Comic Medievalism: Laughing at the Middle Ages by Louise D’Arcens (review)

Abstract

louise d'arcens, Comic Medievalism: Laughing at the Middle Ages. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2014. Pp. x, 209. isbn: 978-1-84384-380-1. $95.Not only did the Middle Ages have their own richly comic seam, but post-medieval studies of the period often treat it as a source of fresh humor. Louise D'Arcens' aim is to identify what is thought funny about the Middle Ages, and to show how this has influenced modern ideas about both the Middle Ages and modernity. The subject is vast, and D'Arcens has wisely decided to focus on only a few aspects; a comprehensive study would have had to include, for example, some evaluation of T.H. White's influential novel, The Sword in the Stone, and its later metamorphoses on stage and screen. That said, her historical range is wide-from Chaucer to now -and takes samples that include early modern chivalric satire, eighteenth century verse, Victorian burlesque, Marxist farce, medievalist cinema, contemporary comichistorical books, television documentaries and heritage tourism sites.The opening chapter ('The Cervantean Paradigm; Comedy, Madness, and Meta-Medievalism') aptly illustrates the ambivalence that informs Cervantes' use of medieval parody and farce, for, as Michael Scham argues, 'Cervantes delights in the very material he travesties' (37).A variant ambivalence is traced in chapter 2 ('Scraping the Rust from the Joking Bard: Chaucer in the Age of Wit'), which describes how the revivers of interest in Chaucer regarded him either as embodying a lost medieval comic outlook or as forming a link in a much longer, European post-Horatian tradition. In both cases the perceived shortcomings in his versification and endemic ribaldry were thought to require 'polishing' (67).Chapter 3 ('Medievalist Farce as Anti-Totalitarian Weapon: Dario Fo as Modern Giullare') provides a masterly examination of Fo's role as a modern Marxist activist who believes that he is reviving a traditional/medieval anarchic folk-humor which had the power to encourage social revolt. Yet, despite claims for his great influence in Italy, and on Pasolini's films in particular, Pasolini would dismiss Fo's work as 'bourgeois anti-bourgeois theatre' (84).Chapter 4 ('Pre-Modern Camp and Faerie Legshows: Travestying the Middle Ages on the Nineteenth-Century Stage') then reveals that the desire to present authentically costumed historical drama, especially Shakespearean, led to a fascination with medieval topics. Though these were often grossly burlesqued, the audience probably felt an affectionate complicity with the presentation, and laughed with it rather than at it. …