The profits of pleasure

Abstract

What we normally think of as medieval literary criticism – whether in the form of gloss, commentary, treatise on writing poetry, or defence of classical studies – predominantly concerns written composition. It presupposes texts or lettered traditions of enough heuristic value to warrant critical study or imitation. Such criticism dominates the available manuscript evidence, which obviously reflects learned, usually academic and clerical, interests. Yet throughout medieval Europe people not only studied literature but attended performances or read poems (aloud or silently) or told stories for their own enjoyment. In 734 Bede complained of bishops who support people ‘addicted to laughter, jests, storytelling [ fabulis ], gluttony and drunkenness’. In 1119 the entertainment at a marriage feast in Iceland was reported as including ‘many kinds of games, dancing as well as wrestling and saga entertainment’. Around 1300 a prioress complained about damage to her convent's property from Londoners trekking across it to see ‘miracles and wrestling’. One of the major lessons we have learned from contemporary theory is that no attitude towards literature is free of social or ideological influence and implication; some sort of interpretative context underlies even the most seemingly transparent descriptions of literary activity and reception. These three brief passages, the tiniest tip of a medieval iceberg of references to performance, signal as well medieval attitudes towards it: in every case forms of narration or representation that might in more modern contexts be treated as literary genres are linked with other types of amusement, recreational activity or social indulgence. Stories, sagas and enactments of some sort are conceptualised not as ‘literature’ but as part of a diverse group of activities that provide entertainment.

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