Medievalist laughter

This issue of postmedieval explores the role of laughter and humor in medievalism. The medieval period has long provided a fund of images and ideas that have been vital to defining ‘the modern.’ From the earliest parodies of medieval chivalry, through to the scatological humor of contemporary internet medievalism, it is clear that as long as there has been medievalism, people have indulged in medievalist laughter. Comic engagement with the Middle Ages has had a vital role in the postmedieval imaginary, and thus warrants serious attention, but to date it has not received sustained analysis. The work that has appeared on comic medievalist texts has not yet led to the development of a critical language to understand the ‘affective-historical’ responses these texts generate. The essays in this issue take steps toward the development of that language

No Laughing Matter: Fraud, the Fabliau and Chaucer’s Franklin’s Tale

In terms of its genre, the Franklin’s Tale is one of Chaucer’s most puzzling texts. It not only presents an Italian novella as a Breton lay, but splices further material from chronicles, saints’ lives and classical and patristic literature into its overall form. This paper aims to deepen the Tale’s complexity by noting the presence of a further, unremarked genre in the text, that of the fabliau. In particular, it pays close attention to the figure of the magician, arguing that this character and his tacitly rationalised sorcery are designed to evoke the rascally clercs escoliers of the French texts, whose trickery often has comparable methods and results. The wider implications of these allusions for interpreting the poem are also considered