Book
Licensed
Unlicensed
Requires Authentication
Laughter in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times
Epistemology of a Fundamental Human Behavior, its Meaning, and Consequences
-
Edited by:
Albrecht Classen
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2010
About this book
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 The contributions examine a wide gamut of significant cases of laughter in literary texts, historical documents, and art works where laughter determined the relationship among people.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.
Author / Editor information
Albrecht Classen, University of Arizona, USA.
Reviews
"The book aims at an interdisciplinary and multi-layered approach to the highly complex phenomenon of laughter in the Middle Ages and early modern times."
Stefan Seeber in: Medium Aevum Vol. LXXX, 2011
Topics
-
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Frontmatter
I -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Table of Contents
V -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
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
1 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 1. Laughter in Procopius’s Wars
141 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 2. “Does God Really Laugh?” – Appropriate and Inappropriate Descriptions of God in Islamic Traditionalist Theology
165 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 3. Laughter in Beowulf: Ambiguity, Ambivalence, and Group Identity Formation
201 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 4. The Parodia sacra Problem and Medieval Comic Studies
215 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 5. Women’s Laughter and Gender Politics in Medieval Conduct Discourse
243 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 6. Pushing Decorum: Uneasy Laughter in Heinrich von dem Türlîn’s Diu Crône
265 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 7. Laughter and the Comedic in a Religious Text: The Example of the Cantigas de Santa Maria
281 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 8. The Son Rebelled and So the Father Made Man Alone: Ridicule and Boundary Maintenance in the Nizzahon Vetus
295 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 9. Laughing at the Beast: The Judensau: Anti Jewish Propaganda and Humor from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Period
325 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 10. Yes . . . but was it funny? Cecco Angiolieri, Rustico Filippi, and Giovanni Boccaccio
365 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 11. Curses and Laughter in Medieval Italian Comic Poetry: The Ethics of Humor in Rustico Filippi’s Invectives
383 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 12. Tromdhámh Guaire: a Context for Laughter and Audience in Early Modern Ireland
413 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 13. Humorous Transgression in the Non Conformist fabliaux Genre: A Bakhtinian Analysis of Three Comic Tales
429 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 14. Chaucerian Comedy: Troilus and Criseyde
457 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 15. Laughing in and Laughing at the Old French Fabliaux
481 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 16. Laughter and Medieval Stalls
499 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 17. Vox populi e voce professionis: Processus juris joco serius. Esoteric Humor and the Incommensurability of Laughter
515 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 18. “So I thought as I Stood, To Mirth Us Among”: The Function of Laughter in The Second Shepherds’ Play
531 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 19. Laughing in Late Medieval Verse (mæren) and Prose (Schwänke) Narratives: Epistemological Strategies and Hermeneutic Explorations
547 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 20. The Workings of Desire: Panurge and the Dogs
587 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 21. Laughing Out Loud in the Heptaméron: A Reassessment of Marguerite de Navarre’s Ambivalent Humor
603 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 22. You had to be there: The Elusive Humor of the Sottie
621 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 23. Sacred Parody in Robert Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit (1592)
651 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 24. The Comedy of the Shrew: Theorizing Humor in Early Modern Netherlandish Art
667 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 25. The Comic Personas of Milton’s Prolusion VI: Negotiating Masculine Identity Through Self Directed Humor
715 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
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)
735 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 27. Andreae’s ludibrium: Menippean Satire in the Chymische Hochzeit
767 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 28. The Comic Power of Illusion Allusion: Laughter, La Devineresse, and the Scandal of a Glorious Century
791 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 29. Laughing at Credulity and Superstition in the Long Eighteenth Century
803 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Backmatter
831
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
September 22, 2010
eBook ISBN:
9783110245486
Hardcover published on:
August 17, 2010
Hardcover ISBN:
9783110245479
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
Front matter:
9
Main content:
853
Illustrations:
38
Other:
Num. figs.
Keywords for this book
Laughter / in Literature
Audience(s) for this book
Academics, Departments, Libraries
Safety & product resources
-
Manufacturer information:
Walter de Gruyter GmbH
Genthiner Straße 13
10785 Berlin
productsafety@degruyterbrill.com
