session 2

1: Farcical Elements in Other Forms:

Christine Richardson

University of Florence, Italy:

Abuse of Language: Breaking the Bounds of Linguistic Convention for Humorous Effect.

Charlotte Spivack

University of Massachusetts, USA:

Mirth and Mockery: The Devil's Way.

J.P. Debax

Université de Toulouse-le Mirail, France:

Farcical Elements in the Late Medieval Drama of England.

Thierry Boucquey

Claremont University Center, California, USA:

Proverbial Farce and Farcical Proverbs: Frans Hogenberg's Blue Cloak as Icon for the Upside-Down World of Farce.

session 3

2: Farcical Elements in English Mystery Plays:

Peter Happé

England:

Farcical Elements in English Mystery Cycles.

Michael O'Connel

University of California, USA:

Mocking Christ: blasphemy and farce in the York Christ before Herod.

Nancy Funk

Mont Alto, USA:

Onward with the Farcical Villain.

session 13

3: England + Folk Traditions:

Zoe Borovsky

University of Oregon, USA:

Folk Dramas, Farce, and the Fornaldersögur.

Christine Herold

New York, USA:

The English Mummers As Manifestations of the Social Self.

Roberta Mullini

Universitá di Urbino, Italien:

Thersites: A Farce for Students.

Elizabeth Baldwin

Canada:

Musophilus: an unpublished seventeenth century play.

session 14

4: Iberia

José Oliveira Barata

University of Coimbra, Portugal:

Staging the words. Court and courtly models of farce.

José Alberto Ferreira

Coimbra, Portugal:

Acting as a fool. Actorial practices in Portuguese 16th century.

Iñaki Mozos

Basque Country:

Stereotipes dramatiques dans les farces basques.

Maria José Palla

Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal:

La farce vicentine - Étude des personnes type.

session 15

5: Fastnachtspiel:

Marjoke de Roos

Den Haag, Holland:

The Pilgrim's Progress in late medieval Shrovetide Plays.

Leif Søndergaard

Odense Universitet, Denmark:

Combat between Genders. Farcical elements in some Fastnachspiele.

Danielle Buschinger

France:

Réception du Décaméron dans les Jeux de Carnaval de Hans Sachs.

Marie Lesaffre

Université de Picardie, France:

Das Heiss eysen.

session 17

6: Farce & Sottie:

Konrad Schoell

Pädagogische Hochschule Erfurt, Germany:

L'individu et le groupe social dans la farce.

Alan Hindley

The University of Hull, England:

Costume Drama: some functions of dress in the late medieval French secular theatre.

Jelle Koopmans

Leiden, Holland:

La sottie et ses constituantes farcesques.

Richardson, Christine

Abuse of Language: Breaking the Bounds of Linguistic Convention for Humorous Effect.

The paper proposes to examine the way in which language is abused in plays belonging to the Farce tradition, or incorporating elements from this tradition, in English and French. The abuses can take several forms: excess of language, in particular with respect to gossiping or domineering women; misunderstaning or deliberate misinterpretation of the linguistic code in punning, often with obscene overtones; artificial language, raving or macaronic language. I would suggest that a more "serious" theme of disruption underlies these comic devices and that this can be linked to the popular tradition.

The logorrhoeic woman forms perhaps the most prevalent stock character of these linguistic disrupters, working in opposition to the social and religious norm of the meek, silent female, obedient and subservient to both God and Man (usually her husband). Mrs. Noah and Gyll are well-known examples which have been absorbed into the English Cycle plays, but Eve too is attributed these characteristics in some plays. In the French Passions, the shepherds' wives in the Passion de Semur demonstrate the same characteristics and Guilemette has this role in Maistre Pierre Pathelin.

Misunderstanding, deliberate or "innocent", heightens comic effect by provoking a stronger dramatic complicity with the audience who perceive both meanings. This is an element often associated with rustic characters, but beneath the immediate country=ignorance, town=wisdom binomial, there seems to lie an association with the disruption of social convention which comes from the popular and particularly the folk tradition. Li Dervés (Le Jeu de la Feuillée) and Ludin the rogue shepherd in the Rouen Nativité represent examples of this type.

