Sacred Comedy in Medieval Culture (A Roundtable)
Sponsoring Organization(s)
Special Session
Organizer Name
Sarah Brazil; Emma Maggie Solberg
Organizer Affiliation
Univ. de Genève; Bowdoin College
Presider Name
Sarah Brazil; Emma Maggie Solberg
Paper Title 1
The Middle of Mankind: Skipping to the Funny Parts of Moralities
Presenter 1 Name
Matthew Sergi
Presenter 1 Affiliation
Univ. of Toronto
Paper Title 2
The Comedy of the Catfight: Misogyny and Laughter in The Castle of Perseverance
Presenter 2 Name
Carissa M. Harris
Presenter 2 Affiliation
Temple Univ.
Paper Title 3
Confessions of a Medieval Drama Queen
Presenter 3 Name
Jody Enders
Presenter 3 Affiliation
Univ. of California-Santa Barbara
Paper Title 4
"From Sexpot to Saint": Teasing Rhetoric and Humorous Incongruity in the Life of Saint Mary of Egypt
Presenter 4 Name
Niamh Kehoe
Presenter 4 Affiliation
Univ. College Cork
Paper Title 5
The Parody of Saint Paul in the Book of Good Love (Libro de buen amor 1343)
Presenter 5 Name
Ryan Giles
Presenter 5 Affiliation
Indiana Univ.-Bloomington
Paper Title 6
Humor, Irony, and Rhetoric in Fourteenth-Century Art and Devotion
Presenter 6 Name
Anne Williams
Presenter 6 Affiliation
College of William & Mary
Paper Title 7
And the Sacred?
Presenter 7 Name
Mark Burde
Presenter 7 Affiliation
Univ. of Michigan-Ann Arbor
Start Date
10-5-2019 10:00 AM
Session Location
Schneider 1280
Description
In 1955, the drama critic F.M Salter made the point that ‘in the Middle Ages, God himself had a sense of humor’ (Medieval Drama in Chester, 103-4). Salter, however, was a critical rarity. Both contemporaries and subsequent generations have refused the position that religious figures might have some dramatic, iconographic, or literary connection to humor and/or comedy. The difficulties critics have faced in trying to theorize and categorize the comic (as opposed to the tragic) points to the fact that this is an area of medieval scholarship that is still in need of attention. This roundtable aims to bring scholars together who are interested in how we might understand the humor of the past, to find and trace laughter and funniness in medieval texts and artifacts, and to strategize what to do when we no longer have access to the joke. This roundtable is looking for new ways to approach these questions. Emma Maggie Solberg
Sacred Comedy in Medieval Culture (A Roundtable)
Schneider 1280
In 1955, the drama critic F.M Salter made the point that ‘in the Middle Ages, God himself had a sense of humor’ (Medieval Drama in Chester, 103-4). Salter, however, was a critical rarity. Both contemporaries and subsequent generations have refused the position that religious figures might have some dramatic, iconographic, or literary connection to humor and/or comedy. The difficulties critics have faced in trying to theorize and categorize the comic (as opposed to the tragic) points to the fact that this is an area of medieval scholarship that is still in need of attention. This roundtable aims to bring scholars together who are interested in how we might understand the humor of the past, to find and trace laughter and funniness in medieval texts and artifacts, and to strategize what to do when we no longer have access to the joke. This roundtable is looking for new ways to approach these questions. Emma Maggie Solberg