The Laughter of the Saints offers a compelling examination of medieval and early-modern parodies of saints. Although Giles’s approach is literary rather than folkloristic, his book is valuable to folklorists in its cultural and textual contextualization of Spanish religious parodies, many of which draw upon rich folk traditions.
One of the author’s main concerns throughout the book is to problematize modern readings of religious parodies that approach the genre “not as a hermeneutic challenge, but as a sign of spiritual bankruptcy” (25). Countering the traditional Bakhtinian dichotomy between official culture (which is serious and authoritative) and carnival culture (which is bawdy and subversive), Giles insists that these two cultures regularly interpenetrate—clergy are just as capable of employing humor as well as peasants, and humor can also be used with authoritative goals. Although these revisions of Bakhtin are hardly original, Giles’s warnings against reductionist readings of religious parody are still apt.
The book’s richness for folklorists comes in its examination of bawdy tales inspired by festival practices and popular religious narratives. For example, in the first chapter Giles considers texts that reimagine Christ’s passion on the Cross as a metaphor for sexual frustration, such as a bawdy song from the fourteenth-century Libro de Buen Amor (The Book of Good Love), written by the Archpriest of Hita. The narrator of this song lusts after a baker woman named Cruz (Cross), and compares his suffering to Christ’s—complete with euphemistic consumption of the “sweetest bread.” Giles contextualizes the Archpriest’s song by exploring treatments of the Cross in both theology and folklore—such as the Feast of the Invention of the Cross festival on the third of May. This festival commemorated the finding of the Cross, and was celebrated by dancing, singing, and matchmaking. Festival songs spoke about young men finding their crosses—young ladies elected as May queens, lined up in front of crosses. It is not difficult to imagine these festival practices inspiring the song in the Archpriest’s Libro.
Chapters 2 and 3 comment on parodies of saints rather than Christ. Chapter 2 considers how parodists subvert the trope of hermit saints who live ascetic lives in the wilderness—a setting just as attractive to sin as to sanctity. This chapter contains a discussion of legends and funerary practices that sheds light on satirical depictions of Saint Hilarion, including a raunchy episode where the devil catches the saint masturbating on a rocky outcrop, slips on ejaculate, and is subsequently violated by the saint. Chapter 3 looks at popular legends and cultic traditions concerning Saint Quiteria and Mary Magdalene to clarify events in two religious parodies, the story of Don Amor in the Libro de Buen Amor and La Celestina.
Chapters 4 and 5 turn to picaresque characters in the Spanish early-modern novel. Giles contends that just as heroes of medieval romance were modeled on saints and saintly behaviors, so too are the picaresque heroes of early-modern Spanish literature modeled on medieval parodies of saints. In chapter 4, Giles discusses how the biblical figures of Martha and John the Baptist are used to construct picaresque anti-heroes in the Retrato de la Lozana Andaluza and the Vida de Lazarillo de Tormes. The final chapter looks to the hagiographic models of Saints Anthony and Martin as they are entextualized in the early modern novels Guzmán de Alfarache and Don Quijote, by Mateo Alemán and Miguel de Cervantes, respectively. Giles explores how Alemán and Cervantes used parodic imitations of saintly models to respond to their rivals who published spurious sequels and imitations of their works.
Giles’s consideration of folkloric and popular culture in the literature of medieval and early-modern Spain results in enriched cultural and textual contexts. Due to the work’s complexity and its deep engagement with the topic, it will be appreciated most by specialists of Spanish or early modern literature.
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[Review length: 631 words • Review posted on June 23, 2011]