Artificial or nonsensical language, such as the "divers langaiges" used by Pierre Pathelin in his simulated illness and also the "Baa" language of the shepherd in the same play, is associated with trickery but also with evil and forms of social disruption such as theft (Mak's night spell in Secunda Pastorum and the Jeu de Saint Nicholas thieves).

Top of page

Spivack, Charlotte

Mirth and Mockery: The Devil's Way

The topic I have chosen to deal with is Farces and Farcical Elements. My theoretical approach will be based on ideas I introduced in The Comedy of Evil on Shakespeare's Stage, concerning the medieval theological conception of privative evil. Evil had been defined by the early Church Fathers as non-Being - malum est non ens. Since evil was regarded not as substance but as privation, it became a logical object of scornful laughter, as exemplified in the comic carvings on the misricords in medieval cathedrals. Whereas my book was focused on the stage of the English Renaissance, especially Shakespeare, my conference presentation will deal with the medieval theatre. The examples of farce as representation of private evil will be selected from the English cycles of mystery plays and from the moralities. Fittingly, in the Coventry Cycle, the farcical element of evil is introduced with the origin of evil. At the very moment of his fall, Lucifer reacts with a crude jest: "Ffor fere of fyre a fart I crake/ In helle donjoon myn dene is dyth" (ll. 81-82). Examples of the farce of privative evil abound throughout the cycles, not excluding plays dealing with the Passion. In the York Crucifixion the Milites complain comically about lifting the heavy cross, and in the Towneley, the Tertius Tortor also complains, "I hauve brysten both my balok stones, So fast hyed I hedyr" (ll. 147-48). In the moralities the laughter is usually directed toward the Vice figures. My presentation will explore further examples.

Top of page

Debax, J.P.

Farcical Elements in the Late Medieval Drama of England.

After a survey of the farcical elements contained in several religious and profane plays (language, situations, scatology), it will be shown how those realize a presence of the popular classes otherwise excluded by the discourse of orthodoxy. If farcical characters use parody and derision, their aim is not to disprove the events and truths illustrated in the main plots usually derived from Scripture or the Golden Legend. They may be compared to an underlying vision of the world also illustrated by avowedly profane and scatological iconography (sculpture, illuminations, marginalia). They are the voice of exclusion.

Top of page

Boucquey, Thierry

Proverbial Farce and Farcical Proverbs: Frans Hogenberg's Blue Cloak as Icon for the Upside-Down World of Farce.

Frans Hogenberg's artistic career in Renaissance Antwerp and Cologne coincides with the period traditionally considered to be the heyday of the theatrical art form of farce. In this paper we propose to examine Hogenberg's Blue Cloak engraving in light of the extreme popularity of this genre, not only by observing token exempla, but also by exploring the generative principle of farce as regulating the Cloak. How the grammar organizing late-medieval and early modern farce parallels the rules governing the Blau Huicke is central to our interart inquiry. In order to approach this question, I shall apply a modified Foucauldian theory to juxtapose farce and Hogenberg's art. In a second analytical movement, the inversionary nature of the Blue Claok will become apparent, revealing how the inner, generative mechanisms that regulate farcical discourse and Hogenberg's art seem remarkably similar. The originality of our inquiry here thus lies specifically in the proposal of a consimilar modus operandi of picture and play. As such, the Blue Cloak appears as an exemplary intertext of farce.

Top of page

Happé, Peter

Farcical Elements in English Mystery Cycles.

The subject of farce may not have been systematically explored in the English mystery cycles though there has been a good deal of work on some individual comic situations. I shall suggest some characteristics of farce, in terms of characterisation and situation before examining the extent of its use in the cycles. This will need to be done with due attention to differentiating between the cycles, for the texts we have and the putative concepts of staging (if any) are very different and may present different problems for the discussion of farce.

Nevertheless there are a considerable number of episodes where the material may be considered farcical. A preliminary list includes the Towneley Mak and Cain; Shepherds at York and Chester; Mrs Noah in Chester and Towneley; the Mothers of the Innocents; Den the Summoner; Pilate's Wife and Pilate; Joseph's Doubts; various Devils (but clearly not all).

