625 Van Pelt Library

In a brief but influential passage from European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (1948), Ernst Robert Curtius explored the unresolved tension within medieval Christian culture regarding ‘Comedy’: the Church’s condemnation of humor contrasted with the recognition of laughter as a fundamental aspect of human nature. However, the concept of humor itself presents a complex challenge for philosophers. Umberto Eco, for example, humorously speculated on the absence of Aristotle’s writings on comedy, suggesting that the ‘lost’ second part of the Poetics resulted from Aristotle’s failure to fully clarify the subject.

Even though a prevailing view in Renaissance philosophy posits that Marsilio Ficino redefined beauty to include the ‘graceful art of laughter, ’ challenging the medieval moralistic rejection of humor, this shift could hardly be seen as marking the Renaissance’s break from medieval Aristotelianism.

My argument questions this established narrative, proposing that the Aristotelian notion of laughter as an intrinsic human trait had a more complex and underexplored medieval legacy. By uncovering this forgotten history, I aim to offer a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, revealing that the Middle Ages were not monolithic—one of its strands (with Thomas Aquinas) already embraced ideas central to the Renaissance.

This event is co-sponsored by the Center for Italian Studies.