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The Medieval Theater of the Absurd

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

Alan E. Knight
Alan E. Knight*
Affiliation:
Pennsylvania State University, University Park
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Abstract

The sottie is a popular dramatic genre of the late Middle Ages which seems to have developed from the comic debates that players often used to gather an audience. In its developed form it resembles the contemporary Theater of the Absurd. The most meaningful approach to a comparison of the two theaters is by way of the thought embodied in the plays. They are both to a certain extent didactic, though they represent different outlooks and value systems. Both theaters utilize clowns and clowning techniques, and both are closely linked to the dream. The two historical periods concerned are presented in the plays as times when cultural ideals have become illusions out of tune with reality, and the accompanying alienation is expressed in powerful images of waiting. One of the most suggestive areas of resemblance is language, which has been cut from its rational moorings. The language of the sottie still has a creative vigor, while that of the Theater of the Absurd is moribund. Both, however, are languages of protest. Each theater creates a new norm against which to judge its society, thereby exposing those who would mask their venality with pretense.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 86 , Issue 2 , March 1971 , pp. 183 - 189
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1971

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References

* A shorter version of this paper was read in the French i section of the 1968 meeting of the Modern Language Association.

Note 1 in page 188 The existing studies of the sottie tend to fall into two groups according to whether the writer views the plays as merely reflecting a style of acting or as constituting a distinct genre. The former interpretation is advanced by Petit de Julleville in La Comédie et les mœurs en France au moyen âge (Paris: L. Cerf, 1886), and in his Répertoire du théâtre comique en France au moyen âge (Paris: L. Cerf, 1886). It is upheld by Eugénie Droz in her edition of Le Recueil Trepperel, Vol. I: Les Sotties (Paris: Librairie ?. Droz, 1935). The generic distinctiveness of the sottie is maintained by Emile Picot in his Introduction to the Recueil général des sotties, 3 vols. (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1902–12); by Howard G. Harvey in The Theatre of the Basoche (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. 1941); and by Lambert C. Porter in “La Farce et la sotie,” ZRP, 75 (1959), 89–123. The latter interpretation is an assumption of the present study.

Note 2 in page 188 Le Recueil Trepperel, i, 33.

Note 3 in page 188 Strictly speaking, Chascun is everyman and Le Commun is the common people, while Le Monde personifies the world viewed sometimes as a moral structure (as in “the world, the flesh, and the devil”), and sometimes as a social or political structure (as in “the world is going to wrack and ruin”). In practice, these distinctions are not always so sharply drawn, as Chascun is sometimes associated with the common people.

Note 4 in page 188 Le Recueil Trepperel, i, 159. The passage is considerably longer than this extract. See also Recueil général, i, xv, for an illustration of a passée de sois.

Note 5 in page 188 Recueil général, m, 220.

Note 6 in page 188 Recueil général, m, 321–44.

Note 7 in page 188 Recueil général, H, 105–73.

Note 8 in page 188 The Theatre of the Absurd (Garden City, ?. Y. : Double-day, 1961), p. 302.

Note 9 in page 188 “Ni un dieu, ni un démon,” Cahiers de la Compagnie Renaud-Barrault, Nos. 22/23 (May 1958), p. 131.

Note 10 in page 188 Samuel Beckett, Fin de partie (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1957), p. 56.

Note 11 in page 188 Recueil général, H, 265, 323.

Note 12 in page 188 L'Aveu (Paris: Editions du Sagittaire, 1946). See esp. pp. 30–31, 43–46, and 108–15.

Note 13 in page 188 P. 62.

Note 14 in page 188 Notes et contre-notes (Paris: Gallimard, 1962), pp. 155 ff.

Note 15 in page 188 Le Recueil Trepperel, i, 155–56.

Note 16 in page 188 Concerning the role of vernacular languages in popular religious movements, see Friedrich Heer, The Intellectual History of Europe, trans. Jonathan Steinberg (Cleveland: World Pub. Co., 1966), pp. 187–91.

Note 17 in page 188 Symbols in Society (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1968), p. 226. On the social function of drama see also pp. 97–99, 125–26.

Note 18 in page 188 Duncan, p. 126.

Note 19 in page 188 The “yearning for salvation of the simple folk” so well described by Heer (Intellectual History, Ch. xi) is but one manifestation of this broader search for identity, which includes, among other things, the right to be heard and taken seriously as a group, and the right to self-determination in certain domains of life and thought.

Note 20 in page 188 “Ni un dieu, ni un démon,” p. 131.

Note 21 in page 188 Le Balcon, Avertissement (Décines: Marc Barbezat, 1960), p. 8.