This list, which is not exhaustive, gives rise to a number of areas for consideration. The underlying question is why farce may have seemed appropriate at certain points but not at others. This would have some distinct performance aspects, including the number of characters involved, and the way farcical scenes and situations contribute to doctrine and worship. One might also ask how farce was actually controlled within individual dramatic situations, even though a measure of licence was characteristic of performances in some of the cycles. It is a factor that the differing natures of the texts may be related to the amount of farce produced. This would be especially the case with Towneley (where the expansions upon York are intriguing) and N Town.

Finally at some point in the paper I should want to discuss the speech which is appropriate to farce. This would include the special features of mode of address to other characters and to the audience.

Top of page

O'Connell, Michael

Mocking Christ: Blasphemy and Farce in the York Christ Before Herod.

While the Towneley Cycle is best known for scenes and characters that introduce elements of farce, especially scenes that involve mockery and abuse of the audience, the generally more serious York Cycle includes several such pageants or parts of pageants that strangely punctuate its unfolding. One of the most bizarrely comic of these pageants is the pageant of the Litsters (Cloth Dyers), Christ before Herod, which involves mockery of Christ that becomes increasingly farcical. The farcical elements include primarily language and voice, as Herod and his court try out varieties of language to induce the silent Christ to speak. But the text suggests that the ways the language is used allow for a good deal of comic and farcical business on stage, that the court itself becomes a topsy-turvy site of farcical mockery. Visual elements also are likely to have played a role in the farce: the "vesta alba" of Christ is contrasted to what can be understood as the gaudily colored costumes of Herod and his court, perhaps in self-ironic reference to the sponsoring guild. What is the effect of this pageant amid the generally serious treatment of the Passion in York? What are the potential meanings of this stage mockery of Christ?

I shall address these questions by reference to medieval treatments of the mockery of Christ, both texts and visual treatments of the subject. But I want to use as well some anthropological paradigms that raise further issues concerning the mockery of the sacred and the place of Christ's body on the medieval stage. The goal is a better interpretive model for the place and function of farce and mockery in the cycle plays.

Top of page

Funk, Nancy

Onward with the Farcical Villain.

Drama can embrace any sort of villain; melodrama tends to require a scoundrel - overtly or covertly hiss-able, but farce calls for one as colorful and exaggerated as he or she is evil. Sometimes, a drama or melodrama will include a farcical character, perhaps as comic relief or as a didactic device. An unexpected example of a farcical villain occurs in, of all places, medieval mystery plays. And it is not Satan, as one might expect. No, it is King Herod, whose role in the short life of Christ, at the beginning, was quite brief, but in one sense more immediately terrifying.

The authors of what remains of the medieval play and the modern playwright and directors who crafted its recent revivals in Coventry, England, created a swaggering, roaring, profane villain guaranteed to wake up the audience and contrast the play's necessarily dignified, divine characters. The medieval authors provided Herod with enough florid pages of dialogue to repel, yet entertain, the audience, and their successors tugged out all the tools of their trade to fertilize that floridity: costumes, props, music, and so forth. This Herod, identified with the Slaughter of the Innocents, abruptly orders a bloody massacre, accompanied by wailing mothers of the murdered children.

Herod becomes more than a historical curiosity; he is a farcical lesson in stagecraft and textural characterization - seductively secular, but profusely profane. My paper will explain this thesis in detail.

Top of page

Borovsky, Zoe

Folk Dramas, Farce, and the Fornaldarsögur.

This paper will explore the possibility that the medieval Icelandic narratives known to scholars today as the "fornaldarsögur" (mythic-heroic sagas) may have formed the "link" between the dialogic Eddic poems recorded in the 13th century, and the much later folk games and rituals described in 18th-century documents. These two traditions have recently been related by Terry Gunnell in his book: The Origins of Drama in Scandinavia. However, Gunnell calls the connection "vague". This paper will demonstrate how that connection is made explicit by comparing the folkloristic evidence of what Gunnell calls "dramatic folk traditions" in the North Atlantic Scandinavian settlements (vikivaki games, and gryla performances at Shrovetide and Yuletide) and the strikingly similar farcical episodes in the Icelandic fornaldarsügur.

Gunnell writes: "Codex Regius and AM/748 appear to contain some of the earliest dramatic works written in the vernacular in northern Europe". He maintains that this pagan dramatic tradition never evolved because of the prohibitions of the church against these types of performances. However, as I will show, the late-medieval more popular literary texts may have preserved this type of dramatic performance by recording them as dramatic narratives, complete with dialogic eddic poetry, which - if not actually performed by saga tellers - at least preserved the poetry, gestures, and costuming details that contributed to the folk drama traditions Gunnell describes.

