A Cultural History of Comedy in the Middle Ages (The Cultural Histories Series)

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. How has our expression, use and reception of comedy developed from antiquity to the present day? What role has it occupied in Western culture, and what can it tell us about how society has changed? In a work that spans 2,500 years, these ambitious questions are addressed by 55 experts, each contributing their overview of a theme applied to a period in history. The volumes describe various manifestations of comedy, its use in religion, theatre and literature, and its historical and philosophical significance. Individual volume editors ensure the cohesion of the whole, and to make it as easy as possible to use, chapter titles are identical across each of the volumes. This gives the choice of reading about a specific period in one of the volumes, or following a theme across history by reading the relevant chapter in each of the six. Themes (and chapter titles) are: Form; Theory; Praxis; Identities; The Body; Politics and Power; Laughter; and Ethics. The page extent is approximately 1,824pp with c. 250 illustrations. The six volumes cover: Volume 1: A Cultural History of Comedy in Antiquity (500 BCE - 1000 AD) Edited by Michael Ewans (University of Newcastle, Australia) Volume 2: A Cultural History of Comedy in the Middle Ages (1000 - 1400) Edited by Martha Bayless (University of Oregon, USA) Volume 3: A Cultural History of Comedy in the Early Modern Age (1400 - 1650) Edited by Andrew McConnell Stott (University of Southern California, USA) Volume 4: A Cultural History of Comedy in the Age of Enlightenment (1650 - 1800) Edited by Elizabeth Kraft (University of Georgia, USA) Volume 5: A Cultural History of Comedy in the Age of Empire (1800 - 1920) Edited by Matthew Kaiser (University of California, Merced, USA) Volume 6: A Cultural History of Comedy in the Modern Age (1920 present) Edited by Louise Peacock (De Montfort University, UK) Drawing together contributions by scholars from a variety of fields, including theater, film and television, sociology, and visual culture, this volume explores the range and diversity of comedic performance and comic forms in the modern age. It covers a range of forms and examples from 1920 to the present day, including plays, film, television comedy, live comedy, and comedy on social media. It argues that the period covered was marked by an explosion of comic forms and a flowering of comic creativity across a range of media. From the communal watching of silent films at the start of the period, to the use of Twitter and other online platforms to share and comment on comedy, technology has brought about significant changes in its form, consumption, and social effects. As comic forms have shifted and developed, so too have attitudes to what comedy can and cannot do. This study considers its role in entertainment and in provoking consideration of a range of social and political topics. Each chapter takes a different theme as its focus: form, theory, praxis, identities, the body, politics and power, laughter, and ethics. These eight different approaches to comedy add up to an extensive, synoptic coverage of the subject Drawing together scholars with a wide range of expertise across the early modern period, this volume explores the rich field of early modern comedy in all its variety. It argues that early modern comedy was shaped by a series of cultural transformations that included the emergence of the entertainment industry, the rise of the professional comedian, extended commentaries on the nature of comedy and laughter, and the development of printed jestbooks. It was the prime site from which to satirize a rapidly-changing world and explore the formation of new social relations around questions of gender, authority, identity, and commerce, amongst others. Yet even as it reacted to the novel and the new, comedy also served as a receptacle for the celebration of older social rituals such as May games and seasonal festivities. The result was a complex and contested mix of texts, performances, and concepts providing a deep tradition that abides to this day. Each chapter takes a different theme as its focus: form, theory, praxis, identities, the body, politics and power, laughter and ethics. These eight different approaches to early modern comedy add up to an extensive, synoptic coverage of the subject