<1>  M.H. Abrams, The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 3rd edn., 2 vols. (New York, 1974), I, 5; see further Horner’s essay below.

<2>  Grettir’s Saga, trans. Denton Fox and Hermann Pálsson (Toronto, 1974), ch. 45, p. 95.  ‘Þau tíðkast nú in breiðu spjótin’, Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar, ed. Guðni Jónsson, Íslenzk fornrit 7 (Reykjavik, 1936), p. 146.

<3>  Njal’s Saga, trans. Magnus Magnusson and Hermann Pálsson (Harmondsworth, 1960), ch. 77, p. 169.  ‘Gizurr leit við honum ok mælti: “Hvárt er Gunnarr heima?”  Þorgrímr svarar: “Vitið þér þat, en hitt vissa ek, at atgeirr hans var heima”.  Síðan fell hann niðr dauðr’,  Brennu-Njáls saga, ed. Einar Ól. Sveinsson, Íslenzk fornrit 12 (Reykjavik, 1954), p. 187.

<4>  The Rule of Saint Benedict, ed. and trans. Justin McCann (London, 1952), ch. 4, pp. 29-31; ‘multum loqui non amare, uerba uana aut risui apta non loqui, risum multum aut excussum non amare’.

<5>  Arnold Schröer, ed., Die angelsächsischen Prosabearbeitungen der Benedictinerregel, Bibliothek der angelsächischen Prosa 2 (Kassel, 1888), ch. 4, 18/7-9.

<6>  On the manuscript, see Mildred Budny, Insular, Anglo-Saxon, and Early Anglo-Norman Manuscript Art at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge: An Illustrated Catalogue, 2 vols. (Kalamazoo, MI, 1997), # 25 (I, 439-73), with this feature illustrated in vol. II, plates 297-320.  Timothy Graham establishes that these faces are an early part of the manuscript’s decorative pattern, pre-dating a yellow infilling of some initials, ‘Cambridge Corpus Christi College 57 and its Anglo-Saxon Users’, in Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts and their Heritage, ed. Phillip Pulsiano and Elaine M. Treharne (Aldershot, 1998), pp. 21-69, at 29.

<7>  See Anglo-Saxon Conversations: the Colloquies of Ælfric Bata, ed. Scott Gwara, transl. with an intro. by David W. Porter (Woodbridge, 1997), esp. ‘Colloquies’ 8, 9, and 25. 

<8>  For the possibly scatological riddle, see Williamson’s brilliant but contentious reading of the riddles conventionally numbered 75 and 76 (his Riddle 73): The Old English Riddles of the ‘Exeter Book’, ed. Craig Williamson (Chapel Hill, 1977), pp. 110 and 352-55.

<9>  Jeffrey H. Goldstein and Paul E. McGhee, eds., The Psychology of Humor: Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Issues (New York, 1972); Arthur Asa Berger, ‘Humor, An Introduction’, American Behavioral Scientist 30.3 (1987), 6-15; Arthur Asa Berger, An Anatomy of Humor (New Brunswick, NJ, 1993).

<10>  Sigmund Freud, Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious, trans. James Strachey (London, 1960); and ‘Humour’, The International Journal of Psychoanalysis 9 (1928), 1-6.

<11>  Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Hélène Iswolsky (Bloomington, 1984); for a critique, see Martha Bayless, Parody in the Middle Ages: The Latin Tradition (Ann Arbor, 1996).

<12>   Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, ed. Larry D. Benson, The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd edn. (Boston, 1987); for studies, see, inter alia, Chaucer’s Humor: Critical Essays, ed. Jean E. Jost (New York, 1994).

<13>  Valuable studies include Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture (Boston, 1950); Glending Olson, Literature as Recreation in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca, 1982); and Derek Brewer, Medieval Comic Tales, 2nd edn. (Cambridge, 1996).

<14>   Jean Young, ‘Glæd Wæs Ic Gliwum -- Ungloomy Aspects of Anglo-Saxon Poetry’, The Early Cultures of North-West Europe, ed. Cyril Fox and Bruce Dickins (Cambridge, 1950), pp. 275-87; Beatrice White, ‘Medieval  Mirth’, Anglia 78 (1960), 284-301; Jonathan Wilcox, ‘Anglo-Saxon Literary Humor: Towards a Taxonomy’, Thalia 14.1-2 (1994), 9-20.

<15>  Notable successes are Heinemann’s structural readings of Judith and Beowulf: Fredrik J. Heinemann, ‘Judith 236-291a: A Mock Heroic Approach-to-Battle Type-Scene’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 71 (1970): 83-96; and ‘Beowulf 665b-738: A Mock Approach-to-Battle Type-Scene’, in Perspectives on Language in Performance... to honour Werner Hüllen, ed. Wolfgang Lörscher and Rainer Schulze (Tübingen, 1987), pp. 677-94.

<16> Susie Tucker, ‘Laughter in Old English Literature’, Neophilologus 43 (1959), 222-26, makes a start; Laura Ruth McCord, ‘A Study of the Meanings of Hliehhan and Hleahtor in Old English Literature’ (unpubl. Ph.D. diss, University of Missouri--Columbia, 1979), provides an exhaustive study of words for laughter and their usage; Hugh Magennis, ‘Images of Laughter in Old English Poetry, with Particular Reference to the “Hleahtor Wera” of The Seafarer’, English Studies 73 (1992), 193-204, provides an outstanding survey of laughter in the poetry. 

<17> Fr. Klaeber, ed., Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg (Boston, 1922).  The influential third edition with supplement was first published in 1950.

<18> See especially Raymond P. Tripp, Jr., Literary Essays on Language and Meaning in the Poem Called Beowulf: Beowulfiana Literaria (Lewiston, NY, 1992)

<19> Homilies on the Gospel of Saint Matthew, homily 6; trans. Philip Schaff, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. 10 (New York, 1888), p. 41.  For a good survey of early Christian attitudes to laughter, see Joachim Suchomski, “Delectatio” und “utilitas”: Ein Beitrag zum Verständnis mittelalterlicher komischer Literatur (Berne, 1975), pp. 9-23.

<20> On the humor of saints’ death scenes, see Jonathan Wilcox, ‘Famous Last Words: Ælfric’s Saints Facing Death’, Essays in Medieval Studies 10 (1994), 1-13.