Jablonski, Marek (Michael)

WRITINGS

‘Notice sur Joseph Jongen’, Annuaire de l’Académie royale de Belgique, cxx (1954), 193–254

‘Notice sur Sylvain Dupuis’, Annuaire de l’Académie royale de Belgique, cxxi (1995), 197–217

BIBLIOGRAPHY

HENRI VANHULST, JOHN SCOTT WHITELEY

Jongleur

A medieval entertainer and in specifically musical contexts a minstrel. According to most lexicographical authorities the word was extremely rare before 1500 and seems to be the result of a conflation of two separate Old French words, joglëor and janglëor. Joglëor derives from the Latin joculator, as do the cognate Old Provençal joglar and the modern English ‘juggler’. The medieval word covers a whole category of professionals including specific instrumentalists and even storytellers. Within this final group may sometimes be found the janglëor or jangleur, which literally means ‘liar’, ‘gossip’ or ‘prattler’: in this case he would presumably be one who earned his living by the use of his sharp tongue, but in general the word was one of disparagement with no implications of professionalism and gave rise to the word janglerie (approximately, ‘rubbish’). The fusion of the two words seems to have happened in the 15th century: by the 16th century the word jongleur had become standard in French and was used in the modern sense by Jean Lemaire de Belges and Rabelais. In common parlance today the jongleur tends to be considered more of a freelance musician than the minstrel whose name implies some official household position. See Minstrel; Guilds.