The Tragic, the Comic and the Tragicomic in Cretan Renaissance Literature

Greek tragedy and comedy re-emerge in late sixteenth-century Crete, now based on Renaissance neo-classical prescriptions. Besides ‘pure’ examples of the genres we also find a tragedia di lieto fine (the biblical drama Abraham’s Sacrifice) and a pastoral idyll with a tragic outcome (The Shepherdess), while Kornaros’ verse romance Erotokritos plays with the possibility of a tragic ending before settling for the outcome proper to romance. This intermingling of the tragic and the comic – of tears and laughter – is common in Cretan Renaissance literature, and most fully realised in the new hybrid genre of tragicommedia pastorale, which seems to have been popular in Crete around 1600. Taking Panoria by Georgios Chortatsis as its main textual focus, this chapter explores the interaction of tears and laughter both at a textual level and in plot structure. While the theoretical bases of tragicomedy, as propounded by Guarini, clearly underpin works like Panoria, in the case of works belonging to other genres other factors are involved: Petrarchising tropes, which are common in Cretan literature, and the antithetical structures characteristic of the folk tradition. Panoria, set on Mount Ida, is thoroughly Cretan and at the same time thoroughly imbued with late-Renaissance poetics.

Laughing at Eros and Aphrodite: Sexual Inversion and its Resolution in the Classicising Arts of Medieval Byzantium

The social and cultural authority that images exercised in medieval Byzantium derived in part from their consistent observance of established traditions of representation. As a result of this tendency toward recognisable types, when an intentional departure from visual conventions was introduced, Byzantine viewers could be expected to notice the difference and wonder about the intentions behind it. This chapter explores how Graeco-Roman mythological and romance narratives offered opportunities for the engineering of amusing imagery through strategies of inversion and exaggeration. It focuses especially on how this up-ending of visual conventions served to disrupt the expected order of gender relations. The chapter shows how the programmes of middle Byzantine works of classicising art used humour initially to destabilize – but ultimately to reaffirm -- social norms surrounding female sexuality.

Mime and the Dangers of Laughter in Late Antiquity

This chapter asks why joking and laughter were perceived as so dangerous and problematic by early Christians. Condemnations of laughter in the sermons of John Chrysostom refer to Paul’s rejections of eutrapelia (wittiness) in his Letter to the Ephesians and seek to create an association with Late Antique stage practices, particularly the comic performances of the mimes. In so doing, Chrysostom plays on widespread social prejudices against the mime. He also activates the root meaning of eutrapelia or ‘versatility’, thus identifying it firmly with theatrical role play. One result of this move, however, is to highlight a particular aspect of humour and its effects: much humour, including that of the mimes, demands a degree of intellectual versatility, the ability to see situations and practices from a different perspective and it may be precisely this that underlies the ban on laughter and wittiness pronounced by Paul and taken up by Chrysostom and others

Guiding Grief: Liturgical Poetry and Ritual Lamentation in Early Byzantium

Early Byzantine church leaders regularly admonished against grief as a Christian response to death. Yet, mourning practices continued unabated, and church leaders also participated in the lavish mourning that attended the funerals of beloved church figures, whether bishops or holy men or women. Amidst such contradictory discourses, liturgical piety appears to have provided a constructive manner of engaging grief and negotiating such tensions. Early Byzantine liturgies in both Greek and Syriac abound in hymns and homilies that retold biblical stories in dramatic fashion. Often, these included searing depictions of anguish, grief, and lamentation over loss or death for biblical characters. The accounts show strong similarities with traditions from classical drama, with imagined speeches as well as dramatic narrative that linger closely on postures, gestures, and lyrical expressions of sorrow. This chapter argues that these presentations took on particular social significance in the context of liturgical setting and performance. Embedded within liturgy itself as an overarching narrative, such stories took on resolution within a higher process of grief turned to restoration. Biblical tragedy, articulated in homilies and hymns, offered congregations typological expressions of their own sorrows, even as people were ritually guided from bereavement to consolation.

Towards a Byzantine Theory of the Comic?

This chapter tackles the question of laughter and humour from a theoretical perspective. Rather than map out the Byzantine ‘comic landscape’ by resorting to modern theorisations, it looks at Greek medieval humour and laughter from within, in the attempt to single out elements of a Byzantine theory of the comic. Recent scholarship has gone some way towards dismantling the prejudice that there was no room for laughter in Byzantine society, combing the sources for tangible evidence of humour and jokes, or focusing on the scant traces for the survival of genres such as mimes and satires. Less reflection has been devoted to understanding how the Byzantines construed, conceptualised and justified comic features of discourse. Patristic and devotional texts, frowning upon laughter and humour, have taken the lion’s share of attention. This chapter sheds light on the other side of the coin, concentrating on secular texts used for educational purposes in middle Byzantine literature (rhetorical handbooks and commentaries), aiming to unravel the function that the Byzantines assigned to laughter, irony and humour in their literary production. Four major areas are explored, crucial to the deployment and legitimation of the comic in Byzantium: psychology, rhetorical display, didacticism and narrative.

