Laughter and Narrative in the Later Middle Ages

Laughter and Narrative in the Later Middle Ages PDF Author: Sebastian Coxon
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351560832
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
In contrast to the vernacular literary traditions of France, Italy and England, comic tales in verse flourished in late medieval Germany, providing bawdy entertainment for larger audiences of public recitals as well as for smaller numbers of individual readers. In a sustained close analysis Sebastian Coxon explores both the narrative design and fundamental thematic preoccupations of these short texts. A distinctively performative tradition of pre-modern narrative literature emerges which invited its recipients to think, learn and above all to laugh in a number of different ways.

Laughter and Narrative in the Later Middle Ages

Laughter and Narrative in the Later Middle Ages PDF Author: Sebastian Coxon
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351560832
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
In contrast to the vernacular literary traditions of France, Italy and England, comic tales in verse flourished in late medieval Germany, providing bawdy entertainment for larger audiences of public recitals as well as for smaller numbers of individual readers. In a sustained close analysis Sebastian Coxon explores both the narrative design and fundamental thematic preoccupations of these short texts. A distinctively performative tradition of pre-modern narrative literature emerges which invited its recipients to think, learn and above all to laugh in a number of different ways.

Handbook of Medieval Studies

Handbook of Medieval Studies PDF Author: Albrecht Classen
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110215586
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 2822

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Book Description
This interdisciplinary handbook provides extensive information about research in medieval studies and its most important results over the last decades. The handbook is a reference work which enables the readers to quickly and purposely gain insight into the important research discussions and to inform themselves about the current status of research in the field. The handbook consists of four parts. The first, large section offers articles on all of the main disciplines and discussions of the field. The second section presents articles on the key concepts of modern medieval studies and the debates therein. The third section is a lexicon of the most important text genres of the Middle Ages. The fourth section provides an international bio-bibliographical lexicon of the most prominent medievalists in all disciplines. A comprehensive bibliography rounds off the compendium. The result is a reference work which exhaustively documents the current status of research in medieval studies and brings the disciplines and experts of the field together.

Humorous Structures of English Narratives, 1200-1600

Humorous Structures of English Narratives, 1200-1600 PDF Author: Theresa Hamilton
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443853275
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
We all have the ability to recognize and create humour. But how do we do it? Salvatore Attardo and Victor Raskin have attempted to explain the workings of humour with their General Theory of Verbal Humor. How well does their theory explain the way humour ‘works’ in a particular text, and can it provide us with interesting, novel interpretations? By identifying and interpreting the narrative structures that create humour, this study tests the usefulness of Attardo & Raskin’s humour theory on a specific corpus of fabliaux, parodies and tragedies. Hamilton proposes a supplementation of the General Theory of Verbal Humor to create a means of undertaking what she calls a ‘humorist reading’. By posing the questions ‘why is this humorous?’, ‘how is it humorous?’ or ‘why is it not humorous?’ and providing the theoretical tools to answer them, a ‘humorist reading’ can make a valuable contribution to our understanding of a literary text and its place in society.

Laughter in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times

Laughter in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times PDF Author: Albrecht Classen
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110245485
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 864

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Book Description
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.

Medievalia et Humanistica, No. 44

Medievalia et Humanistica, No. 44 PDF Author: Reinhold F. Glei
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538112728
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 145

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Book Description
Since its founding in 1943, Medievalia et Humanistica has won worldwide recognition as the first scholarly publication in America to devote itself entirely to medieval and Renaissance studies. Since 1970, a new series, sponsored by the Modern Language Association of America and edited by an international board of distinguished scholars and critics, has published interdisciplinary articles. In yearly hardcover volumes, the new series publishes significant scholarship, criticism, and reviews treating all facets of medieval and Renaissance culture: history, art, literature, music, science, law, economics, and philosophy. Volume 44 showcases the interdisciplinary nature of the series with articles on the role of women in Old English martyrology, the blending of sacred and mundane subjects in medieval biblical plays (Spiele), the relationship between reality and literary topoi in the humanist praise of cities (Städtelob), and reflections on the absence of the bull in early modern European discourse. Volume 44 also includes five review notices that illustrate the journal’s interdisciplinary scope.

