Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction: ‘Don't worry, I've got the key’
- PART I THE FATE OF HUMOROUS WRITING
- PART II HUMOUR AND THE POLITICS OF DIFFERENCE
- 3 The lexicon of abuse: drunkenness and political illegitimacy in the late Roman world
- 4 Funny foreigners: laughing with the barbarians in late antiquity
- 5 Liutprand of Cremona's sense of humour
- PART III HUMOUR, HISTORY AND POLITICS IN THE CAROLINGIAN WORLD
- Index
5 - Liutprand of Cremona's sense of humour
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction: ‘Don't worry, I've got the key’
- PART I THE FATE OF HUMOROUS WRITING
- PART II HUMOUR AND THE POLITICS OF DIFFERENCE
- 3 The lexicon of abuse: drunkenness and political illegitimacy in the late Roman world
- 4 Funny foreigners: laughing with the barbarians in late antiquity
- 5 Liutprand of Cremona's sense of humour
- PART III HUMOUR, HISTORY AND POLITICS IN THE CAROLINGIAN WORLD
- Index
Summary
The relationship between humour, history and gender is still neglected by historians despite a recent fashion for books about humour as an historical phenomenon. This chapter illustrates the degree to which these three issues were linked together by Liutprand of Cremona (c.920/5–72) in his various writings. Liutprand's Antapodosis (or ‘Book of Revenge’, written 958–62), Liber de Ottone rege (965) and Relatio de legatione Constantinopolitana (969–70), each contain humorous passages, which are a fundamental feature of his unique literary style. The most developed of all Liutprand's jokes (or ludibrium, as he has it) is a tale that appears in Antapodosis 4.10, inserted into an otherwise anodyne report of a battle, which took place in the late 920s, between Tedbald, a relative of King Hugh of Italy, Liutprand's sometime patron, and some Greeks. I quote this in full in Frederic Wright's translation:
Let me here insert the story of a witty (ludibrium), or rather a clever (sapientiam), trick which a certain woman played on this occasion. [1] One day some Greeks in company with the men of the countryside went out from a fortress to fight against the aforesaid Tedbald, and a certain number of them were taken prisoners by him. [2] As he was taking them off to be castrated (eunuchizaret), a certain woman, fired by love (amore) for her husband and very disturbed for the safety of his members (membris), rushed out in a frenzy from the fortress with her hair all flying loose. […]
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2002
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