A Cultural History of Comedy in the Middle Ages

Martha Bayless, Andrew McConnell Stott, Eric Weitz, Martha Bayless

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781350187610
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: History Reference
• Index: History

Comedy and humor flourished in manifold forms in the Middle Ages. This volume, covering the period from 1000 to 1400 CE, examines the themes, practice, and effects of medieval comedy, from the caustic morality of principled satire to the exuberant improprieties of many wildly popular tales of sex and trickery. The analysis includes the most influential authors of the age, such as Chaucer, Boccaccio, Juan Ruiz, and Hrothswitha of Gandersheim, as well as lesser-known works and genres, such as songs of insult, nonsense-texts, satirical church paintings, topical jokes, and obscene pilgrim badges. The analysis touches on most of the literatures of medieval Europe, including a discussion of the formal attitudes toward humor in Christian, Jewish, and Islamic traditions. The volume demonstrates the many ways in which medieval humor could be playful, casual, sophisticated, important, subversive, and even dangerous. Each chapter takes a different theme as its focus: form, theory, praxis, identities, the body, politics and power, laughter, and ethics.

CHAPTER ONE

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Form

Its Expressions and Manifestations

OLLE FERM

Theory and practice often clash. This is nothing new; and so it was in the Middle Ages. Comedic performances flourished in public arenas, and the comedy of everyday life was lived by all. Theories describing the phenomenon, however, were often found lacking. They mostly applied to the theater of antiquity, and often failed to deal seriously with contemporary customs, which were regarded as lowly. It is nevertheless possible to say something significant about the comic and its forms of expression, based on a selection of medieval texts.¹

WHAT IS THE COMIC?

The word “comic” (comicus), suggests Johannes Balbus in his dictionary (Catholicon, 1260s), is derived from the word “comedy” (comedia), and can be used as a qualifier of everything about comedy. He adds that the word also has the more specific, independent meaning of “funny,” “amusing” (facetus). With this addition, I suggest, Johannes points to comedy’s general characteristics and determining features: the comic aspect of humans and their world. Johannes also implies that “the comic,” “the amusing,” is not tied to the theater. This is no surprise because the word “comedy” had a double denotation. A comedy in the rhetorical discourse of the time meant not only an entertaining piece of theater, but also a story that begins in difficulties but ends in happiness. Dante’s Commedia is often cited as an example of the latter (Kelly 1989: 72–6), but from that perspective the Easter cycle is also a comedy. Papias, Isidore, and others do not simply mention the word “comic”; when they speak about the funny, amusing elements in comedy, they employ words such as “jokes” (ioca), “joyful things” (res laetae), “jovial matters” (materia iocosa), or “jokers” (ioculares).² But the main point remains the same.

None of this explains what constitutes the comic—what makes people laugh. But one thing is certain: comedy arises from incongruity, a major concept in the theory of humor, considered to have been established by Francis Shaftesbury (Billig 2005: 74–7). But Thomas Hobbes (d. 1679) knew this (1840: 46), as did Thomas Aquinas, although he did not use exactly that word. In his Summa Theologiae he writes that “witty” is “the person who turns (or twists) what has been said or done into pleasure” (eutrapeleus qui bene convertit aliqua dicta vel facta in solatium) (ST 2a2ae, quaestio 168, a. 2; Ferm 2002: 46, 64). Incongruity has a prerequisite, congruity, to which it stands in contrast. Congruity is the given, the normal, the established, the conventional, while incongruity is its opposite—it repeals a given order. Those who appreciate the contrast thus experience a sense of joy manifested in smiles or laughter.³ Joy, according to Thomas and others, is “rest for the soul” (relaxatio) and contributes to “recuperation” (recreatio).

Incongruities can be easy to construct. For example, it was widely known that the papal curia demanded heavy fees for its services. This annoyed the suppliants from the many provinces of Europe who looked to the curia for help. A nickname was coined, aimed at the curia’s top representatives, the cardinals. They no longer were called cardinales but instead carpinales or carpidinares, from the verb carpere, “to pluck”—that is, they plucked money from the people (Lehmann 1963: 38–9, 53). This example shows that incongruity requires a context to be perceived as amusing.

Incongruity, like its opposite, is a bearer of meaning. Meaning is communicated through signs, which are part of different symbolic systems. Musical notation, dots and dashes, surfaces and colors in a painting, all convey meaning, just like the grimaces, gestures, and miming so common in medieval comedy. This was evidently known, utilized, and exploited; some examples follow.

In a solemn ceremony each year, the English nation at the University of Paris commemorated their patron, St. Edmund. This took place at the church of Saints Cosmas and Damian on the Left Bank. Attendance by the nation’s members was mandatory. Once—at the celebration in 1370—all did not go as planned. At the Vigilia (the evening worship before the celebrations of November 20), the attempt at song was so terrible—the book of the Nation’s proctor (procurator) speaks of “howling singers” (ululantes cantantes)—that it initially caused consternation, before it was appreciated as comic and the congregation burst into laughter. In this case, the transformation of meaning was undeniably profound. What should have been a celebration of the heavenly sublime was replaced by the earthly all-too-fallible. Not everyone involved thought it was amusing, at least not the procurator. Before the next day’s celebrations, the howlers were replaced by “good singers” (bonos cantores) (AUP I: 373, 405).

