Abstract
Understanding the place and functions of the comic and laughter in the European medieval societies has been subject to a variety of persistent myths. According to these, the Middle Ages, the very foundation which the modern western world is based on and is being defined by drawing comparisons with it, have been depicted as either dark and immature or simple and pure.
Whether the medievalists in recent decades have agreed with such opinions or have tried to critically re-evaluate them, there has seldom been a thesis on medieval culture which would entirely abandon a model based on binary oppositions. Imaginary borders of laughter have been in various scholarly concepts identified with even more imaginary borders of the Middle Ages.
The authors and editors of this publication reflect this fact not only in specific interpretations and analyses but also in their conceptual approach. The comic and seriousness in the subtitle are not opposing each other but rather represent a sum of possible connections which constitute the meaningfulness of joking as well as sadness, ridiculing as well as moralizing, hope and despair, destruction as well as salvation.