Introduction: Les festivités joyeuses et leur production littéraire: pratiques parodiques en scène et en textes, en France et en Europe (XVIe-XVIIIe siècles).

Joyful culture, a sociability system in which urban groups organised performances and ritualised playful activities, played an important role to consolidate social cohesion in the post-medieval era. Joyful and parodic practices and texts reinforced group identity and the feeling to belong to a community. Parody, a polymorphic notion, was essential to this culture. Various interpretative strategies allow understanding its literary and cultural functions.