English 90cl. Comic Imagination Through the Middle Ages

Instructor: Daniel Donoghue
Wednesday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: TBD
Enrollment: Limited to 15 students.

Bad puns. Blasphemy. Codpieces. Corpse humor. Cougars. Cuckolds. Fart jokes. Dominant ladies. Funny drunks. Hypocrites. Incredible sex. Over-clever students. Priapic priests. Romance send-ups. Wimpy knights. Wit triumphant. These are some of the ingredients of humor covered in our survey of literature from 1100 to 1650. The ranges include drama, fabliaux, Latin lyrics, Chaucer, Middle Scots poetry, and other genres up to Rabelais and Shakespeare. With the help of Auerbach, Huizinga, Bakhtin, and other critics, you will develop an understanding of what constitutes humor from this period, as well as the serious institutions that invite a comic reflex.

This course satisfies the “Pre-1700 Guided Elective" requirement for English concentrators and Secondary Field students.