SFB - Sonderforschungsbereich Kulturen des Performativen

ABSTRACTS:

Description of the entire project:

While research on comical texts traditionally enquired after the "essence" or the "nature" of laughter/"the comic" (H. Bergson), recent approaches have emphasized the instrumental and functional character of laughter, its social contexts and historically variant semiotic references. Viewing the comic ontologically, most of the definitions agreed in understanding it as a "clash of different notions of reality, which through their mutual misunderstanding may cause laughter and derision" (H. Blumenberg). But if we assume the existence of historically different cultures of laughter, aspects like their anthropological conditions and their different forms of social communication become more relevant: therefore, the analysis will particularly focus on the use and the function of comical texts and images during the Middle Ages; furthermore, it will enquire after the license to laugh in the framework of medieval feasts and banquets as well as the role and use of laughter in the early genres of comical theatre, in order to clarify the structure, effects and the different historical meanings of the comic. Therefore, within the framework of the project, the following central topics will be discussed: the theatrical forms of comedy and the possibilities of their staging, spatial and temporal conditions of laughter, its styles and modes of expression, and the theoretical and aesthetical discourses which accompany its literary appearance. Our aim is twofold: on the one hand, we attempt to determine more precisely as previously done the different functions and effects of medieval laughter. On the other hand, it is our intention to outline a literary history of medieval and early modern laughter, while simultaneously considering the other arts and discourses. The analysis will embrace the diverse "reasons for pleasure in the comical hero" (H.R. Jauß) and the comical dispositions of thinking, speaking and acting; in addition, it will systematically trace this in the German, Latin, French, and Italian literary systems.
Generally, the joke seems to be the most physical of all forms of laughter; however, it makes sense to distinguish between two different types of jokes:
1. The form of the intellectual-rhetorical joke, which is produced by plays on language, double meanings etc. and which is often followed by aggressive laughter. This type of joke makes only a complementary use of bodily means - a preliminary observation which will be made more precise in the course of the analysis. This subordinate project covers in the first place the resarch on humanistic facetiae.
2. The form of the figurative and "body" joke, which is centered on visuality and the gesture of showing. This type of jest relies definitely less on language and witty expression, it can be characterized as a self-representation of the foolish actor or the staging of a foolish or theatrical sequence in a specific situation. This subordinate project includes research on the court fools, the French sotties, carnival plays and the risus paschalis.

Subordinate projects

Humanist facetiae:
The most important feature ot the genre "facetiae" is certainly a formal one: the choice of the Latin language. Therefore, the problem of diglossity has been pointed out repeatedly both by humanist authors and by modern observers, overlooking the question of how these texts actually worked within their historical and cultural contexts, a discussion which Barner has tried to initiate several times. The literary development of the facetiae is much broader than the names usually related to it – Poggio, Bebel and Zincgref – might suggest. By looking only at the morphological differences on the surface of the text, we can assume that the different collections of facetiae were not aimed to serve always the same literary and social contexts. Two aspects are important here: first, the specific relation between the printed book and the performance of reading, and second the more general question of the performance of laughter enclosed within the book. If the facetiae are expressions of educated sociability, which has been often claimed, the forms and spaces of staging this erudite culture must have been varied and variable. If the humanists used the vernacular to illustrate their anecdotes, we have to analyze more carefully the criteria of their choice, because with the use of the vernacular the humanists adopt a position which includes non-humanist forms of joking as well. Generally, the relation between the humanistic and the supposed popular or folkloristic staging of laughter must therefore be analyzed more thoroughly, especially since research in the last twenty years has overcome the traditional partition between high and low culture.

