholar,
what you want to just understand this is the going view,
at least in the United States towards the medieval past.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
Yes, and it includes who are people's favorite named characters,
like favorite figures from history. Includes also the people who
they have no idea who they are, Like most people
don't know who Saladin is. Yeah, but most people know
who Richard the Lionheart is, which is interesting but not surprising.
Speaker 5 (41:47):
I think, yeah, I think a lot of you know,
we kind of see is like this is stuff that
you know would be broad like it's like fifty years
ago to both habits diehard. Right.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
Yes, we still have work to do, which is good
because it means that there is still work for us,
and that's what we want. We want to keep getting
all this information that we know about the Middle Ages
further out there, and it turns out that there is
more to.
Speaker 5 (42:10):
Do exactly exactly. So we've been working pretty hard on
medelists that my writers have been doing some good work.
So we have a piece on ten musical instruments tore
played in Medieval Europe. We also have this fun piece
on ten forgeries, Ten famous forgeries from the Middle Ages
beyond the donation of Constantine.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
Yes, there are a lot of them. That was an
interesting article. I mean, all of the articles are good ones, right,
so people should go and check them out on medievalis
dot net.
Speaker 5 (42:40):
Indeed, indeed, thanks Peter for.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
Stopping by and telling us what is on the website.
Thanks thank you to all of you who support my
work by letting the ads play, through sharing your favorite
episodes on social media, reading, borrowing and lending my books,
and becoming patrons on patreon dot com. Patrens can access
also of goodies like medievalist dot net's book club, extensive
(43:03):
lists of open access articles, and access to this podcast
ad free. To find out more or to become a patron,
please visit patreon dot com slash Medievalists for everything from
writers to fighters. Follow Medievalist dot net on Instagram at
medievalist net or blue Sky at Medievalists. You can find
(43:23):
me Danielle Sibalski across social media at fiven Medievalist or
five Minute Medievalist, and you can find my books at
all your favorite bookstores. Our music is Beyond the Warriors
by Geefrog. Thanks for listening, and have yourself a wonderful day,
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