"Mediaeval Popular Cultureó and the Discussion About Laughter in Old Rus"

The paper considers the discussion about laughter in pre-Petrine RusÕ, which took place in the 1970s, and the view on it Aron Gurevich expressed in his 1981 book Problemy srednevekovoi narodnoi kulÕtury (translated into English as Medieval Popular Culture: Problems of Belief and Perception). The debate was initiated by Mikhail BakhtinÕs book Tvorchestvo Fransua Rable i narodnaia kulÕtura srednevekovÕia i Renessansa (1965, known in English as Rabelais and his World), which put forward the problem of laughter as a cultural phenomenon. However, the discussion did not go along Bakhtinian lines: placing laughter into the paradigm of mediaeval religious world-view became its main problem, and mockery of the sacred its main object. The debate started with Dmitry LikhachevÕs paper Drevnerusskii smekh (Old Russian Laughter) published in 1973. A book by Likhachev and Alexander Panchenko ÒSmekhovoi mirÓ Drevnei Rusi (The World of Laughter of Old RusÕ) followed in 1976. Reviewing BakhtinÕs theory, Likhachev contended that mediaeval laughter was different from its modern counterpart in being directed at its subject rather than its object, thus eliminating the inherent conflict of parodia sacra. In a review of this book entitled Novye aspekty izucheniia kulÕtury Drevnei Rusi (1977, New Aspects in the Study of Early Russian Culture in English translation), Juri Lotman and Boris Uspenskij proposed an opposite interpretation: in Russia laughter was always viewed as a sin, and behaviour that inverted the religious norm meant challenging it (and therefore affirming it eÊcontrario); if it required laughter, that laughter was devoid of the comic and essentially joyless. Lotman and Uspenskij saw this vision of laughter as typical of Russia, for its culture, in their opinion, knew no mean between the extremes of sanctity and sin, whereas BakhtinÕs model applied to the West. Aron Gurevich showed that in the mediaeval West, as well as in Old Rus', laughter over the sacred came together with fear in an ambivalent world-view full of tense contrasts. In this respect, Russian and Western culture were alike; national differences meant less than the unity of mediaeval mentality..