Space Matters: Negotiating Social Boundaries in Le Sacristain II and Le Bouchier d’Abeville

Abstract

Through an analysis of Le Sacristain II (Du Segretain Moine) and Le Bouchier d’Abeville (or Eustache d’Amiens), this study theorizes a common theme in the Old French fabliaux, that of the anticlerical conflict between the merchant and priest, by identifying the “appropriate” use of social spaces of production and reproduction in the text, as defined by Lefebvre (La Production de l’espace, Editions anthropos, Paris, 1974). The successful management of space in the fabliaux—from the marketplace, to the home, to the church—promotes and protects bourgeois values as they emerge at pivotal moments of exchange in the text. The bourgeois’ wit and the ability to manage space equate to both a successful trade and a shift in power in these tales, with the fabliaux providing a literary space to envision and play out a new social order. Situating the fabliaux in its historical context, this article argues that the genre’s preoccupation with “appropriate” behavior within certain social spaces communicates an increasingly cohesive cultural ideology for the rising merchant class in thirteenth century that marginalizes the authority of the church while strengthening these ideas in northern France and throughout the European trading community.