Humor

HUMOR

HUMOR. Aristotle, in De partibus animalium, defined man as a being capable of laughter, but laughter is not, as some optimists have claimed, a universal language. Its function and importance differed so widely, even during our historical period, depending on national, social, and other variables, that it is far easier to ask questions than to answer them. Why did (and do) some Christians, like Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627–1704), strongly disapprove of laughter? Is there any common element uniting the hearty, even crude, laughter provoked by carnival merrymaking and slapstick comedy (French farces and sotties, Spanish pasos, the Italian commedia dell'arte) and the urbane wit called festivitas by Desiderius Erasmus (1466?–1536) and Thomas More (1478–1535) and exemplified by the noble speakers in Baldassare Castiglione's Book of the Courtier (1528)? Can we clearly separate "popular" from "refined" or "learned" humor? And why is the terminology of humor not easily translated from one language to another?

Laughter was often considered more important in the Renaissance than it has been since. Several Renaissance princes, including Lorenzo de' Medici (1449–1492) and Louis XII of France (ruled 1498–1515), were reputed to enjoy jokes, even those directed against themselves, whereas France's Louis XIV (ruled 1643–1715) is said to have made only one joke in his life. Unfortunately, even today no explanation of why we laugh is universally endorsed. Sixteenth-century theorists about humor were mainly medical authorities (Laurent Joubert [1529–1582], Ambroise Paré [1510–1590]) interested in physiology; in the seventeenth century Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), following Aristotle, articulated the first of the three commonest modern explanations of laughter: superiority, incongruity, and release from restraint. If we can usually see why satire provokes laughter, we are at a loss when we try to compare the humor of Molière (1622–1673) and Shakespeare (1564–1616), or of Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) and Laurence Sterne (1713–1768).

THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

The Renaissance and the Reformation inspired a remarkable variety of verbal and visual humor. The great humanist Erasmus, in his Colloquies (1518), produced both biting anti-church satire ("The Funeral"), and sly and charming wit ("The Abbot and the Learned Lady"). Reformation and anti-Reformation satirists created an explosion of comic caricature in broadsheets attacking either Luther and his cohorts or the venal priests and hypocritical monks of the Roman Catholic Church. Humanist polemic did not shrink from scatological invective that would horrify most readers today (the Eccius Dedolatus ), and French farce characters could urinate on stage. Much humanist wit, like the Epistles of Obscure Men, is incomprehensible to readers with no knowledge of Latin.

The century apparently reveled in jokes (facetiae in Latin) and in comic short stories, as numerous anthologies in England, France, Italy, and Germany attest. The most influential were those of Poggio Bracciolini in Italy (1438–1452) and Heinrich Bebel in Germany (1508–1512), both written in Latin. Later collections became larger and more inclusive; there are 981 facezie in the 1574 edition of Ludovico Domenichi, written in Italian. An Erasmian love of humor inspired both François Rabelais (Gargantua and Pantagruel, 1532–1564), who used wit and hyperbole to convey his humanist message, and Shakespeare, whose comedies radiate a smiling acceptance of human frailty. Comic theater came to life again in most European countries in the sixteenth century, stimulated by the rediscovery of Aristotle's dramatic principles and of Plautus and Terence. National differences in comic outlook are strikingly illustrated by the German adaptation of Rabelais (1575–1590) by Johann Fischart, which is much cruder than its model and much less humanistically inclined. Comic visual art includes not only a wealth of satirical engravings, but the compelling visual grotesques of Pieter Bruegel (1525?–1569) and Hieronymus Bosch (1450?–1516) and the whimsical portraits of Giuseppe Arcimboldo (c. 1530–1593), which are created exclusively of fruit, flowers, or fish.

THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

Whereas much literature of the previous century was still written in Latin, this one saw the flowering of vernacular literatures; it is Spain's Golden Age, and France's Age of Classicism. Cervantes's Don Quixote (1615), generally recognized as the first novel, has comic moments, but its prevailing tone is ironic rather than frankly humorous. Comic theater flourished, with some common elements; for instance, the classical clownish slave lived on as the Spanish gracioso, as Molière's soubrette, as the zanni (crafty servant) of the commedia dell'arte, and as numerous characters in the plays of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson (1573–1637).

The century's great comic dramatists were not primarily satirists. Shakespeare's dramatic worlds are more imaginary than real. Molière's minor comedies owe more to literary sources than to real life (Les Fourberies de Scapin, 1671), and his best plays only occasionally reveal his scorn for stupid minor nobles, or for dangerous religious hypocrites (Le Tartuffe, 1667). Their genius, like Shakespeare's, lies in revealing character through comedy, though Shakespeare was freer to include farce in his plays. England's Restoration drama (after 1660) was much more satirical; William Wycherley (1640–1716), John Vanbrugh (1664–1726), John Farquhar (1678–1707), and William Congreve (1670–1729) delighted in skewering stupidity and pretentiousness, as Jonson had before them. Critics continued to discuss the form and function of stage comedy, and comic opera became a popular genre.

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

The Age of Enlightenment specialized in satire, though less in the theater than in other genres. Carlo Goldoni's (1707–1793) comedies continue the tradition of comedy of intrigue, while those of Pierre de Marivaux (1688–1763) are more interested in human emotions than in social mores. In Russia, Denis Fonvizin (1745–1792) showed members of the nobility in a comic light (The Brigadier, 1769).

England produced some satirical giants: Henry Fielding (1707–1754), whose sprawling novel Tom Jones (1749) has comic moments; Richard Sheridan (1751–1816), whose Mrs. Malaprop in The School for Scandal (1777) is a comic type to rival Shakespeare's Falstaff; William Hogarth, whose moralizing series (Marriage à la mode, 1745) prefigured the modern cartoon; the verse satires of John Dryden (1631–1700) and Alexander Pope (1688–1744), and above all, Jonathan Swift (1667–1745). Compared to his mentors, Erasmus and Rabelais, Swift is sometimes too ferocious to be comic, as when he recommends relieving the famine in Ireland by eating babies (A Modest Proposal, 1729), but Gulliver's Travels (1726) remains a humorous and readable indictment of the society of his time.

France's Voltaire (1694–1778) is often both subtler and funnier than Swift, especially in his masterpiece, Candide (1759), a comprehensive attack on the aristocracy, religion, and general prejudices of his time (a battle is a "heroic butchery"; a Spanish grandee demonstrates "pride suitable in a man with so many names"). A new element in this century is the connection between laughter and eroticism, in works by Charles-Louis de Secondat de Montesquieu (1689–1755), Denis Diderot (1713–1784), and Pierre Choderlos de Laclos (1741–1803) (Les liaisons dangereuses, 1782).

See also Caricature and Cartoon ; Castiglione, Baldassare ; Cervantes, Miguel de ; Commedia dell'Arte ; Dryden, John ; Erasmus, Desiderius ; Jonson, Ben ; Molière ; Pope, Alexander ; Rabelais, François ; Shakespeare, William ; Sheridan, Richard Brinsley ; Swift, Jonathan ; Voltaire .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Source

Bowen, Barbara C. ed. One Hundred Renaissance Jokes: An Anthology. Birmingham, Ala., 1988. Latin jokes with English translations.

Secondary Sources

Bremmer, Jan, and Herman Roodenburg, eds. A Cultural History of Humor: From Antiquity to the Present Day. Malden, Mass., 1997.

Ménager, Daniel. La Renaissance et le rire. Paris, 1995.

Barbara C. Bowen