Medieval Joke Poetry: The Cantigas d'Escarnho e de Mal Dizer (review)

268ReviewsLa corónica 34.1, 2005 Benjamin Liu. Medieval Joke Poetrv: The Cantigas d'Escamho e de Mal Dizei: Harvard Department of Comparative Literature. Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature. 50. Cambridge: Harvard VP. 2004. 166 pages. ISBN: 0-674-01664-5 Benjamin Liu's study of the satirical Galician-Portuguese cantigas d'escarnho e de mal d/zer ( = CEM), jiroduced under the jiatronage of .Alfonso X and Denis of Portugal, is a lively, provocative contribution to emerging scholarship on humor in medieval Iberian literatures. In the introduction, Liu says that the CEM began as "a counterpoint" to the cantigas d'amor e d'àmigo (3), although thev may also be considered poems of "malediction" in contrast to .Alfonso Ws poems of "praise and benediction" to the Virgin, the Cantigas de Santa Maria (11). However, the heterogeneous CEM lack the univoca1 character ofthe jiraise songs to the Virgin. Instead, Lin argues, the cantigas d'escarnho especially should be interpreted in a two-fold way, that is, as comical and as covering another meaning through their humor. The cantigas de mal dizer, on the other hand, are usually more obvious, direct invectives against a person (2-3). Notwithstanding this distinction, Liu still suggests that both types of poems contain a deejicr meaning, which he identifies as the sociopolitical and cultural tensions of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Iberia. Although many of the poems jioint their satires toward targeted individuals, the jiarticular names cover larger social concerns (15). The jioems' humor obfuscates "painful animosities" and avoids "coming to blows or being driven to tears" (8). The titles ol several of the book's seven chapters reveal the conflicts or ambiguities embedded in the jokes ofthe CEM, such as chapter five, "'.Affined to Love the Moor': Sexual Misalliance and Cultural Mixing", and chapter six, ' "Aquí no Valen Dolores': Christian Doctors and Charlatans". After reading the introduction, I wished that Liu had included basic, general information about the CEM poets, although the comjiosers themselves were not the focus of his study. Medieval Joke Poeln contains an introduction, seven chapters (chapter seven constitutes the conclusion), a bibliography: the book has no index. In chapter one, "Proper Names, Equivocation, and Escandio", Liu analyzes the "curse" against someone, which is the central jioint ofthe CEM. In contrast to the Provençal tradition, which often generalizes against certain classes of people, the CEM usually single out one jierson. Exceptions include poems against the lesser nobility as a group or against the social category of donzelli. Liu emjihasizes the particular use of jiroj)cr names in the CEM, La corónica 34.1 (Fall, 2005): 268-71 Reviews269 which are based not on changes in nominal form, as in paronomasia, but on equivocal meanings already present within names. He traces the discussion of logical equivocation from Aristotle through the Middle Ages in order to link to the CEM the concept of aeqnivocatio as it was used in a fourteenthcentury treatise on the arie de trovar (cited on jiage 2 of Liu's book). The equivocal nominal meanings that Liu analyzes are evident, for instance, in the onomastic wordplay of such authentic Portuguese surnames as Ladräo, Peido, Caga-na-Riia and Merda-Assada (30). Other cantigas satirize a person's last name and its connection to that person's body or character. Liu begins chapter two, "Bird-Signs and Other .Allegories ofthe Future", by stating that the jirevious chapter exploredjokes that created "fimdamental uncertainties in interpretation" (35). A very brief summary would have been helpful, since the nature of those uncertainties was unclear. In my reading of chapter one, the equivocal meanings of projier names seemed more accurarely described as complexities rather than uncertainties, since "uncertainty" implies a listener's expectation of a set meaning or of an intention on the part of the poet, which is precisely what some of the CEM criticize. The abnipt use of "uncertainties" at the beginning of chapter two creates a transition to a discussion in that same chajiter about cantigas that critique divinations regarding the future. Liu focuses on rhetoric and figurative language to show the various ways that the CEM evaluate divinations about the future, and thereby demonstrate anxieties about future outcomes of...