As my starting point I will compare a farcical episode from the fornaldarsaga Sturlaugs saga starfsama in which one hero, Hrolf nefja, cross-dresses as a giant (or giantess?) in order to undermine the amorous intentions of a giantess who desires a human mate. His giant-like attire is remarkably similar to the costumes donned by the cross-dressing males who performed as supernatural female giants in the dramatic folk traditions that Gunnell discusses: the giantesses known as Háa-thora or gryla, and the Thinngálp. I will draw comparisons between elements of the costumes, poems and gestures showing how they relate to similar episodes in Saxo's Gesta Danorum and the fornaldarsögur. Although these folk games and farces attracted the wrath of the church in the latter part of the 16th century, the tradition continued - perhaps aided by the existence of a textual tradition.

Once the connection between text and performance is made, I will then analyze the meaning and appeal of these farcical episodes and dramatic plays. Drawing on recent research regarding the effects of the black plague on demographies and women in northern Europe, I maintain that the appeal of these carnivalesque icons attests to the persistence of what Carol Clover (in her article on sexuality in medieval Scandinavian society) has called the "one-sex" or "common-sex" notion. This notion of sexuality, in which masculinity and femininity are not viewed (as they tend to be today) as essentially different kinds. Instead, the "common-sex" notion portrays sexual difference as more of a difference of degree on a continuum of power - a continuum that contributes to fantasies of (and anxieties about) the possibility for gender overlap, i.e. women who are more powerful than men.

As I will show, the cross-dressing men who perform as giantesses during these folk dramas appealed to the popular imagination as a way of staging and coping with necessity: late medieval conditions of plague and famine in northern Europe led to increased opportunities for women to take on roles traditionally reserved for men. Despite the prohibitions of the church - which officially endorsed the notion that men were essentially different from and superior to women - conditions were such that a more popular notion, the "common-sex" notion, continued to be played out as occasional, seasonal dramatic farces in unofficial spheres.

Top of page

Herold, Christine

The English Mummers as Manifestations of the Social Self.

My topic is an explication of the mythological, or archetypal, figures which make up the cast of characters in the Anglo-Saxon British Mummers' Play. I explore in particular the representations of the Feminine, and of the masculinized Ego. Male Mummers and Guisers appeared in overtly gender-cross-dressed form, as is the case in the Symondsbury Mumming Play and the Rottingdean plays. Maid Marian, Bet (also Little Dame Dorothy) and the Old Woman were traditionally played by men, in dramatic contrast to the exaggerated masculinity of Ego-characters such as Saint George and Father Christmas. Such reversals, as well as the use of alcohol to lower inhibitons, seem to indicate a semi-ritualized encounter between an aggressive masculine persona and its more feminine aspects. In this way, the mummings function as mirrors, or collective projections, if you will, of various psychological characteristics of the social groups which perform and support these plays. I apply Post-Jungian Feminist literary theory for an understanding of such stock characters as collective projections of unconscious contents of archetypes central to the medieval English folk Identity. And I speculate as to the social meaning of the dramatic and comic public ritualization of these archetypal elements.

Read Paper | Top of page

Mullini, Roberta

Thersites: A Farce for Students.

The interlude Thersites, written in the late 1530's very probably to be played by Oxford students, derives from the homonymous Latin dialogue composed by Ravisius Textor. The English adapter, presumably Nicholas Udall, added more than 600 lines to the original, besides translating a great part of the dialogue itself into English. What strikes most in the interlude are the enlargement of the snail combat and the farcical addition of the exorcism of Telemachus suffering from worms, which is carried out by Thersites's mother. The flimsy plot does not allow a story proper to take place, thus limiting the narrative possibilities of the play, nevertheless the additions reveal a keen sense of farce in the slapstick episode of Mater's being attacked by her own son, and in the folksy nuances of the parody of Catholic exorcisms. The theme of the miles gloriosus on which the play is built is certainly drawn from classical Roman drama, but it also reproduces one of the main traits of French monologues, as is exemplified by Le Franc Arcier de Baignollet.