Court fools:
Scholar's growing interest during the las decade in the problem of oral transmission in the Middle Ages has shown that the art of medieval troubadours and minnesingers was bound to presence and presentation, whereby the "text" was just one among diverse means which created the "work" when performed (Paul Zumthor). Analogously, the comical art of fools or jesters at European courts between the 12th and 16th centuries was performed within a "community of laughers", where the fools appeared with theatrical gestures, "staging" jokes and tricks and amusing their audience with obscene movements and slapstick. (Laughter is seen here as the clue element of a social and functional relation among an attending group of people). These funny sequences of action, which starred fools such as Gonnella at the court of the Este in Ferrara or Claus Narr at the court of the Saxon dukes, were transformed into literary texts (novellas, anecdotes, comedies, farces) as early as the 14th century in several European cultures. The project intends to pursue this process of transfer from a situative and communicative act to a distancing textual model, focusing on the body of the fool with its gestures of demonstration and imitation, masquerades and theatrical and mimical art. The fool's body, which in the performance is at the same time author, locus and object of the action, is being transformed and "rationalized" in the narrative sequences of the literary text, where the separation of author and audience grows more sharply. The example of the fool's literary figure as a result of a complicated process of interchange and oscillation between acting and narrating can show the transition from medieval performance culture to an early modern culture of the text.

Sociétés joyeuses:
This subordinate project is dedicated to the analysis of the relation between performativity and textuality in the "cultural performances" of the Sociétés joyeuses - urban carnival corporations in northern and central France. The main hypothesis is that urban fools' corporations are closely linked to the esthetics of the Grands Rhétoriqueurs, which have been until recently understood exclusively as a courtly poetical school. The "second rhetoric" must be examined as a broad cultural movement, which spans several different media and social strata. Outside courtly poetic texts it found its highest expression in urban settings, in the sotties (short comic plays, performed by fools) and other symbolic actions of the société joyeuse. We argue that comic foolery is not substantive, but becomes the collective performative medium of the "second rhetoric", promoting specific communicative conditions, in which conventional linguistic forms (from single words and idioms to literary texts and genres) are transformed into multisensorial and dynamic performances. In such a framework the relationship between body language and the figurative-comic and the rhetorical-comic is not alternative or complementary but reciprocal and dynamic. The aim of the project is the examination of the media context, conditions of performance and social functions of the "rhetoric of fools". The art of the French Rhétoriqueurs, which has been traditionally ranked among the dying courtly medieval culture (Huizinga, Zumthor) will be explored as an expression of the new urban culture of transition from the late medieval to early modern period.

