ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that a playful Boethian voice would not have seemed unusual to medieval readers. It explores the characteristic in the Boethian tradition, particularly in the Pseudo-Boethian De disciplina and other school texts that feature Boethius or use humor pedagogically. The chapter describes De disciplina’s pedagogy within a tradition of potentially humorous schoolbooks for young students. It shows how Boethius’s authentic writings also make use of potentially humorous topics and exempla: they also discuss snorers, prostitutes, and violence against parents in many illustrations used to define logical terms or illuminate logical problems. The chapter considers how a humorous rewriting of Boethius’s voice relates to his authority as a revered auctor and trace De disciplina’s own ambivalent and sometimes funny treatment of scholarly authority. It examines how De disciplina constructs its humor in more detail and places it within tradition of humor in teaching texts for young students that teach creative and subversive forms of reading alongside their upright lessons.