Read Paper | Top of page

Baldwin, Elizabeth

Musophilus: an unpublished seventeenth-century play.

During my research at the Cheshire Record Office for the Records of Early English Drama volume on Cheshire, I came upon the manuscript of a play, which, from the handwriting and topical references, would seem to date from the second quarter of the seventeenth century. The first folio is damaged, so that the title and any possible attribution are lost. The play is a comedy, possibly connected with one of the Inns of Court. Most of the characters are stock ones, and have names which tell their main attribute. The hero is Musophilus, the poor scholar. His father, Tremulus, is an aged usurer, who has no interest in learning, and rejects Musophilus is favour of his other son, Crusophilus. Musophilus has the support of his mother, Tremula, his faithful friend Fido, and the court fool Simplicius. Virtually all the characters have some attribute element to their names: Even a character such as Urina, the beloved of Musophilus, owes her name to the dual facts that she is the daughter of a physician and that at the end of the play she provides the "water of an unspotted virgin" which cures Tremulus' blindness.

As there are twenty-nine characters in the play, but no more than eight on stage at any time, some scenes exist principally to allow characters who are doubling roles to change costumes. Several of these scenes are farcical, escpecially the episodes between Monsieur Silly, the gentleman usher, who takes the various metaphors of love poetry literally, and Musophilus disguised as Cupid. There is a good deal of slapstick in these scenes, as Monsieur Silly is first beaten by Cupid, then driven away from Urina by Edentula and four Furies.

Other scenes are little more than comic cross-talk, with much topical humour, and jokes directed at Puritans, Papists, lawyers, the court, soldiers, usurers, women, spendthrifts, physicians, preachers, married couples and various other stock figures. Musophilus is a play that makes lively use of traditional stereotypes and well-worn jokes, adapting them to the particular circumstances of the period immediately preceding the English Civil War.

Read Paper | Top of page

Barata, José Oliveira

Staging the words. Court and courtly models of farce.

Drawing on the textual (either literary or cultural) materials of the Cancioneiro Geral de Garcia de Resende (published 1516, but gathering poetry from the previous century), mainly the production of Anrique da Mota enclosed in it, this paper will deal with early evidences of Portuguese theatrical practices prior to Gil Vicente's. In pursuing this aim, I will initially present information on some related areas:

I) the actorial practice(s) in the Portuguese Middle Ages, as documented in contemporary documents. This area will lead to the construction of a "map" of medieval actors and their practices, as well as to the recognition of a resourceful stock of traditions;

II) in the realm of courtly literature, entertaining practices should be focused as models of (textual) behaviour. That is, court culture is to be seen as a shifting generator of models of both textual and sociability practices.

As I enlarge the inquiry, the genologic dominants - mostly of comic nature - become as much part of the cultural frame in which theatrical practices take place as those other elements previously referred to. The actor and his entertaining practices become, as do the real and/or textual models which he deals with (within the court), a kind of organising criteria by which theatrical practice actually happens.

Seen this way, the farcical production of Anrique de Mota enclosed in the Cancioneiro Geral clearly assumes a dominant role in the early history of Portuguese theatre.

Top of page

Ferreira, José Alberto

Acting as a fool. Actorial practices in Portuguese 16th Century Drama.

Drawing on texts of what is traditionally called the Escola Vicentia (that is, the theatrical and dramatic production after Gil Vicente's work in the Portuguese court: 1502-1536), this paper proposes a two-fold approach to Portuguese theatrical culture in the early modern period.

Firstly, pursuing a didascalic reading, the paper proposes to identify actorial practices inscribed on those texts, mostly those which could be directly connected with comical procedures, with laughter and its arousal.

Secondly, the rhetorical and textual strategies which configure either a neatly comic path and a peculiar way of dramatic writing and conception.

As preliminary conclusions show, this attempt will provide the recognition and shaping of strategies such as the imitation of voices, the use of written texts on stage and of props designed to arouse laughter.

In both moments, attention should be directed to the methodological approach and to correlative fields such as iconography, gesture and performance history, dramatic and rhetorical theory.

Top of page

Mozos, Iñaki

Stereotipes dramatiques dans les farces Basques.

