5 “She Is Beautiful and She Is Laughing?” Courtly Smiling in the Iconography of Virtue and Vice

Abstract

So far, the uneasy relationship between women’s laughter and virtue in medieval vernacular tradition has been examined for the most part in terms of clerical influence on the secular aristocratic society, as a reflection of the overall ambiguous treatment of laughter and its connection to female sexuality based on the symbolic equivalence between the mouth and genitals. However, it has also become clear that the lay and religious worlds in the Middle Ages were engaged in a constant and productive dialogue, sometimes challenging, sometimes adopting the other’s ideas. Ecclesiastical discourse responded to the politics and morality of secular society, while the latter accepted or questioned religious authority, views, and pastoral guidance. As the last two chapters have shown, the belief in the inherent weakness and sinfulness of female nature coexists side by side with a different view of femininity promoted in courtly culture—the figure of a beautiful and virtuous aristocratic lady whose smile encourages, inspires, and welcomes the interest of male suitors. The enormous popularity of this image in the High Middle Ages and beyond leads to a question about the potential reverse impact of this seemingly positive alternative in religious iconography of virtue and vice: Could laughter ever grace a chaste female body? Art, particularly sculpture, lends itself well to answering this question. Thanks to its size and ability to accurately reproduce human features and bodies, portal sculpture presents vast opportunities for deepening our understanding of medieval emotions. The contemporary debates on women’s laughter and virtue are reflected and further tested in the depictions of the popular biblical parable