An effeminate hero, an aggressive heroine and a pregnant king: at first sight, it is perhaps unsurprising to find an analysis of the Old French Aucassin et Nicolette within a collection where gender is a key consideration. In the twentieth century, scholars tended to focus upon the gender identities portrayed in this chantefable, with many maintaining the view that Nicolette, a Saracen princess-turned-slave, has decidedly masculine characteristics, and that Aucassin, a Christian prince, is rather pathetic in his amusing passivity. Such approaches often emerge in discussions of the possible parodic or humorous nature of the protagonists. The present study, however, brings the question of gender troubling into dialogue with both temporal and spatial movements in the text and aims to consider the extent to which moments of dislocation, whether of space or time, may determine the gender identities presented. More importantly, in the process, I aim to explore the possibility that, in the manner of modern-day ‘expiration dating’ (where a relationship is characterized by its very lack of a future), this tale may propose cross-cultural, youthful love as a hiatus in the lives of the protagonists and thus as a moment where linear time is suspended: a moment, in short, of queer time dictated by a simultaneous living for the moment, yet also by concern for the future.

Aucassin et Nicolette, referred to as a chantefable by its narrator, is clearly concerned with questions of movement, whether temporal, spatial or psychological. It is centred upon a boy-meets-girl scenario and seems at first sight to narrate a move away from youth and family ties that leads to the traversal of foreign climes and the assumption of adult responsibility. Furthermore, it is not only the protagonists who are engaged in such a journey: as Jill Tattersall has noted, this is a text where the author is ‘repeatedly and deliberately displacing his audience’s horizon of expectations’. Most obviously, this is achieved through the interlacing of different generic forms and themes, such as those of chanson de geste, roman d’aventure or lyric poetry, further split between an alternating verse and prose structure. While the reader may be left disoriented by this text, the same confusion does not necessarily apply to the fictional world presented.