Depuis le Moyen Age, dans les sociétés paysannes européennes, les comportements qui n'étaient pas convencionels, ont fait l'objet d'une censure populaire, au moyen d'une farce, une "course de l'âne", etc. Normalement la jeunesse, regroupée en comités de fêtes, comme les Abbeyes de Maugouverne, etc., était chargée d'organiser la représentation de la farce ou charivari.

Au Pays Basque, nous en conservons vingt et une, écrites au cours du XVIII et XIX siècles. Les raisons pour lesquelles ces manuscrits soient si récents et si peu nombreux peuvent se résumer ainsi: premèrement, leur caractère circonstanciel car certaines cas étaient censurés, et deuxièmement, l'obscenité et la rigueur des arguments en provoquaient la destruction immédiate, étant donné que ce genre de farce était souvent interdite.

Ces censures, ainsi que quelques tentatives de contrôle ou régularisation institutionel (par ex.: celle de 1315, apparu aux Papier de Gascogne du British Museum) viennent de loin. Cependant, les XVI et XVII siècles y ajoutent un autre élément en évidence lequel contribue à la marginalisation et criminalisation de ces farces: le travail uniformiste de l'Inquisition. Les oeuvres d'un Pierre de Lancre, par exemple, en sont le témoin, tout de moins de manière indirecte.

Les oeuvres basques nous les conservons dans ces trois formes: indépendents ou isolées, insèrées dans des autres oeuvres au caractère sérieux et melangées à l'action et aux personnages d'une autre réprésentation plus ample. Il est clair que ces deux derniers procédés sont dûs à la semi-clandestinité gardée par les organisateurs. On y montre des personnages typiques et des clichés que l'on peut classer de la manière suivante: d'une part les personnages et actions que l'on veut censurer, et d'autre part les clichés repetés dans les oeuvres vraiement comiques, comme celles de Carnaval, ou même les pastorales plus sérieuses, ayant fonction, dans ce dernier cas, de rendre plus léger des arguments ennuyeux.

Dans ces clichés la relation conflictuelle entre le maître et le domestique est mise en valeur, un thème qui est presque toujours prèsent dans le théâtre, ainsi que dans d'autres genres de la littèrature populaire basque.

Top of page

Palla, Maria José

La farce vicentine - Étude des personnages type.

Je me propose d'analyser les personnages dans les farces de Gil Vicente.

On étudiera le discours, l'habillement, la langue, du Fidalgo, de la Commère, de la Jeune Fille, du Valet, entre autres, figures stérotypées appartenant aussi bien à la tradition qu'à invention.

En nourrissant son inspiration dans les traditions populaires de son pays, Gil Vicente nous apparait comme un homme du terroir. Vicente caractérise une certaine époque, un certain climat intellectuel et moral: il appartient à une génération de transition, encore au Moyen Age, pas encore tout à fait à la Renaissance.

Situés à la fin du Moyen Age, mais encore étrangers aux idées nouvelles venues d'Italie, ses personnages ce situent à la croisée des chemins.

Top of page

de Roos, Marjoke

The Pilgrim's Progress in Late Medieval Shrovetide Plays.

Among the peasants, the bachelors, the lovers, the fools and the doctors, we rarely meet a pilgrim in the well-known fifteenth and sixteenth century carnival farces or Shrovetide plays (Fastnachtspiele). And, as a matter of fact, the pilgrim who is the main character in one of the plays, could easily have been replaced by an ordinary peasant, a lover or a fool. On the other hand, there is an implicit relationship between these plays and the very popular practice of undertaking pilgrimages in the period in view. It is even possible that pilgrims and pilgrimages played a rather prominent role in the ideological framework of late medieval Shrovetide festivals. Most of the Shrovetide plays were not only funny, but they were also closely related to the social circumstances of the players and the audience. More than ten years ago, Edelgard DuBruck wrote in her paper for the Fifth SITM-Colloquium (Perpignan) that "Nürnberg Shrovetide plays of the fifteenth century are the most society-oriented of all medieval theatre". I agree with Dubruck - and with others who have dealt with carnival plays during the past ten years - that these plays fulfilled a fairly important social function. There is no doubt, of course, about the importance of different sorts of pilgrimage in late medieval society.

