Humour, History and Politics in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages

by Edited by Guy Halsall

• ISBN13: 9780521133654
• ISBN10: 0521133653
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-03-18
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Although the topic of humour has been dealt with for other eras, early medieval humour remains largely neglected. These essays go some way towards filling the gap, examining how early medieval writers deliberately employed humour to make their cases. The essays range from the late Roman empire through to the tenth century, and from Byzantium to Anglo-Saxon England. The subject matter is diverse, but a number of themes link them together, notably the use of irony, ridicule and satire as political tools. Two chapters serve as an extended introduction to the topic, while the following six chapters offer varied treatments of humour and politics, looking at different times and places, but at the Carolingian world in particular. Together, they raise important and original issues about how humour was employed to articulate concepts of political power, perceptions of kingship, social relations, and the role of particular texts.

Table of Contents

Notes on contributors

Preface

List of abbreviations

Introduction: 'Don't worry, I've got the key'

The Fate of Humorous Writing

Laughter and humour in the early medieval Latin west

Humour and the everyday in Byzantium

Humour and the Politics of Difference

The lexicon of abuse: drunkenness and political illegitimacy in the late Roman world

Funny foreigners: laughing with the barbarians in late

Liutprand of Cremona's sense of humour

Humour, History and Politics in the Carolingian World

'He never even allowed his white teeth to be bared in laughter': the politics of humour in the Carolingian renaissance

Alcuin's Disputatio Pippini and the early medieval riddle tradition

Laughter after Babel's fall: misunderstanding and miscommunication in the ninth-century west

Index

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