Gokken, gekken en geluk
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: This article examines the use of French terms for casting dice in the fourteenth-century Middle Dutch satirical nonsense poem Dit es de frenesie. Rather than to consider the codeswitch from Dutch into French in this text as a tool to showcase the French linguistic skills of the narrative’s protagonist, this study suggests the use of French in dice games was a wider cultural phenomenon that is displayed in various medieval texts of different linguistic traditions. Through a comparison with these works, in particular Middle English poems, a richer understanding of the text is worked towards that suggests the dice terms in the Frenesie are used in a proverbial sense, to both comment on the actions of the protagonist and respond to a medieval literary tradition that connected gambling, fools, and fortune.
Source: Queeste
Author: Jelmar Hugen
Institution: Leiden University
Language: English
Subfield: Classics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4417423919
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