In this paper, I will try to analyse the relationship between Shrovetide drama and pilgrimage from various points of view. First of all, the presence of "pilgrimage elements" in the drama texts will be examined. Secondly, I'll focus on the performance and the performers of the Shrovetide plays in relation to the activities of definite social groups during carnival festivals and pilgrimages. Eventually, conclusions will be based not only on references to drama texts and other literary works, but also to some iconographical evidence which could help us to understand the mental framework of the pre-Lenten period.

Top of page

Søndergaard, Leif

Combat between the Genders: Farcical Elements in some Fastnachtspiele.

Next to the erotic triangle the combat between man and woman is probably the most used motif in literature. In Keller's collection of Fastnachtspiele aus dem fünfzehnten Jahrhundert 13 plays (some of them fragments) deal with this topic. One of the most famous tells the story of the wise Mayster Aristoteles, who claims that he will never fall in love, but ends up with a beautiful woman riding on his back. In other German plays a husband and wife, often of markedly different ages, fight each other. In a short interlude, Hercules and Omphale from Denmark (c. 1600) the woman disarms the strong warrior Hercules and dresses him in women's clothes. In a Swedish play from the same period, A Merry Comedy about Doctor Simon, the weak man and the strong woman, called Doctor Simon, fight to determine who will wear the trousers.

My paper will investigate the different types of plays dealing with the combat between the genders and their social background. Which male characteristics are exposed and mocked? Which female characteristics? Who will win the combat between the genders? Can we trace a historical development?

Top of page

Buschinger, Danielle

Réception du Décameron dans les Jeux de Carnaval de Hans Sachs.

Hans Sachs, cordonnier-poète, a dans sa longue vie (1494-1576) écrit plus de 6000 oeuvres en vers, parmi lesquelles de nombreuses tragédies et comédies, mais aussi une foule de Jeux de Carnaval. Il n'invente pas ses sujets, mais les emprunte à la littérature universelle, à la Bible, aux Anciens et aux contemporains, au Volksbuch von Eulenspiegel, à la littérature médiévale, mais il doit aussi beaucoup à Boccace, notamment à son Décameron, qu'il lit dans la traduction allemande d'un certain Arigo, qui est en fait un patricien de Nuremberg, Heinrich Schlüsselfelder. Sur les 85 Jeux de Carnaval que Hans Sachs a écrits (seulement 81 sont conservés), 13 sont empruntés à l'oeuvre de Boccace. Je prendrai pour exemples plusieurs de ces Fastnachtspiele (Fassnacht-spiel, mit 4 personen zu agirn: Der jung kaufmann Nicola mit seiner Sophia (XIV 84-98), selon Dec. 8,10 (1550), Ein fassnachtspiel mit 5 peronen, die listig bulerin genandt (XVII 17-28), d'après Dec. 7,6 (1552), Ein fassnachspiel mit 4 personen und wird genennet: Der gross eyferer, der sein weib beicht höret (XVII 29-41), d'après Dec. 7,5 (1553)), que j'analyserai, en les comparant à leur source afin de tenter de montrer la manière dont Hans Sachs a transformé en pièces de théâtre la forme narrative de la nouvelle, mais aussi ce qu'il a apporté de nouveau: j'étuderai en particulier les procédés du comique.

Top of page

Lesaffre, Marie

le jeu de carnaval, Das heiss eysen.

Je me propose d'étudier le jeu de carnaval Das heiss eysen, composé en 1551 par le poète-artisan Hans Sachs à partir d'une nouvelle du Stricker, auteur du XIIIe siècle, créateur du genre du récit bref et de la nouvelle à portée moralisatrice dans le domaine linguistique allemand. J'envisage étudier tout particulièrement les techniques d'adaption à la scène d'un texte narratif, les procédés comiques et les moyens utilisés par l'auteur du XVIe siècle pour adapater aux goûts de son public une oeuvre médiévale.

Read Paper | Top of page

Schoell, Konrad

L'individu et le groupe social dans la farce.

