„Da lacht der babst“: Zur komischen Erzählmotivik als Mittel der Kohärenzstiftung in Johannes Paulis Schimpf und Ernst (1522)

This article explores the patterns of meaning that arise from the use of certain narrative motifs in Johannes Pauli’s Schimpf und Ernst (1522), a large homelitic collection of ‚exempla‘ and other short narrative forms. It takes as its starting-point a cluster of three texts (Nr 339-341) which all feature the figure of a laughing pope (I). The literary significance of such narrative laughter is then discussed in a number of different contexts: the section of ten ‘pope-tales’ (Nr 339-348) in which it occurs (II); the collection of Schimpf und Ernst as a whole (III); and, finally, the series of later sixteenth-century ‘Schwanksammlungen’ whose authors drew inspiration from Pauli’s work