Gasping at Straw Men: The Politics of Fear in Early Modern French Farce

"Gasping at Straw Men: The Politics of Fear in Early Modern French Farce." This paper examines the uses of derision of cowardly soldiers in comic plays and monologues which deal with war and battle in early modern France. Generally regarded as mere satires that voiced the peasants' ridicule of the cowardice of soldiers, these plays also raise anxieties, via plot and character, about the damage done to society and to individuals by military conflicts and the culture of war. Yet these concerns are skewed and misdirected, so that the audience is left guffawing at the wrong fears. The analysis involves two separate steps: the sociological use of misleading fears, as described in Barry Glassner's The Culture of Fear; and the use of humor to dismiss fear, as delineated in Rush Dozier's Fear Itself The study begins with the figure of the braggart free archer as encapsulated in the extant French comedies about him, both farces and sermons joyeux or comic monologues, from roughly 1450-1550, and goes on to discuss two other plays in which soldiers and battle serve as the loci of comedy yet which provide a glimpse into the devastation wars wreaked on the res publica.