Abstract
Pierre Toubert begins his opening lecture with the story of the reluctant lecturer, taken from a 10th-century text circulating in Cordoba. In the 12th century, this story was translated from Arabic into Latin, and then passed on to Italy. It continued to make people laugh , so much so that it wastranslated into Tuscan (Volgare) during the reign of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and the short-story writer Arlotto Mainardi included it in his Libro delle Facezie.
At the same time, the historiette continued its successful career in Spain. Translated from Latin into Castilian, it ended up in an anthology of bon mots in the Libro de chistes, composed by a circle of cheerful companions, a [tertulia] of discreet opponents to the prevailing rigorism at the court of Philip II. Such distribution illustrates the unity of a world: the one studied by Pierre Toubert: the Mediterranean West in the Middle Ages.