| oben | Projektliste | Homepage | SUCHEN | Stand: 12/02




	A3 Cultures of Laughter: The performance of joking and jesting in late medieval and early modern cultures
	ABSTRACTS: Description of the entire project: While research on comical texts traditionally enquired after the "essence" or the "nature" of laughter/"the comic" (H. Bergson), recent approaches have emphasized the instrumental and functional character of laughter, its social contexts and historically variant semiotic references. Viewing the comic ontologically, most of the definitions agreed in understanding it as a "clash of different notions of reality, which through their mutual misunderstanding may cause laughter and derision" (H. Blumenberg). But if we assume the existence of historically different cultures of laughter, aspects like their anthropological conditions and their different forms of social communication become more relevant: therefore, the analysis will particularly focus on the use and the function of comical texts and images during the Middle Ages; furthermore, it will enquire after the license to laugh in the framework of medieval feasts and banquets as well as the role and use of laughter in the early genres of comical theatre, in order to clarify the structure, effects and the different historical meanings of the comic. Therefore, within the framework of the project, the following central topics will be discussed: the theatrical forms of comedy and the possibilities of their staging, spatial and temporal conditions of laughter, its styles and modes of expression, and the theoretical and aesthetical discourses which accompany its literary appearance. Our aim is twofold: on the one hand, we attempt to determine more precisely as previously done the different functions and effects of medieval laughter. On the other hand, it is our intention to outline a literary history of medieval and early modern laughter, while simultaneously considering the other arts and discourses. The analysis will embrace the diverse "reasons for pleasure in the comical hero" (H.R. Jauß) and the comical dispositions of thinking, speaking and acting; in addition, it will systematically trace this in the German, Latin, French, and Italian literary systems. Generally, the joke seems to be the most physical of all forms of laughter; however, it makes sense to distinguish between two different types of jokes: 1. The form of the intellectual-rhetorical joke, which is produced by plays on language, double meanings etc. and which is often followed by aggressive laughter. This type of joke makes only a complementary use of bodily means - a preliminary observation which will be made more precise in the course of the analysis. This subordinate project covers in the first place the resarch on humanistic facetiae. 2. The form of the figurative and "body" joke, which is centered on visuality and the gesture of showing. This type of jest relies definitely less on language and witty expression, it can be characterized as a self-representation of the foolish actor or the staging of a foolish or theatrical sequence in a specific situation. This subordinate project includes research on the court fools, the French sotties, carnival plays and the risus paschalis. Subordinate projects Humanist facetiae: The most important feature ot the genre "facetiae" is certainly a formal one: the choice of the Latin language. Therefore, the problem of diglossity has been pointed out repeatedly both by humanist authors and by modern observers, overlooking the question of how these texts actually worked within their historical and cultural contexts, a discussion which Barner has tried to initiate several times. The literary development of the facetiae is much broader than the names usually related to it – Poggio, Bebel and Zincgref – might suggest. By looking only at the morphological differences on the surface of the text, we can assume that the different collections of facetiae were not aimed to serve always the same literary and social contexts. Two aspects are important here: first, the specific relation between the printed book and the performance of reading, and second the more general question of the performance of laughter enclosed within the book. If the facetiae are expressions of educated sociability, which has been often claimed, the forms and spaces of staging this erudite culture must have been varied and variable. If the humanists used the vernacular to illustrate their anecdotes, we have to analyze more carefully the criteria of their choice, because with the use of the vernacular the humanists adopt a position which includes non-humanist forms of joking as well. Generally, the relation between the humanistic and the supposed popular or folkloristic staging of laughter must therefore be analyzed more thoroughly, especially since research in the last twenty years has overcome the traditional partition between high and low culture. Court fools: Scholar's growing interest during the las decade in the problem of oral transmission in the Middle Ages has shown that the art of medieval troubadours and minnesingers was bound to presence and presentation, whereby the "text" was just one among diverse means which created the "work" when performed (Paul Zumthor). Analogously, the comical art of fools or jesters at European courts between the 12th and 16th centuries was performed within a "community of laughers", where the fools appeared with theatrical gestures, "staging" jokes and tricks and amusing their audience with obscene movements and slapstick. (Laughter is seen here as the clue element of a social and functional relation among an attending group of people). These funny sequences of action, which starred fools such as Gonnella at the court of the Este in Ferrara or Claus Narr at the court of the Saxon dukes, were transformed into literary texts (novellas, anecdotes, comedies, farces) as early as the 14th century in several European cultures. The project intends to pursue this process of transfer from a situative and communicative act to a distancing textual model, focusing on the body of the fool with its gestures of demonstration and imitation, masquerades and theatrical and mimical art. The fool's body, which in the performance is at the same time author, locus and object of the action, is being transformed and "rationalized" in the narrative sequences of the literary text, where the separation of author and audience grows more sharply. The example of the fool's literary figure as a result of a complicated process of interchange and oscillation between acting and narrating can show the transition from medieval performance culture to an early modern culture of the text. Sociétés joyeuses: This subordinate project is dedicated to the analysis of the relation between performativity and textuality in the "cultural performances" of the Sociétés joyeuses - urban carnival corporations in northern and central France. The main hypothesis is that urban fools' corporations are closely linked to the esthetics of the Grands Rhétoriqueurs, which have been until recently understood exclusively as a courtly poetical school. The "second rhetoric" must be examined as a broad cultural movement, which spans several different media and social strata. Outside courtly poetic texts it found its highest expression in urban settings, in the sotties (short comic plays, performed by fools) and other symbolic actions of the société joyeuse. We argue that comic foolery is not substantive, but becomes the collective performative medium of the "second rhetoric", promoting specific communicative conditions, in which conventional linguistic forms (from single words and idioms to literary texts and genres) are transformed into multisensorial and dynamic performances. In such a framework the relationship between body language and the figurative-comic and the rhetorical-comic is not alternative or complementary but reciprocal and dynamic. The aim of the project is the examination of the media context, conditions of performance and social functions of the "rhetoric of fools". The art of the French Rhétoriqueurs, which has been traditionally ranked among the dying courtly medieval culture (Huizinga, Zumthor) will be explored as an expression of the new urban culture of transition from the late medieval to early modern period. \| oben \| Projektliste \| Homepage \| SUCHEN \| Stand: 12/02