Words that Tear the Flesh

Words that Tear the Flesh PDF Author: Stephen Alan Baragona
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110563258
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
The rhetorical trope of irony is well-trod territory, with books and essays devoted to its use by a wide range of medieval and Renaissance writers, from the Beowulf-poet and Chaucer to Boccaccio and Shakespeare; however, the use of sarcasm, the "flesh tearing" form of irony, in the same literature has seldom been studied at length or in depth. Sarcasm is notoriously difficult to pick out in a written text, since it relies so much on tone of voice and context. This is the first book-length study of medieval and Renaissance sarcasm. Its fourteen essays treat instances in a range of genres, both sacred and secular, and of cultures from Anglo-Saxon to Arabic, where the combination of circumstance and word choice makes it absolutely clear that the speaker, whether a character or a narrator, is being sarcastic. Essays address, among other things, the clues writers give that sarcasm is at work, how it conforms to or deviates from contemporary rhetorical theories, what role it plays in building character or theme, and how sarcasm conforms to the Christian milieu of medieval Europe, and beyond to medieval Arabic literature. The collection thus illuminates a half-hidden but surprisingly common early literary technique for modern readers.

Scales of Connectivity

Scales of Connectivity PDF Author: Paul Maurice Clogan
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742570184
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
Since its founding in 1943, Medievalia et Humanistica has won worldwide recognition as the first scholarly publication in America to devote itself entirely to medieval and Renaissance studies. Since 1970, a new series, sponsored by the Modern Language Association of America and edited by an international board of distinguished scholars and critics, has published interdisciplinary articles. In yearly hardcover volumes, the new series publishes significant scholarship, criticism, and reviews treating all facets of medieval and Renaissance culture: history, art, literature, music, science, law, economics, and philosophy. Medievalia et Humanistica Editorial Board and Submissions Guidelines

From Priest's Whore to Pastor's Wife

From Priest's Whore to Pastor's Wife PDF Author: Marjorie Elizabeth Plummer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317131924
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
On 13 June 1525, Martin Luther married Katharina von Bora, a former nun, in a private ceremony officiated by city preacher Johann Bugenhagen. Whilst Luther was not the first former monk or Reformer to marry, his marriage immediately became one of the iconic episodes of the Protestant Reformation. From that point on, the marital status of clergy would be a pivotal dividing line between the Catholic and Protestant churches. Tackling the early stages of this divide, this book provides a fresh assessment of clerical marriage in the first half of the sixteenth century, when the debates were undecided and the intellectual and institutional situation remained fluid and changeable. It investigates the way that clerical marriage was received, and viewed in the dioceses of Mainz and Magdeburg under Archbishop Albrecht of Brandenburg from 1513 to 1545. By concentrating on a cross-section of rural and urban settings from three key regions within this territory - Saxony, Franconia, and Swabia - the study is able to present a broad comparison of reactions to this contentious issue. Although the marital status of the clergy remains perhaps the most identifiable difference between Protestant and Roman Catholic churches, remarkably little research has been done on how the shift from a "celibate" to a married clergy took place during the Reformation in Germany or what reactions such a move elicited. As such, this book will be welcomed by all those wishing to gain greater insight, not only into the theological debates, but also into the interactions between social identity, governance, and religious practice.

A Cultural History of Comedy in the Middle Ages

A Cultural History of Comedy in the Middle Ages PDF Author: Martha Bayless
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350187631
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
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.

Linguistic Theories of Humor

Linguistic Theories of Humor PDF Author: Salvatore Attardo
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3111280330
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
Linguistic Theories of Humor appeared thirty years ago. It attracted a lot of attention and ended up being one of the most quoted books in the linguistics of humor. Partly due to its broad coverage which includes both theoretical and socio-pragmatic aspects and partly due to the depth of its bibliography it remained an indispensable reference in many areas, despite the growth of the field. The original fully corrected text is supplemented by a long essay, in which the author revisits the topics of the book to discuss how three decades have shifted the perspective of the field.