4:30 p.m.– 6 p.m.

Lecture by Marek Zágora. Only in Czech.

Medieval comedy has attracted growing interest in recent years. However, its boundaries are very fragile. What may seem amusing or ridiculous to us today would often have had an entirely different (and even serious) meaning in the Middle Ages. For this reason, medieval historians have varying approaches to comic scenes from the era, particularly those depicted in manuscripts. For some scholars, such scenes represent attempts to express the meaning of the text in an alternative way, while other scholars view the elaborate ornamentation of a manuscript’s borders as images which distracted attention from the main text, their authors having been inspired by secular pleasures, medieval folklore or even ancient pagan religion. It is not possible to interpret medieval comedy without consulting preserved written sources, which at least to some extent help us to understand the artistically depicted scenes that bring a smile to our lips. But do we really understand these images correctly? This lecture sets out to answer that question.

Booking advance

The lecture will be streamed live on Facebooku and the gallery’s YouTube channel.

free entrance