ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book begins with an enquiry into the ways in which laughter and narrative conditioned one another in German verse-couplet comic tales of the later Middle Ages. It explores the laughter(s) implied by these texts, as well as the laughter(s) portrayed within them. The book also explores the comic efficacy of certain fundamental aspects of their narrative technique and the balance that they strike between normativity and discursivity in respect of quintessential themes and categories of perception. It focusses on the large number of overtly comic 'Maren' composed in the later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, a period which saw their appropriation by urban poets in prosperous southern German cities in particular. The respective balance struck by comic tales and Nuremberg Shrovetide plays between 'theatricality' and 'narrativity' illustrates the dynamism of German comic literature in the period.
