Laughter and Narrative in the Later Middle Ages

Download or read book Laughter and Narrative in the Later Middle Ages written by Sebastian Coxon and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In contrast to the vernacular literary traditions of France, Italy and England, comic tales in verse flourished in late medieval Germany, providing bawdy entertainment for larger audiences of public recitals as well as for smaller numbers of individual readers. In a sustained close analysis Sebastian Coxon explores both the narrative design and fundamental thematic preoccupations of these short texts. A distinctively performative tradition of pre-modern narrative literature emerges which invited its recipients to think, learn and above all to laugh in a number of different ways.