Is the Comic World a Paradise for Women? Medieval Models of Portable Utopia

Abstract

Medieval comic narrative comes in many forms, but the apogee is arguably found in the fabliaux, the comic tales of trickery that appeared in many European languages and that f lowered most famously in the rhymed French versions of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Other medieval humorous genres include comic plays and lyrics, mock epics, beast fables, nonsense texts, parodies, schoolboy doggerel, riddles, and jokes both respectable and bawdy, and various other forms. Although these forms and genres are disparate, in fact the vast majority of medieval humorous texts participate in a shared world, each expressing life in the comic mode, depicting a fictive realm of appetite and abundance. This comic mode in effect establishes a mini- or pocket Utopia, a world of enjoyment that can be entered into from anywhere and by anyone, merely by indulging in the story. This essay will speak to explicate that comic realm, that portable Utopia, and in particular will engage with questions of gender as it relates to this comic realm, asking the question: is the portable Utopia a paradise for women as well as for men?