Wickham on Multiple Meanings

A while ago I offered a thought from A. C. Graham on the emergence of multiple meanings in the history of (a) culture.  Chris Wickham has a thought to offer on the same subject:

[T]he early Middle Ages was very unlike twenty-first-century western Europe, in which I am writing.  Current values, such as liberalism, secularism, toleration, a sense of irony, an interest in the viewpoints of others, however skin-deep in  our own society, were simply absent then, or at best only vestigially present, as indeed they have been absent from most of the societies of the past.  Early medieval people did have a sense of  humour, needless to say, but what was funny to them (largely mockery and dreadful puns) by no means make them seem closer to us; they used irony, but it was usually pretty savage and sarcastic.

--Chris Wickham, The Inheritance of Rome, Chapter 23 (2009)