Личманова Е.А. Многоголосие средневекового смеха [Электронный ресурс] // Vox medii aevi. 2021. Vol. 2(9). С. 12–38. URL: http://voxmediiaevi.com/2021-2-lichmanova/
DOI: 10.24412/2587-6619-2021-2-12-38
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Личманова Елена Александровна
Докторантка кафедры истории искусств, Оксфордский университет
elena.lichmanova@merton.ox.ac.uk
Многоголосие средневекового смеха
В статье, представляющей собой введение в тему средневекового смеха, демонстрируется многообразие форм юмора и его рецепции современниками. Здесь прослеживаются основные проблемы, возникающие в изучении этого субъективного феномена, и существующие в медиевистике способы их преодоления. Три классические теории юмора, сформированные в философском и психологическом дискурсах, обусловили три базовых методологических подхода к исследованию средневекового смеха в разные периоды. Акцент сделан на том, чтобы, показав развитие историографии и текстовых, и изобразительных источников, выявить искусственность закрепленного в медиевистике ХХ в. деления на вербальный и визуальный юмор.
Ключевые слова: вербальный юмор; визуальный юмор; карнавальная культура; методология изучения юмора; психоаналитическая теория смеха; средневековый смех; теория инконгруэнтности; теория превосходства
Elena Lichmanova
Post-Graduate Student in History of Art, University of Oxford
elena.lichmanova@merton.ox.ac.uk
The Polyphony of Medieval Laughter
As an introduction to the subject of medieval laughter, the article demonstrates the diversity of its forms and the responses of contemporaries to it. It traces the main problems arising in the study of this subjective phenomenon and the ways of overcoming them existing in medieval studies. Three classical theories of laughter, shaped by philosophical and psychological discourses, have conditioned three basic methodological approaches to the study of medieval humour in different periods. Both the superiority theory of laughter prevalent in philosophical writings and the understanding of play as primitive and childish activity formed in anthropological research of the period, led to a condescending attitude to medieval humour in nineteenth and early twentieth-century publications.
Freudian relief theory of laughter and Huizinga’s reevaluation of the notion of play as a fundamental aspect of human culture determined twentieth-century studies on humour. The Bakhtinian idea of comical being an integral part of ‘serious’ religious culture was aligned with Huizinga’s understanding of play, and Bakhtin’s concept of carnival as a relief from the official church order reflected a psychoanalytic approach to laughter.
The studies of the last three decades have been influenced by the incongruity theory: it had risen in the psychological research in the 1970s and interprets the basis of any humour as the contrast between what one expects and what one gets. Historiography shows, however, that any methodological approach to the study of medieval humour must be complemented by its main ingredient — context. A special focus of this article was given to the historiography of visual humour: by demonstrating the development of research of both textual and visual sources, the article aims to reveal the artificiality of division into verbal and visual humour that had been inadvertently enunciated in the twentieth century studies.
Key words: carnivalesque; incongruity theory; medieval laughter; methodology of studying humour; superiority theory of laughter; relief theory; verbal humour; visual humour