Gokken, gekken en geluk: Het gebruik van Franstalige dobbeltermen in Dit es de frenesie

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.