Abstract
This chapter unites sets of historically distant thoughts about laughter and humour, focusing on rhetoricians, doctors and comic writers in France, Italy and England during the sixteenth century. Although sixteenth-century writers of and about humour used classical work as a model for inspiration, their bid to understand the nature and function of laughter took a number of unprecedented directions, many of which anticipate our modern humour theories. This chapter uses the three modern categories of superiority, incongruity and relief as a framework for surveying the early modern intervention to the critical re-assessment of humour, providing a paradigm case study of a history of humour ‘theory’. It considers discussions of poetics, analyses medical writings by physicians and provides a wide range of examples of early modern humour in practice, for instance in drama, poetry and sermons. Bringing out the historical distinctness of sixteenth-century European thinking about laughter, the chapter also unwrites the tendency of current scholarship to group comic thinking from Aristotle to Hobbes under the label of ‘superiority theory’.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Rabelais, Gargantua, 53. All translations in this chapter are my own, unless otherwise indicated.
- 2.
Erasmus (1466–1536), for example, wrote that words and not laughter were a marker of the human, since laughter was also common to dogs and apes: ‘It is ridiculous that what is attributed to man as his own seems to be shared with dogs and apes’. Erasmus, De ratione concionandi, 5:922, 650. Translation by Butrica.
- 3.
This particular statement is from Spingarn, History of Literary Criticism, 101.
- 4.
In short, the notion that when we laugh, it is always because we experience a sense of superiority over something or someone else.
- 5.
Aristotle, Poetics, 5:45. Translation by Halliwell.
- 6.
Marvin Herrick discusses the influence of Aristotle’s commentators throughout his French Comic Theory.
- 7.
‘When we laugh at the ridiculous aspects of our friends, the admixture of pleasure in our malice produces a mixture of pleasure and distress’. Plato, Philebus, 51. Translation by Gosling.
- 8.
‘The seat, the region, so to speak, of the humorous—for this is the next question—lies in a certain dishonorableness and ugliness’. Cicero, De Oratore, 2:187. Translation by May and Wisse.
- 9.
‘Laughter is not far from derision’. Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, 6:3, 67. Translation by Russell.
- 10.
‘Wee laugh at deformed creatures, wherein certainly wee cannot delight’. Sidney, Defence of Poesie, in Prose Works, 40.
- 11.
Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, 4.
- 12.
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 218. Also cited in Skinner, ‘Why Laughing Mattered’, 418.
- 13.
Joubert, Traité du Ris, 1:1, 16. In the sixteenth century, the various forms of ‘ridicule’ (‘ridiculous’, ‘ridicolo’) indicated ‘laughable’ in its etymological sense, rather than today’s sense of the word as meaning foolish or outlandish.
- 14.
Machiavelli, La vita di Castruccio Castracani da Lucca, in Opere complete, 175.
- 15.
Castiglione, II Cortegiano, 2:46, 153.
- 16.
‘Any avaricious man is deformed, and turned into a monster’. Mancini, De risu, ac ridiculis, 145.
- 17.
Wiles discusses this culture in his excellent chapter centring on Richard Tarlton. Cf. Shakespeare’s Clown, 11–23.
- 18.
Lotte Hellinga discusses the laughter caused by this jestbook in chapter six of her Texts in Transit, 168–200.
- 19.
Cited in Burke, ‘Frontiers of the Comic’, 64. These, and many more examples, can also be found throughout Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature, especially 240, 243, 411.
- 20.
This incident is recounted in full in Robertson, Il Gran Cardinale, 128. Cited in Burke, ‘Frontiers of the Comic’, 64.
- 21.
More, Epigrammata, ‘In anglum gallicae linguae affectatorem’ (On an Englishman Affecting the French Language). 45–47. McCutcheon assesses this epigram in her ‘Laughter and Humanism’, 230.
- 22.
Burke, ‘Frontiers of the Comic’, 63.
- 23.
These comments are reproduced in Ann Marie Borys’s Vincenzo Scamozzi and the Chorography of Early Modern Architecture, 2–4.
- 24.
This anecdote is examined in further detail throughout Minamino, Fabricated Laughter.
