an erotic allegory. Moreover, the actor may inject a topical meaning derived from
historical circumstances. In this way, St. Jambon came to denote a certain Joannes Bonus
(or Jean le Bon), who was incarcerated in Paris for having recited on All Soul’s Day a
sermon joyeux inviting the audience to indulge in public drunkenness.
Most of the texts are anonymous, though the Sermon de saint Billouard was written by
Jean Molinet and the Sermon pour une nopce by Roger de Collerye. Much of the humor
of these short pieces is accessible to readers today, despite the fact that many allusions
remain unexplained. Products of an era when preaching flourished, the sermons joyeux
cast light on the festive spirit in France on the threshold of modern times.
Jelle Koopmans
[See also: MOLINET, JEAN; THEATER]
Koopmans, Jelle, ed. Quatre sermons joyeux. Geneva: Droz, 1984.
——, ed. Recueil de sermons joyeux. Geneva: Droz, 1988.
Aubailly, Jean-Claude. Le monologue, le dialogue et la sottie. Paris: Champion, 1976.
SESTINA
. Invented by the troubadour Arnaut Daniel, the sestina is composed of six six-line
stanzas and a three-line tornada. The first stanza establishes six rhyme words which are
repeated according to a fixed structure: stanza a rhymes 1 2 3 4 5 6; the next stanza
rhymes 6 1 5 2 4 3; subsequent stanzas repeat the permutation. Were there to be a seventh
stanza, it would repeat the rhyme-word order of the first. All six rhyme words are
repeated in the tornada. Though a creation of Occitania, the genre found its greatest
audience in Italy, where Dante and Petrarch were master practitioners.
Wendy E.Pfeffer
[See also: VERSIFICATION]
Riesz, János. Die Sestine: Ihre Stellung in der literarischen Kritik und ihre Geschichte als lyrisches
Genus. Munich: Fink, 1971.
SEVEN SAGES OF ROME
. The Seven Sages of Rome is an antifeminist frame tale that generated many variations
and continuations in France and became enormously popular throughout medieval
Europe. It derives from an unknown version of an eastern romance, the Book of Sindbād,
which probably originated in India in the 5th century B.C. Like the oriental archetypes of
two other ostensibly didactic frame narratives that won favor in Old French adaptations,
Barlaam et Josaphat and the Chastoiement d’un pere a son fils, the Sindbād moved
westward; it was translated into Persian, Arabic, Greek, and Hebrew and reached Europe
by the mid-12th century, with significant changes to both the frame and the intercalated
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