‘Do you Think you’re Clever? Solve this Riddle, then!’ The Comic Side of Byzantine Enigmatic Poetry

‘Comic’ is not an adjective one would normally use in connection with or ancient Greek Byzantine riddles. Yet Greek riddles began to show their comic side after the fifth century BCE, when they became typical sympotic pastimes. At some point, ainigmata turned into griphoi and, according to the definition given by the Peripatetic philosopher Clearchus of Soli, became a ‘a problem put in jest’. The comicality we see in in the many griphoi Athenaeus took from Attic comedy in the tenth book of the Deipnosophists is more evident, and less dangerous; and it is generally agreed that such drollery is mostly absent from Byzantine riddles. A survey shows how the unknown Byzantine authors who took pleasure in composing these little conundrums were even able, in some circumstances, to jest with Holy Scripture and to linger on topics more suitable for Old Comedy.

Belisarius in the Shadow Theatre: The Private Calvary of a Legendary General

The favourite character of the Greek shadow puppeteer, Vassilaros (1899–1979), one of the most productive and best-known artists of his generation, was the sixth century Byzantine general Belisarius (c. 505–565). Vassilaros created a number of variations of plays, in which Justinian’s general was the protagonist of a love-and-betrayal drama, against the historical backdrop of a most successful military career. According to historical sources Belisarius was disfavoured on several occasions by Justinian, but restored to power thanks to the support of Empress Theodora, who was a friend of Belisarius’ wife, Antonina. This riveting story has inspired a number of plays, novels and operas, long before its twentieth-century debut in the shadow theatre. In Vassilaros’ play, Belisarius’ story is adapted to the conventions of this art form to involve the trickster Karaghiozis, who is the leading member of the shadow theatre cast. The dramatic circumstances of Belisarius’ life are spiced up with comic episodes involving Karaghiozis, who is always after food and money. At the height of battle scenes, Karaghiozis stuffs his pockets with meatballs, to appease his never-ending hunger, even at the threshold of death.

The Power of Amusement and the Amusement of Power: The Princely Frescoes of St Sophia, Kiev, and their Connections to the Byzantine World

The largest Orthodox church of the eleventh century, St. Sophia of Kiev, challenges the boundaries between the sacred and profane spheres. It unites under one roof carefully constructed representations of the sounds, movements, amusements and merriments of the Byzantine court and invocations of the stillness, silence and tears of Orthodox piety. These two irreconcilable realms were brought into dialogue for prince Jaroslav the ‘Wise’ (died 1054), a second-generation Christian who prevailed over his rivals after decades of fratricidal conflict. While in Byzantium these two spheres had long ago established a clear modus vivendi, in Iaroslav’s Rus’ their relationship was just being formulated. St. Sophia of Kiev had to adapt to its prince and Christian decorum had to accommodate to the princely patron.

‘Tantalus ever in Tears’: The Greek Anthology as a Source of Emotions in Late Antiquity

During the period of Late Antiquity (AD c. 300-600) few texts are preserved that were intended to make the reader laugh. The Greek Anthology, however, provides an unusually rich source for late antique attitudes to both laughter and tears. As Agathias, a lawyer and historian, explains when putting together his Garland of epigrams he followed and quoted the wise model of the ancients, and added sixth-century topics that illustrate ‘the devious paths of life’, ‘scurrilous rhyme’, ‘sweet love’ and ‘the joys of Bacchus’. He also describes the collection as a literary feast with different new flavourings, the kneading of fresh poetical dough by many skilled cooks. Their ‘dishes’, read aloud at real banquets, reveal a persistent devotion to Aphrodite/Cypris and all the passions that love brings. Yet the ancient gods and the wheel of Fortune that frustrates human endeavour appear side by side with Christian heroes, the martyrs of the early church, bishops and pious virgins, who overcame pagan disdain and persecution. The collection therefore captures the representation of emotions between two distinct worlds: the inheritance of Greek antiquity as it was being accommodated and restricted in the emergent world of Christian dominion.

Parody, Symbol and the Literary Past in Lucian

Laughter and the elicitation of laughter in Lucian are dependent principally upon the paideia which his readers require in order to unravel fully the complexity of his literary allusion and satire. Through analysis of key satirical passages in the True Histories, the Charon, the Icaromenippus and the Nigrinus, this chapter demonstrates that Lucian, and his readers, laugh at the history of interpretation, both philosophical and literary. It delves into the literariness of Lucian’s satire, and in particular his representation of the literary past as a lens for laughing at the less educated. Lucian parodies historiographical and philosophical accounts of the moon in the lunar voyages in the True Histories and Icaromenippus, undercuts allegorical accounts of the cosmos in the Charon, and proves the absurdity and shallowness of contemporary Roman pretentions of Greek paideia in the Nigrinus by parodying the pseudo-learning so much on display.