Medieval Joke Poetry examines the intersection of jokes, laughter, insults, and poetry in a collection of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century medieval Iberian songs known as the Cantigas d'escarnho e de mal dizer. Written in Galician-Portuguese, these "songs of mockery and insult" make up a heterogeneous corpus whose witticisms are by turns funny and vicious, crudely obscene and exquisitely sophisticated, playful and deadly serious.
Benjamin Liu's readings disentangle the complex verbal strategies of these joke-poems in order to reveal the latent cultural tensions that underlie their humor. Wordplay, double meanings, and deliberate combinations of incongruous ideas are intended to elicit laughter, even as they gesture toward the rupture of accepted cultural categories in such manifestly hybrid paradoxes as an "Albardan cavaleiro" (noble buffoon), a "mouro cruzado" (Crusader Moor), or a male "dona salvage" (wild woman). Liu shows how these jokes operate in such varied cultural contexts as the arts of augury and divination, pilgrimage, prostitution, interfaith sexuality, and medical malpractice.
| ISBN: | 9780674016644 |
| Publication date: | 7th December 2004 |
| Author: | Benjamin Liu |
| Publisher: | Harvard University Department of Comparative Literature an imprint of Harvard University Press |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 166 pages |
| Series: | Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature |
| Genres: |
Literary studies: poetry and poets |
Medieval Joke Poetry examines the intersection of jokes, laughter, insults, and poetry in a collection of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century medieval Iberian songs known as the Cantigas d'escarnho e de mal dizer. Written in Galician-Portuguese, these "songs of mockery and insult" make up a heterogeneous corpus whose witticisms are by turns funny and vicious, crudely obscene and exquisitely sophisticated, playful and deadly serious.Benjamin Liu's readings disentangle the complex verbal strategies of these joke-poems in order to reveal the latent cultural tensions that underlie their humor.
Medieval Joke Poetry features in the following genres: Literary studies: poetry and poets
Paperback. Not Available.
Medieval Joke Poetry was written by Benjamin Liu and published by Harvard University Department of Comparative Literature an imprint of Harvard University Press
Medieval Joke Poetry has 166 pages
Yes it is part of Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature series