Abstract
This chapter attempts to analyse and test the definition of humour as theorised by Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936) in his 1908 essay L’Umorismo. In this work, Pirandello defines humour as the feeling of the opposite, an evolved version of what people find merely ridiculous in life and in literature, which leads to inner questioning and introspection. Pirandello mentions a variety of examples with the purpose of describing humour as the product of the artist’s reflection on his own work of art, a convoluted process by means of which writers and readers alike feel the opposite of what they are supposed to feel. In order to test the theory’s effectiveness, this article proposes to read a selected chapter from the Chinese jestbook Xiaolin Guangji 笑林廣記 (1791), namely the one titled Guifeng bu 閨風部 (The inner chamber), seen as a continuous narrative. Xiaolin Guangji may have given life to a coherent series of micro-fictions, in which thematic repetition removes the comical effect and instead leaves the reader with the opposite feeling. Pirandello’s theory helps to describe how the feeling of the opposite rises without the aid of repetition, given that other factors (incongruity, superiority, and self-deprecation) come into play.
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Notes
- 1.
Italian version in Pirandello Umorismo, 122–123. English version in Pirandello, On Humour, 113.
- 2.
Rauhut, ‘Wissenschaftliche Quellen’, 185–205.
- 3.
Ibid., 136.
- 4.
Pirandello, Umorismo, 120–121.
- 5.
Ibid., 124–125.
- 6.
Quoted in Critchley, On Humour, 3.
- 7.
Graham, Chuang-Tzu, 52.
- 8.
Graham, Lieh-tzu, 84.
- 9.
Armao, ‘From Il Fu Mattia Pascal to Liolà’, 55.
- 10.
Ragusa, ‘Nota’, 140.
- 11.
Quoted in Pirandello, Umorismo, 196.
- 12.
Caserta, ‘Croce, Pirandello’, 21–22, and Iliano, ‘Momenti’, 139.
- 13.
Iliano, ‘Momenti’, 138.
- 14.
Quoted in Ragusa, ‘Nota’, 139.
- 15.
Iliano, ‘Momenti’, 138.
- 16.
Armao, ‘From Il Fu Mattia Pascal to Liolà’, 63.
- 17.
Druker, ‘Self-estrangement’, 57.
- 18.
Eco, The Limits of Interpretation, 167: ‘Reflection (artistic consciousness) undergoes here a new development: it attempts to understand the reason why the old woman masks herself under the delusion of regaining her lost youth. The character is no longer separate from me; in fact, I try to get inside the character. In so doing, I lose my own sense of superiority because I think that I could be she (sic). My laughter is mixed with pity; it becomes a smile. I have moved from the Comic to Humor’ (Italics are mine).
- 19.
This, however, can be disputed, see Mariani, Living Masks, 61, where a character from the play Each in his own Way ‘evolves into a pure instance of Pirandellian Umorismo’.
- 20.
Quoted in Chandler, Modern Continental Playwrights, 573.
- 21.
Some sources (e.g. Qi Lianxiu, Minjian gushi, 361) assume that XLGJ was first printed in 1781.
- 22.
It has to be noted, however, that Xiaofu was itself an anthology of jokes which had appeared in other collections, both contemporary to Feng Menglong and from previous dynasties. For an extensive list of texts that Feng may have consulted, see Hsu, Treasury, 5–6.
- 23.
See Mair and Weinstein.
- 24.
Myhre, 2001, 135. However, notice that in the same chapter, Myhre erroneously identifies 1899’s homonym XLGJ, edited by Cheng Shijue, as the object of this study. The homonymy of such works is indeed confusing more often than not!
- 25.
Lu Xun, Xiaoshuo Shilüe, 61. It is intriguing to notice how Lu Xun, arguably the sharpest novelist of his time, favoured the benign and harmless Aizi Zashuo over more overtly satiricaljestbooks.
- 26.
Wang Yunxi, and Gu Yisheng, Wenxue Piping, 867.
- 27.
Wang Liqi (Lidai xiaohua, index) includes a total of forty-nine Ming and Qing collections in his anthology.
- 28.
Quoted in Wang Yunxi, and Gu Yisheng, Wenxue Piping, 866.
- 29.
Wang Yunxi, and Gu Yisheng, Wenxue Piping, 864. For a discussion on the prefaces and postfaces of Ming jestbooks, see Wu Shaoping, Xiaohua Pingdian, 194–204. A block printed version of Gujin Tangai which circulated during the Kangxi 康熙 (1661–1722) era had its preface penned by famous writer and playwright Li Yu 李漁 (1610–1680), as noted in Chen Pingyuan, Yanbian, 148.
- 30.
The inclusion of Zhuangzi as a text which justifies mean language may be informed by the following passage: ‘Four Men, Masters Si, Yu, Li, and Lai, were talking together. ‘Which of us is able to think of nothingness as the head, of life as the spine, of death as the rump? Which of us knows that the living and the dead, the surviving and the lost, are all one body? He shall be my friend’. The four men looked at each other and smiled, and none was reluctant in his heart. So they became friends’ (Graham, Chuang-tzu, 87–88). As for Dongfang Shuo, see his biography, where some of his jests and tricks are reported in Minford and Lau, Classical Chinese Literature, 352–356 (a translation of his biography in Guji Liezhuan 滑稽列傳, Biographies of Court Wits).
- 31.
I stand with Hanan (Vernacular Story, 3–4) in preferring Classical Chinese over Literary Language as a translation for wenyan.
- 32.
This hypothesis is pointed out in Hsu Pi-Ching, Treasury, 17. For a discussion on the differences between Classical and Vernacular Chinese as written languages in Late-Imperial China, see Hanan, Vernacular Story, 1–27.
- 33.
Quoted in Wang Jingmin, ‘Cong Ming Qing Xiaohua’, 14.
- 34.
Wu Xiaoru, Du XLGJ.
- 35.
Wang Xuetai, ‘Xiaolin Guangji Qianyan’, 50.
- 36.
Liong, ‘Hegemony and Humour’, 194.
- 37.
Huang Kewu and Li Xinyi, ‘Ming Qing Xiaohua’, 370.
- 38.
Hanan, Vernacular Story, 3 and following; for an introduction to wenyan, see also Pulleyblank, Classical Chinese, 4–11.
- 39.
Some sources say 1923 (Chey, ‘Youmo’, 1–5, but also Kao, Wit and Humor, XXII), other sources say 1924 (Yan Guanglin and Xu Tong, Guanjianci, 120).
- 40.
Lin Yutang, Youmo Zahua, 249, my translation.
- 41.
Lin Yutang, Lun Youmo, 260. The whole essay appeared translated in English by Joseph C. Sample, in the volume Humour in Chinese Life and Letters. Sample has chosen as his translation ‘gentle and sincere, unbiased, and at the same time concerned with the destiny of humankind’. See Sample, On Humour, 175.
- 42.
Lin Yutang, Youmo Zahua, 249, my translation.
- 43.
For a discussion on the differences between Huaji and Youmo, see Chey, ‘Youmo’, 1–5.
- 44.
Zhou Gong, or The Duke of Zhou, is said to have instituted marriage as a rite.
- 45.
Keith-Spiegel, ‘Early Conceptions’, 7.
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Leggieri, A. (2020). Testing the Limits of Pirandello’s Umorismo: A Case Study Based on Xiaolin Guangji. In: Derrin, D., Burrows, H. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Humour, History, and Methodology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56646-3_11
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