M.M. Bakhtin’s "Medieval laughter" in "Merlin" by Robert de Boron

M.M. Bakhtin, while describing the carnival culture in his book about François Rabelais, uses the term “medieval laughter” and points out its characteristics. One of the main characteristics of this laughter, according to Bakhtin, is that it destroys the boundaries and restrictions of social hierarchy and, as a result, defeats the fear of it. In the prose version of “Merlin” by Robert de Boron, written in the beginning of the XIII century, it is possible to notice laughter in the dialogs between the king Uther Pendragon and the sourcerer Merlin. Considering the fact that this romance is based on events previously described in the latin chronicle by Geoffrey of Monmouth (“Historia Regum Britanniae”, 1138) and its free translation to “romance” language by Wace (“Roman de Brut”, 1155) and the fact that this laughter is unusual for medieval literature, we can suppose its connection to the carnival culture. In this work we will look at the context, in which laughter appears in “Merlin”, and try to figure out the role of carnival motives in “historical” narrative