As a further example, in a late thirteenth-century manuscript of canon law someone drew a monk with a donkey’s hind legs and hooves. The illustrator, possibly the scribe, in amusing himself offered the reader a chance to share in his humor. Donkeys were considered to be the stupidest of animals, and monks were considered by academics to be as stupid as donkeys, since they had never learned the art of academic disputation. Anyone reading the book might have found the illustration amusing for another reason: it stood in sharp contrast to the context in which it was placed.

FIGURE 1.1: A monk pulls up his habit. Gregory IX, Decretals, Bologna, late thirteenth century. Ms. C533, f. 187, Uppsala University Library. By permission of Uppsala University Library.

More systematic forms of incongruity upend the normal order and create an absurd world. This is what happens in two forms of medieval poetry—fatrasie (from the 1300s) and the somewhat later fatras—where one cognitive absurdity follows another; it seems that nothing (except the normal) is impossible to combine.⁴ “A beautiful man without a head arranged a great party for a hairy cunt” (Uns biaus hom sans teste / Menoit mout grant feste / Por un com velut). Gracious! The sentence as a whole is an oxymoron, but the initial phrase (“a beautiful man without a head”) is itself oxymoronic. This is common in this peculiar world: “An old man born dead” (uns viellars mors nez), “a wise man without understanding” (uns saiges sans sens), a remarkable fly “made two mutes speak” (fist parler deus muiaus).⁵ The transformed, irrational combinations of words, ideas, and concepts create a mishmash of contrasts, which should induce laughter by way of surprise and astonishment. The structural incongruity is also worth noting, a contrast between form and content. All the sentences are correctly constructed grammatically, and they are inserted into a strictly organized rhymed poetic form. Form holds the transgressive, meaningful semantics together into an aesthetically functioning whole, which demanded a masterful hand to compose. Therefore, we should not believe the claim in one of the verses: “I compose in my sleep” (je versifie en dormant) (Porter 1960: 135, n. 54).

Everything meaningful—words, images, music, gestures—can thus appear comic if given adequate contrast. Thomas Aquinas was aware that more than words can convey comedy; he speaks of “dicta vel facta,” that is, what is said or done to amuse (ST 2a2ae, q. 168, a. 3). The context in the Summa Theologiae (ST 2a2ae, q. 168) supports this conclusion. There Thomas speaks sympathetically about “jesters” (ioculatores), who could entertain in various non-sinful ways.⁶

Through incongruity, comedy establishes its own perspective, a special way of looking at men and their world. Those who accept this perspective find it amusing and laugh, which they also may find liberating and uplifting. And if several people laugh together, well-being increases within the group. No wonder, then, that anyone who has seen or heard something comic usually wishes to pass it along to others. Further diffusion requires that the experience be given a form which makes its transmission possible. And if it is to be transmitted across different contexts, this may require changes in its form.

Such changes were well within the capabilities of satirists, as the following example will show. In Paris, students often hurled insults at each other. The English were drunkards and had tails; the French were arrogant, weak, and feminine; Germans were raving mad and vulgar at table (Jacques de Vitry 1972: 92). The insults amused some but infuriated others. Some were even framed in verse and not always suitable for polite society: Angli caudati, / qui sunt ad pocula nati / cum sunt imbuti / tunc sunt de semine Bruti (“The English with their tails, born to the flagon, when they are filled up, it is with the seed of Brutus”). The distinctive character of the English is three times emphasized by rhyme: they have tails, caudati, they are drunk, imbuti, and they are traitors, de semine Bruti. The text is part of a debate poem, written by Henry of Avranches, who was a clerus vagus in the early thirteenth century.⁷

COMEDY AND HUMAN INTERACTION

Comedy is, directly or indirectly, tied to human interaction, where it has its origin and is perpetuated. Human interaction is not in itself comical, but a comic perspective arises when someone identifies and finds amusing some incongruous aspect. Human interaction is institutionally structured, and interaction is contingent upon the resources available when people meet. A sense of comedy is such a resource, though not always available. Here, I distinguish among three types of institutional connection:

Comedy that is not linked to specific institutions: it appears randomly when the opportunity arises (incidental comedy).

Comedy that is institutionalized: it is an expected and appreciated feature in specific contexts.

Comedy that is its own institution: it determines the agenda and the focus of the interaction.

There is no watertight separation between the three. Experiences are transferred and transformed, utilized and reaffirmed in a social cycle that varies over time; given changes to the cycle, comedy changes also.

Incidental Comedy

Incidental comedy is not attached to any specific institution. It occurs suddenly and without warning. This happens especially in everyday life and its many routines, but also in other contexts where comedy is unexpect...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Notes on Contributors
• Series Preface
• Editor’s Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Comedy in the Middle Ages: Answers and Questions
• 1 Form: Its Expressions and Manifestations
• 2 Theory: Comedy Humbled and Exalted
• 3 Praxis: The Location and Performance of Comedy
• 4 Identity
• 5 The Body: Unstable, Gendered, Theorized
• 6 Politics: Comic Power, Foolish Men, and Holy Women
• 7 Laughter: A Comedic Approach
• 8 Ethics: Ethical Dimensions of Medieval Comedy
• Notes
• References
• Index
• Copyright