Were the Middle Ages funny? To answer that question, Mary Wellesley and Irina Dumitrescu hunt through some of the rudest, silliest and surprising works in English literature in search of the Medieval sense of humour.
Mary Wellesley and Irina Dumitrescu are both writers and historians, and regular contributors to the London Review of Books.
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Academic scholars Irina Dumitrescu & Mary Robertson explore Gwerful Mechain's daring 15th-century poem 'Cywydd y Cedor', challenging medieval conventions with witty, combative verses that redefine female empowerment.
18 Nov 2024
'Tales of Count Lucanor' by Juan Manuel
If you’re looking for advice on sustaining a marriage, or robbing a grave, or performing liver surgery, then a series of self-help stories by a 14th-century Spanish prince is a good place to start. Tales of Count Lucanor, written between 1328 and 1335 by Prince Juan Manuel of Villena, is one of the earliest works of Castilian prose. The tales follow the familiar shape of many medieval stories, presented as a kind of medicine to improve the lives of its readers by example. Yet in his preface Manuel makes an unusual assertion about the individuality of all people, a philosophy that, as Mary and Irina discuss in this episode, leads to bizarre and opaque moral messages intended more to make the reader think for themselves than reach a universal conclusion.
Find a translation of the Tales here: https://elfinspell.com/CountLucanor1.html (https://elfinspell.com/CountLucanor1.html)
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18 Oct 2024
Boccaccio’s ‘Decameron’: Part Two
Mary and Irina resume their discussion of Boccaccio’s Decameron, focusing on three stories of female agency, deception and desire. Alibech, an aspiring hermitess, is tricked into indulging her powerful sexual urges; Petronella combines business and pleasure at the expense of her husband and lover; while Lydia demonstrates her devotion by killing hawks and pulling teeth. As Mary and Irina discuss, these stories exemplify the ambiguous depiction of women in the Decameron, where the world is powered by rapacious female lusts, sex has no consequences and conventional morality is suspended.
Read more on the Decameron in the LRB: https://lrb.me/decameronpod (https://lrb.me/decameronpod)
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18 Sept 2024
Boccaccio's 'Decameron': Part One
In the preface to the Decameron Boccaccio describes Florentine society laid waste by bubonic plague in the mid-14th century. But before he gets to that he has a confession for the reader: he has been hurt by love, a love ‘more fervent than any other love’, and intends his work as a guide to life and love for young women in particular. In the first of two episodes on Boccaccio’s hundred novelle of sex, dishonesty and foolishness, Mary and Irina consider why both the preface and first story – about the disreputable merchant Cepparello – start with a confession, before looking at the later tale of the gardener Masetto and his noble efforts tending to the needs of every nun in a convent in Lamporecchio.
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Read more on Boccaccio the LRB: https://lrb.me/decameronpod (https://lrb.me/decameronpod)
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18 Aug 2024
Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle
The character of Gawain, one of King Arthur’s leading knights, recurs throughout medieval literature, but the way he’s presented underwent a curious development during the period, moving closer and closer to an impossible and perhaps comical ideal of chivalric perfection. In 'Sir Gawain and the Greene Knight', his most well-known incarnation, Gawain faces a series of peculiar tests and apparently fails them all. 'Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle', a later poem, takes many elements from 'The Greene Knight' and exaggerates them to the extreme: the cups the knights drink from are so large they’re impossible to drink from, and Gawain faces an even more peculiar sequence of tests, but meets them all perfectly. Irina and Mary discuss the degree to which this exaggeration can be taken as a satire on chivalric expectations, and whether by this point the character of Gawain should be considered more monastic than knightly.
Read the text here:
https://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/hahn-sir-gawain-sir-gawain-and-the-carle-of-carlisle (https://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/hahn-sir-gawain-sir-gawain-and-the-carle-of-carlisle)
Read some Arthurian background in the LRB here:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v40/n24/tom-shippey/so-much-smoke (https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v40/n24/tom-shippey/so-much-smoke)
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18 Jul 2024
Solomon and Marcolf
The foul-mouthed, mean-spirited peasant Marcolf was one of the most well-known literary characters in late medieval Europe. He appears in many poetic works from the 9th century onwards, but it’s in this dialogue with Solomon, printed in Antwerp in 1492, that we find him at his irreverent and scatological best as they engage in a battle of proverbial wisdom. Mary and Irina consider some of the more startling and perplexing of the riddles and discuss how the development of Marcolf’s earthy rejoinders tells a story about justice and political power.
