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That's Not Funny: Comic Forms, Didactic Purpose, and Physical

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That's Not Funny: Comic Forms, Didactic Purpose, and Physical LATCH: A Journal for the Study of the Literary Vol. 1 Artifact in Theory, Culture, or History (2008) That’s Not Funny: Comic Forms, Didactic Purpose, and Physical Injury in Medieval Comic Tales Mary E. Leech The University of Cincinnati Abstract Comedy, though often seen by the ancients as a lesser form of art, has a certain form and structure that audiences expect. Comedy serves an important social function. It alleviates social fears, draws a community together by defining its values, and often works as a critique of a culture in a non-threatening manner. The main way comedy is able to do this critique is by distancing the audience from actual pain and violence. However, one comic tale, the French “The Castrated Woman,” breaks many of these comic structures, in some ways almost working directly against the normal social goals of comedy. Part of the shrew-taming tradition, this tale presents violence that is unusually graphic. The masculine order within this tale is often subverted, calling into question the very foundation of patriarchal ideals. This study examines how this tale violates comic sensibilities, and what purpose these deviations may serve. Keywords: comedy, women, violence, masculinity, class, fabliaux, medieval, shrew-taming, rhetoric, genre, social commentary The purpose of comedy and the exact constitution of the comic have been queried by rhetoricians, artists, philosophers, and psychologists, from Aristotle down through Freud and Jung. In the ancient world, rhetoricians considered comedy the lowest form of rhetoric, a careful balancing act of creating pleasure in laughter without being offensive or vulgar. Since rhetoric and poetry were 105 Mary E. Leech That’s Not Funny: Comic Forms, Didactic pp. 105-27 Purpose, and Physical Injury in Medieval Comic Tales seen by the ancients as having a didactic purpose, comedy was not usually the main concern of high or liberal art, primarily because comedy was seen as emphasizing the less appealing aspects of the human character. Because of this view of comedy, the content of comic works could be used for social commentary and criticism without fear of serious repercussions.1 In modern culture, comedy is presented as light entertainment, with dramatic stories and tragedies seen as the more serious form of art. Yet the satire of comedians such as George Carlin and Jon Stewart provides strong criticism of social standards. In this way, the comedy still challenges the audience to examine what it values and become more thoughtful about its principles. Generally speaking, comedy becomes comedy when a story portrays something or someone as deserving of ridicule. In constructing this perception of ridicule, the comedy draws the audience into a common experience and can work to build a sense of common values and common concerns. Comedy can also help to alleviate fear, as the audience is invited to laugh at what usually causes anxiety. In this way, the fears can be brought to the surface and faced in a non-threatening manner. Part of what makes these fears non-threatening is the distance the audience has from the material. Violence and horror become funny when there is no real danger, and the audience can laugh at what should be terrifying because there is a sense that no one is really hurt and that any implied pain is meant to be comical. Perhaps no form of literature illustrates the view of comedy as trivial better than the fabliaux. At times dismissed by critics as dirty stories with little literary value, the fabliaux have a wide range of topics, structures and themes that clearly demonstrate that the issues of comedic structure or purpose in these tales are not easily discerned or understood. The purpose of this study is to look at one particularly disturbing fabliau that seems to defy the standard forms of comedy of the time, and to discuss what the purpose of 1 Perhaps the best known comedies of the ancient world are those of Aristophanes. In his play The Clouds, Aristophanes challenges his audience to question the philosophy of prominent orators such as Socrates. In another play, Lysistrata, the playwright comments ironically on the purpose of war. These plays, though comedies, clearly attempt to critique certain cultural values and inform the audience of alternative viewpoints. 