Project A3 is dedicated to critical analysis of cultures of laughter in the late medieval / early modern period, especially in regard to the relationship between written or visual testimonies and cultural performances. In contrast with former research, our goal is not an ontological definition of humor, but an understanding of the specific forms and functions of "staged" laughter. Our main aim is to outline the different functional modes of medieval laughter and to broaden the perspective on a literary history of laughter, opening it to other arts and discourses. In the first three years of our work we developed specific heuristic categories of jokes linguistic (facetiae) and practical, which appear in different genres of medieval theatre and prose. Our research over the last triennium has emphasized the dialogic relationships between literary texts and cultural practices of laughter. We focused our work on the analysis of the ritual functions of comic texts (e.g. Fastnachtspiel, Farce, Sottie), being staged in social frameworks of mocking and rebuke customs, like charivaris and other public ostentations.
On the basis of the results of the two former phases we intend to focus our present work on the social processes of community formation that are being initiated and modified through collective laughter. Therefore, the three interconnected subprojects are centered on the question of collective laughter in different textual genres, in its function as performative group construction.
In the first instance, we understand "laugh communities" as spontaneously formed social groups characterized by structural openness and instability. They are distinct from institutionalized groups of that time, which are based on different material and social premises. Thus, laugh communities do not belong to that type of communities that Max Weber defines in the context of "Vergemeinschaftung" (Weber 1922/1985), since he associates communities with stable forms of their members’ subjective, affective, and traditional togetherness. In contrast, our concept of "laugh community" emphasizes - following the concept of performative community formation (Gebauer/Wulf 1998) - its contingent, incalculable and fluid traits. Above all, laugh communities, unlike their institutionalized counterparts, must "script" their concepts of social order (authority, power and moral norms) through laughter every time anew.
Despite their openness, these communities follow certain rules. Our project analyzes the grammar of these rules, which can be traced in both performance and literary texts. On the background of new theoretical achievements of performativity studies, we explore the emergence, the ways of functioning, and the social effects of laugh communities as they appear in literary texts, theatrical and ritual performances. Central to this investigation are issues of the staging of communities based on laughter’s potential of social regulation and their stylizations in literary texts. The connection between openness and stability, crucial for laughing communities, will be analyzed with the help of social, ideological and anthropological paradigms.
Subproject 1: Laugh Communities at Court. Performances of Social Order in medieval epic and early modern narrative (Hans R. Velten)
This subproject explores the ritual laughter of courtly communities in regard to mockery, revilement, and speeches of boasting and bragging in German and European literature. The subgenre of "gap" and ancient Nordic forms of boasting speeches and disputations will serve as models for the analysis of laughter as an essential part of the social fabric of carousal, and for the social dynamics of chivalric groups. The central part of this research will focus on Arthurian and Dietrich epic poetry.
Subproject 2: Laughter in the sociétés joyeuses in medieval and early modern France (Katja Gvozdeva)
The second subproject explores the culture of burlesque men corporations in France. The dynamics of inclusive and exclusive group laughter acquires ritual dimensions in carnivalesque contexts, which allows to perceive sociétés joyeuses as institutionalized forms of laugh communities, promoting gender- and age specific ideologies. The goal of the subproject is to explore the late medieval and early modern literary and iconographic comedy in relationship to the ideological concepts and burlesque rituals of these institutions.
Subproject 3: Holy Laughter. The Fascination of Evil in Religious Laugh Communities in the Middle Ages (Werner Röcke)
The third subproject explores the relationship between salvific history and laughter in medieval rituals and texts (the variations of "holy laughter" in religious drama and comic Latin tales). The subproject will especially focus on the connection between salvific history and mundus perversus, and on the varying functions of laughter in relation to the representation of evil.
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