Du bacon et de la femme: Pour une relecture de Barat et Haimet de Jean Bodel

Jean Bodel's work has recently been the subject of considerable research in reassessing the versatility and originality of this late XIIth century trouvère. Readings of Barat et Haimet, however, one of Bodel's nine fabliaux, have invariably remained one-dimensional in seeing in this fabliau a simple story of successive theft, and, at best, a parody of aspects of chivalric epic and courtly romance. But closer attention to detail, cross-textual reference to Bodel's other fabliaux, and an extrapolation and contextualization of similar themes and narrative procedures in the fabliaux of other fableors, reveal that in Bodel's destabilization of referents, and delight in linguistic play, euphemism, and sexual metaphorization, Barat et Haimet may tell another story. The ham that occupies the center of the second part of the fabliau needs to be read in conjunction with the role of the main protagonist's wife. The ham and the woman become interchangeable objects, and the story of theft one of illicit, non-consentual sex, in which Bodel both endorses and toys with the misogynistic discourse inherent in the genre of the fabliau. This ambiguity arises from Bodel's subtle use of inversion and suggestion and cannot be reduced to the text's most explicit meanings and parodic intent.