Mes recherches sur la représentation des groupes sociaux dans le théâtre menées depuis quelques années et publiées sous des titres généraux évoquant le théâtre "populaire", "courtois", ou "érudit", ou confrontant commerçants et paysans, entraînent presque nécessairement des questions sur la position de l'individu. Les personnages se définissant par leur résidence (cité vs. campagne), par leur état (appartenance à l'Eglise, à la noblesse, à la bourgeoisie, ou tous les autres états), par leur métier (tavernier, savetier, meunier etc.), par leurs connaissances et expériences aussi (celui qui a fait des études ou des voyages, qui connaît le monde, et par contraste le naïf), par leur sexe, bien sûr, leur reste-t-il aussi une part d'individualité? Est-ce que l'individualité ne serait formée que de la combinaison, chaque fois différente, des diverses appartenences à des groupes sociaux? Ou bien, l'individualité ne naîtrait-elle pas plutôt de tout ce qui sort de la norme?

Pour élucider ces questions qui, en fin de compte, mèneront à des aspects plus vastes de l'histoire culturelle (vision du monde médiévale vs. vision du monde de la Renaissance), il faudra analyser en particulier les noms des personnages (individuels ou typiques?), les (éléments de) portraits et les descriptions; et tout ce qui, parmi les indications scéniques directes et indirectes concerne le personnage, donc, pour reprendre les catégories de la sémiologie théâtrale: costume, coiffure, masque, mimique, gestualité, proxémique (ton, accessoires). Plus profondément, et plus difficilement la question se pose sur le plan de la conscience de chaque personnage: Selon le texte, et donc selon l'idée de l'auteur, tel personnage se conçoit-il en tant que paysan, marchant, apprenti, ou bien en tant que Naudet, Guillaume, Esopet avec ses angoisses ou désirs personnels?

Top of page

Hindley, Alan

Costume Drama: some Functions of Dress in the Late-Medieval French Secular Theatre.

Apart from Gustave Cohen's general survey of 1903, there has been no systematic study of the function of costume in the French secular theatre of the later Middle Ages. Based on a selection of representative plays, this paper will examine the distinctive use of costume in the farce, the sottie, and the moralité. In the farces, dress is used not just to emphasize the realism of the genre (as André Tissier has shown) but more organically as a dramatic means of expressing the key farce themes of deceit and trickery. Dress as a means of deception is also a feature of the sottie, though with a greater emphasis on the connection between clothes, disguise and social status within the overall satitical framework of the plays. Costume in the morality plays is usually emblematic and symbolic, with properties as well as dress designating a wide range of abstractions: rather than complex staging, significant changes of costume are often tellingly used here in plays that are essentially about falls to wickedness and conversions to virtue. In addition to costume, this paper will also review evidence for the use of masks in the French secular plays.

Top of page

Koopmans, Jelle

La sottie et ses constituantes farcesques.

Le genre de la sottie peut être considéré comme la contribution la plus originale du théâtre français au drame médiéval. L'histoire littéraire du genre reste à écrire. Son statut générique n'a pas non plus clairement été délimité; surtout sa position par rapport à la farce a fait problème. Les discussions sur la nécessité de séparer les deux genres n'ont pas mené à une réponse claire, pourtant elles ont cédé le pas à d'autres points épineux dans le théâtre médiéval, sans doute plus urgents. Il est grand temps de revenir sur le problème des rapports précis entre la farce et la sottie.

Une analyse systématique des procédés de farce, des éléments farcesques présents dans la sottie invite à une autre vue sur le problème. C'est qu'il est vain d'opposer les deux genres farce et sottie, pour la simple raison qu'elles se définissent à des niveaux différents. Il y a justement beaucoup d'interférences génériques, beaucoup d'éléments farceques dans la sottie pour la bonne raison qu'une sottie est hypergénérique par rapport à la farce.

L'un des traits caractéristiques de la sottie française, c'est l'avant-jeu: les personnages se demandent quel va être le jeu qu'ils vont jouer. En cela, la sottie pose comme préliminaire de la farce. En cela, la farce fait figure de théâtre dans le théâtre. A partir des interrelations entre ces deux niveaux de jeu et à partir d'une analyse concrète des réminiscences farcesques dans la sottie, il est possible de créer une nouvelle base théorique pour une théorie des genres du théâtre profane et en même temps, sur un plan plus historique - de préciser le fonctionnement sociologique des deux genres. Là où la farce se définit isolément, par rapport à elle-même, la sottie de définit, selon toute vraisemblance, par rapport à la farce. A partir de cette idée, nouvelle, il est possible d'arriver pour la première fois à une explication de certaines sotties qui comptent parmi les pièces les plus obscures du Moyen Age.

Top of page