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Volume 32, Issue 2
  • ISSN: 0929-8592
  • E-ISSN: 2667-1689
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Abstract

Abstract

This article examines the use of French terms for casting dice in the fourteenth-century Middle Dutch satirical nonsense poem . 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 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.

© Jelmar Hugen
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2025-12-18
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Queeste 32, 228 (2025); https://doi.org/10.5117/QUE2025.2.002.HUGE
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Keyword(s): dice games; Dit es de frenesie; fools literature; Multilingualism; wisdom of folly

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