Read the text here:
https://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/bradbury-solomon-and-marcolf (https://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/bradbury-solomon-and-marcolf)
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18 Jun 2024
The Second Shepherds' Pageant
In their quest for the medieval sense of humour Mary and Irina come to The Second Shepherds’ Pageant, a 15th-century reimagining of the nativity as domestic comedy that’s less about the birth of Jesus and more about sheep rustling, taxes, the weather and the frustrations of daily life. The pageant was part of a mystery cycle, a collection of plays that revealed religious mysteries through performances of the Christian story and were a central part of community life. Mary and Irina discuss the porous relationship between player and audience in medieval theatre, and the expert stage management of this knockabout semi-biblical farce.
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31 May 2024
Dame Syrith
As Mary and Irina discussed in the previous episode of Medieval LOLs, French fabliaux had an enormous influence on Chaucer, but outside of his work, only one survives in Middle English. Dame Syrith, a story of lust, deception and a mustard-eating dog, is medieval humour at its silliest and most troubling. Mary and Irina explore the surprising representations of old women, magic and consent in fabliaux, the poem’s possible role as a pedagogical tool, and medieval audiences’ love for the procuress trope.
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18 Apr 2024
Fabliaux
Fabliaux were short, witty tales originating in northern France between the 12th and 14th centuries, often featuring crafty characters in rustic settings and overwhelmingly concerned with money and sex. In this episode Irina and Mary look at two of these comic verses, both containing surprisingly explicit sexual language, and consider the ways in which they influenced Boccaccio, Chaucer and others.
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18 Mar 2024
Old English Riddles
Riddles are an ancient and universal form, but few people seem to have enjoyed them more than English Benedictine monks. The Exeter Book, a tenth century monastic collection of Old English verse, builds on the riddle tradition in two striking ways: first, the riddles don’t come with answers; second, they are sexually suggestive. Were they intended to test the moral purity of the reader? Are they simply mischievous rhetorical exercises? Mary and Irina read some of them and consider why Anglo-Saxon culture was so obsessed with the enigmatic.
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18 Feb 2024
The Colloquies of Aelfric Bata
All teachers know that the best way for students to learn a language is through swear words, and nobody knew this better than Aelfric Bata, a monk from Winchester whose Colloquies, compiled in around the year 1000, instructed pupils to swear in Latin with elaborate and vivid fluency. Mary and Irina work through some of Aelfric’s fruitier dialogues, and ask whether his examples can be taken purely in good humour.
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Read more in the LRB:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n09/irina-dumitrescu/making-my-moan (https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n09/irina-dumitrescu/making-my-moan)
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18 Jan 2024
Chaucer's Miller's Tale
Were the Middle Ages funny? In this bonus series for 2024, Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley begin their quest for the medieval sense of humour with Chaucer’s 'Miller’s Tale', a story that is surely still (almost) as funny as when it was written six hundred years ago. But who is the real butt of the joke? Mary and Irina look in detail at the mechanics of the plot and its needless but pleasurable complexity, and consider the social significance of clothes and pubic hair in the tale.
You can also watch a video version of this episode: https://youtu.be/_o1GdU5-O8U?si=ca_I-wnwR1HVGMqV (https://youtu.be/_o1GdU5-O8U?si=ca_I-wnwR1HVGMqV)
Sign up to listen to this series ad free and all our subscriber series in full, including Mary and Irina's twelve-part series Medieval Beginnings:
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Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk
Read more on Chaucer in the LRB:
Barbara Newman: Chaucer's Voices
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v41/n22/barbara-newman/kek-kek!-kokkow!-quek-quek!
Gabriel Josipovici: Imperfect Knight
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v02/n07/gabriel-josipovici/imperfect-knight
Tom Shippey: Chaucer's Life
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v15/n01/tom-shippey/nayled-to-the-wow
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