Laughter in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times Epistemology of a Fundamental Human Behavior, its Meaning, and Consequences
:
Albrecht Classen
:
Laughter in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times Epistemology of a Fundamental Human Behavior, its Meaning, and Consequences
:
Walter de Gruyter GmbH& Co.KG
:
9783110245486
:
Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern CultureISSN
:
1
:
CHF 159.70
:
:
Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft
:
English
:
862
:
Wasserzeichen
:
PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
:
PDF
< >Despite popular opinions of the‘dark Middle Ages’ and a‘gloomy early modern age’, many people laughed, smiled, giggled, chuckled, enternained and rediculed each other. This volume demonstrates how important laughter had been at times and how diverse the situations proved to be in which people laughed. The contributions examine a wide gamut of significant cases of laughter in literary texts, historical documents, and art works. 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. br />
< >
Albrecht Classen
, University of Arizona, USA.
Table of Contents
6
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
Chapter 1. Laughter in Procopius’s Wars
152
Chapter 2. “Does God Really Laugh?” – Appropriate and Inappropriate Descriptions of God in Islamic Traditionalist Theology
176
Chapter 3. Laughter in Beowulf: Ambiguity, Ambivalence, and Group Identity Formation
212
Chapter 4. The Parodia sacra Problem and Medieval Comic Studies
226
Chapter 5. Women’s Laughter and Gender Politics in Medieval Conduct Discourse
254
Chapter 6. Pushing Decorum: Uneasy Laughter in Heinrich von dem Türlîn’s Diu Crône
276
Chapter 7. Laughter and the Comedic in a Religious Text: The Example of the Cantigas de Santa Maria
292
Chapter 8. The Son Rebelled and So the Father Made Man Alone: Ridicule and Boundary Maintenance in the Nizzahon Vetus
306
Chapter 9. Laughing at the Beast: The Judensau: Anti Jewish Propaganda and Humor from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Period
336
Chapter 10. Yes . . . but was it funny? Cecco Angiolieri, Rustico Filippi, and Giovanni Boccaccio
376
Chapter 11. Curses and Laughter in Medieval Italian Comic Poetry: The Ethics of Humor in Rustico Filippi’s Invectives
394
Chapter 12. Tromdhámh Guaire: a Context for Laughter and Audience in Early Modern Ireland
424
Chapter 13. Humorous Transgression in the Non Conformist fabliaux Genre: A Bakhtinian Analysis of Three Comic Tales
440
Chapter 14. Chaucerian Comedy: Troilus and Criseyde
468
Chapter 15. Laughing in and Laughing at the Old French Fabliaux
492
Chapter 16. Laughter and Medieval Stalls
510
Chapter 17. Vox populi e voce professionis: Processus juris joco serius. Esoteric Humor and the Incommensurability of Laughter
526
Chapter 18. “So I thought as I Stood, To Mirth Us Among”: The Function of Laughter in The Second Shepherds’ Play
542
Chapter 19. Laughing in Late Medieval Verse (mæren) and Prose (Schwänke) Narratives: Epistemological Strategies and Hermeneutic Explorations
558
Chapter 20. The Workings of Desire: Panurge and the Dogs
598
Chapter 21. Laughing Out Loud in the Heptaméron: A Reassessment of Marguerite de Navarre’s Ambivalent Humor
614
Chapter 22. You had to be there: The Elusive Humor of the Sottie
632
Chapter 23. Sacred Parody in Robert Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit (1592)
662
Chapter 24. The Comedy of the Shrew: Theorizing Humor in Early Modern Netherlandish Art
678
Chapter 25. The Comic Personas of Milton’s Prolusion VI: Negotiating Masculine Identity Through Self Directed Humor
726
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
Chapter 27. Andreae’s ludibrium: Menippean Satire in the Chymische Hochzeit
778
Chapter 28. The Comic Power of Illusion Allusion: Laughter, La Devineresse, and the Scandal of a Glorious Century
802
Chapter 29. Laughing at Credulity and Superstition in the Long Eighteenth Century
814
List of Illustrations
842
Contributors
846
Index
858
