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The study analyses the reflection of laughter in medieval Russia in medieval literary studies from the 1970s to the present. Special attention is paid to the interpretation of laughter in the book by D. S. Likhachov and A. M. Panchenko The World of Laughter of Ancient Russia and the following reaction and re-interpretation of this issue in the texts of the Russian semioticians J. M. Lotman and B. A. Uspenski. The study also attempts to outline possible reasons why laughter does not appear in the writings of medieval Russia, which is a phenomenon that literary studies -- being so far concentrated particularly on formulating the specifics of "Russian laughter" -- have largely neglected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]