106 LATCH: A Journal for the Study of the Literary Vol. 1 Artifact in Theory, Culture, or History (2008) this tale may be within the corpus of medieval comic literature. Does the breaking of comic expectations eliminate comic sensibilities? If a tale labeled as “fabliau” has the form but not the substance of the comic, what purpose does the tale serve in terms of audience? It is important to better establish what a fabliau is and how the genre is conceived. The usual definition of fabliaux, based on work by Joseph Bédier and Per Nykrog, characterizes fabliaux as short comedic tales, in verse, usually about obscene themes.2 Other standard features include lower class characters, an emphasis on cleverness, no conventional ethics or virtues, and often ironic morals at the end. The fabliaux also tend to have a subversive element to them, as the cleverer characters (peasants, wives) are often lower in status than the duped ones (nobility, husbands), and immoral characters triumph over the morally justified. However, none of these qualities is universal, and nearly any assumed rule about the fabliaux must be qualified within the range of material considered as fabliaux. The one quality that is normally seen as universal is the aspect of comedy, often obscene or scatological comedy. Even if the comedy is seen today as offensive or violent, the comedic element intended and its purpose within the historical and cultural contexts are usually apparent. The historical context of the fabliaux, particularly the Old French fabliaux, is a relatively short period during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Often, the fabliaux are viewed as a 2 Nykrog defines fabliaux as “C’est une poёme qui renferme le récit elegant d’une action inventée, petite, plus ou moins intrigue, quoique d’une certaine éntendue, mais agreeable ou plaisante, dont le but est instruire ou d’amuser” (xi). (“It is a poem which is comprised of a stylish narrative of inventive action, short , also less intrigue [possibly meaning that the plot is less complex] although with a certain intent, but agreeable while pleasing, which is meant to instruct while also amusing.”) Bédier describes the fabliaux as “comme les nomme un vieux texte, les fabellae ignobilium. Ils sont las poésie des petites gens. La réalisme terre á terre, une conception gaie et ironique de la vie, tous ces traits destinctifs des fabliaux” (371). (“[The fabliaux is] just as they named an old text, the ignoble fables. They are the poetry of the lower classes. They realize the commonplace, with cheery and ironic conceptions of life, these are the distinctive traits of the fabliaux.”) 107 Mary E. Leech That’s Not Funny: Comic Forms, Didactic pp. 105-27 Purpose, and Physical Injury in Medieval Comic Tales consequence of social upheaval, specifically the rise of the middle classes and the resulting loss of power for the upper classes. The origins, audience, and social dynamics of the fabliaux are also debated, although Charles Muscatine, commenting on Bédier and Nykrog’s insistence on a bourgeois centrality for the fabliaux, states: [T]he flourishing of the fabliaux, the rise of the cities, and the emergence of an urban middle class are equally visible symptoms of the same social and spiritual climate. Some phases of fabliau mentality seem more characteristic of rural society than of urban; but it is a rural society that is being transformed by essentially the same forces that are creating a bourgeoisie. (5) In other words, the unrest caused by the rise of the middle classes is similar to the unrest caused by the growth of cities and the loss to the rural work force. Muscatine’s point is that the social dynamics of the fabliaux cannot be limited to one cause. Just as what a fabliaux is can change from tale to tale, so must the origins of those variations be viewed as multi-faceted. Since comedy is one of the central features of what makes a fabliau a fabliau, it is important to get a clear idea of what the expectations of comic structure were during that time and how the fabliaux fit into these criteria. The rhetorical arts, including the comic, were influenced mainly by ancient Roman rhetorical standards, themselves being influenced by the Greeks.3 Aristotle 3 Nearly all ancient rhetoricians saw the rhetorical arts (oratory, argument, poetics) as didactic. The purpose of rhetoric was to persuade or teach, and the job of the orator was to attain knowledge. Oratory was in some ways seen as a calling to seek truth and to relate that truth to others. Cicero states in On Oratory and Orators, “[N]o man can be an orator possessed of every praiseworthy accomplishment, unless he has attained the knowledge of everything important […]. The qualifications of an orator, and his very profession of speaking well, seem to undertake and promise that he can discourse gracefully and copiously on whatever subject is proposed to him” (11). Knowledge was supposed to elevate, 108 LATCH: A Journal for the Study of the Literary Vol. 1 Artifact in Theory, Culture, or History (2008) and Cicero both noted that comedy is often imitative, usually of the baser qualities of humans. Aristotle, in his “De Poetica,” called comedy “an imitation of men worse that the average […] in particular the Ridiculous, which is a species of the Ugly (mistake or deformity)” (1459). This form of the ridiculous, though, is not meant to cause harm, as Aristotle continues: “The Ridiculous may be defined as a mistake or deformity not productive of pain or harm to others” (1459).
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