Carnivalesque Homoeroticism in Medieval Decadent Cairo: Ibn Dāniyāl'sThe Love-Stricken One and the Lost One Who Inspires Passion

Abstract

This study explores the theme of carnivalesque homoeroticism in medieval decadent Cairo as portrayed by oculist andlittérateurIbn Dāniyāl in his third shadow playThe Love-Stricken One and the Lost One Who Inspires Passion. The playwright's satirical response to Sultan Baybars's campaign against vice in Egypt in the thirteenth century falls within the irreverent burlesque tradition. The article analyses the playwright's carnivalesque and satirical shadow play in light of Bakhtin's theory of carnival. He related the carnivalesque – a burlesque dramatic genre aiming to secretively challenge and sabotage the social and political hierarchy of an autocratic regime through satirical obscenity and rhetoric – to the medieval carnivals and feasts of fools throughout Europe. Bawdy burlesque comedies were intended to provoke hilarious laughter by mockingly satirizing the despotic government's absurd subjugation of its citizens. The study shows how carnivalesque dialogic, long thought to be limited to medieval literature in Europe, found fertile soil in medieval Cairo. Ibn Dāniyāl's trilogyṬayf al-Khayāl, which consists ofThe Shadow Spirit,The Amazing Preacher and the Stranger, andThe Love-Stricken One and the Lost One Who Inspires Passion, can unquestionably be studied in the context of Bakhtin's plebeian popular culture of laughter and the carnivalesque tradition.