Classen Laughter in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times

Epistemology of a Fundamental Human Behavior, its Meaning, and Consequences
1. Auflage 2010
ISBN: 978-3-11-024548-6
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, Band 5, 862 Seiten

Reihe: Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture

Despite popular opinions of the ‘dark Middle Ages’ and a ‘gloomy early modern age,’ many people laughed, smiled, giggled, chuckled, entertained and ridiculed each other. This volume demonstrates how important laughter had been at times and how diverse the situations proved to be in which people laughed, and this from late antiquity to the eighteenth century. The contributions examine a wide gamut of significant cases of laughter in literary texts, historical documents, and art works where laughter determined the relationship among people. In fact, laughter emerges as a kaleidoscopic phenomenon reflecting divine joy, bitter hatred and contempt, satirical perspectives and parodic intentions. In some examples protagonists laughed out of sheer happiness and delight, in others because they felt anxiety and insecurity. It is much more difficult to detect premodern sculptures of laughing figures, but they also existed. Laughter reflected a variety of concerns, interests, and intentions, and the collective approach in this volume to laughter in the past opens many new windows to the history of mentality, social and religious conditions, gender relationships, and power structures.

Zielgruppe

Mediävisten, Institute, Bibliotheken / Academics, Departments, Libraries

Autoren/Hrsg.

Classen, Albrecht

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Stoffe, Motive und Themen
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Romanische Literaturen
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur Amerikanische Literatur

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1;Table of Contents;6
2;Laughter as an Expression of Human Natur in theMiddle Ages and the Early Modern Period: Literary, Historical, Theological, Philosophical, and Psychological Reflections. Also an Introduction;12
3;Chapter 1. Laughter in Procopius’s Wars;152
4;Chapter 2. “Does God Really Laugh?” – Appropriate and Inappropriate Descriptions of God in Islamic Traditionalist Theology;176
5;Chapter 3. Laughter in Beowulf: Ambiguity, Ambivalence, and Group Identity Formation;212
6;Chapter 4. The Parodia sacra Problem and Medieval Comic Studies;226
7;Chapter 5. Women’s Laughter and Gender Politics in Medieval Conduct Discourse;254
8;Chapter 6. Pushing Decorum: Uneasy Laughter in Heinrich von dem Türlîn’s Diu Crône;276
9;Chapter 7. Laughter and the Comedic in a Religious Text: The Example of the Cantigas de Santa Maria;292
10;Chapter 8. The Son Rebelled and So the Father Made Man Alone: Ridicule and Boundary Maintenance in the Nizzahon Vetus;306
11;Chapter 9. Laughing at the Beast: The Judensau: Anti Jewish Propaganda and Humor from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Period;336
12;Chapter 10. Yes . . . but was it funny? Cecco Angiolieri, Rustico Filippi, and Giovanni Boccaccio;376
13;Chapter 11. Curses and Laughter in Medieval Italian Comic Poetry: The Ethics of Humor in Rustico Filippi’s Invectives;394
14;Chapter 12. Tromdhámh Guaire: a Context for Laughter and Audience in Early Modern Ireland;424
15;Chapter 13. Humorous Transgression in the Non Conformist fabliaux Genre: A Bakhtinian Analysis of Three Comic Tales;440
16;Chapter 14. Chaucerian Comedy: Troilus and Criseyde;468
17;Chapter 15. Laughing in and Laughing at the Old French Fabliaux;492
18;Chapter 16. Laughter and Medieval Stalls;510
19;Chapter 17. Vox populi e voce professionis: Processus juris joco serius. Esoteric Humor and the Incommensurability of Laughter;526
20;Chapter 18. “So I thought as I Stood, To Mirth Us Among”: The Function of Laughter in The Second Shepherds’ Play;542
21;Chapter 19. Laughing in Late Medieval Verse (mæren) and Prose (Schwänke) Narratives: Epistemological Strategies and Hermeneutic Explorations;558
22;Chapter 20. The Workings of Desire: Panurge and the Dogs;598
23;Chapter 21. Laughing Out Loud in the Heptaméron: A Reassessment of Marguerite de Navarre’s Ambivalent Humor;614
24;Chapter 22. You had to be there: The Elusive Humor of the Sottie;632
25;Chapter 23. Sacred Parody in Robert Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit (1592);662
26;Chapter 24. The Comedy of the Shrew: Theorizing Humor in Early Modern Netherlandish Art;678
27;Chapter 25. The Comic Personas of Milton’s Prolusion VI: Negotiating Masculine Identity Through Self Directed Humor;726
28;Chapter 26. Ridentum dicere verum (Using Laughter to Speak the Truth): Laughter and the Language of the Early Modern Clown “Pickelhering” in German Literature of the Late Seventeenth Century (1675–1700);746
29;Chapter 27. Andreae’s ludibrium: Menippean Satire in the Chymische Hochzeit;778
30;Chapter 28. The Comic Power of Illusion Allusion: Laughter, La Devineresse, and the Scandal of a Glorious Century;802
31;Chapter 29. Laughing at Credulity and Superstition in the Long Eighteenth Century;814
32;List of Illustrations;842
33;Contributors;846
34;Index;858

Über Autor(innen)

Albrecht Classen, University of Arizona, USA.