- 25.
Rousse, ‘Le pouvoir royal et le théâtre des farces’, 183–84.
- 26.
Giraldi Cinzio, Discorsi intorno, 35r. Cited in Burke, ‘Frontiers of the Comic’, 69.
- 27.
Castiglione, Il Cortegiano, 2:89, 201–2.
- 28.
Wilson, Arte of rhetorique, 275. Wilson’s treatise is discussed in further detail in Lake Prescott, ‘Humour and satire in the Renaissance’, 285.
- 29.
More, The Answer to a Poisoned Book, 8. Cited in Lake Prescott, ‘Humour and satire in the Renaissance’, 287.
- 30.
Burke, ‘Frontiers of the Comic’, 68.
- 31.
Della Casa, Galateo, 31–32.
- 32.
Cicero, De Oratore, 2:155. Translation by May and Wisse.
- 33.
Ibid., 2:187.
- 34.
Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, 6:3, 65. Translation by Russell.
- 35.
This satire was a collaborative effort by Nicolas Rapin, Florent Chrestien, Jean Passerat and Pierre Pithou. Martial Martin’s 2010 edition of the Satyre is the most up to date.
- 36.
As Indira Ghose has detailed, in the Nicomachean Ethics (4:8, 247) Aristotle points out that ‘the jesting of a gentleman differs from that of a person of servile nature, as does that of an educated from that of an uneducated man’. Ghose, Shakespeare and Laughter, 60. Translation of Aristotle by Rackham.
- 37.
Castiglione, Il Cortegiano, 2:41, 147.
- 38.
Castiglione, Il Cortegiano, 2:20, 118–19.
- 39.
The poet Jean-Baptiste de Santeuil (1630–1697) first used this term when describing the commedia dell’arte character Arlecchino.
- 40.
Peletier, L’Art poétique, 70v.
- 41.
Minturno, De Poeta, 280.
- 42.
Trissino, Della Poetica, 2:30v. Cited in Herrick, French Comic Theory, 83–84.
- 43.
Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel (1681), preface.
- 44.
Henri Bergson, as John Parkin has neatly summarised, has more recently sought to show that ‘laughter must be derisive and corrective in its function, scorning and punishing the aberrant comic figure’. Parkin, French Humour, Introduction, 6.
- 45.
Terence, Eunuchus, 4:4, 87v.
- 46.
Maggi, De Ridiculis, 304–5.
- 47.
More, Latin Poems, 233.
- 48.
This possibility is explored in McCutcheon, ‘Laughter and Humanism’, 229.
- 49.
Cortesi, ‘De cardinalatu’, in his Ad Episcopum, 2:9. Cited in Bowen, ‘Rire est le propre de l’homme’, 186.
- 50.
Erasmus, The Praise of Folly, 18. Translation by Wilson.
- 51.
Castiglione, Il Cortegiano, 2:45, 152.
- 52.
Ghose, Shakespeare and Laughter, 106.
- 53.
This idea is assessed in detail in Derrin, ‘Self-Referring Deformities’, 265.
- 54.
Hindley, ‘Pierre Gringore, Satire and Carnival’, 188. Mikhail Bakhtin has of course assessed the community-building function of the carnival in his Rabelais and his World, although a number of scholars have instead shown the early modern carnival to be a form of oppression, with lower classes exchanging temporary freedom for obedience at all other times. See for example Beard, Laughter in Ancient Rome, 39.
- 55.
Critchley, On Humour, 67–68.
- 56.
See for example Machiavelli’s La Mandragola, 1:1.
- 57.
Castelvetro, Poetica d’Aristotele vulgarizzata, 92–98. Cited in Herrick, French Comic Theory, 53.
- 58.
Valleriola, Enarrationum medicinalium libri sex, 218. Cited in Ménager, La Renaissance et le Rire, 32.
- 59.
Roy, Une culture de l’équivoque.
- 60.
Trissino, Della Poetica, 2:39v. Cited in Herrick, French Comic Theory, 41.
- 61.
Maggi, De Ridiculis, 306.
- 62.
Ibid., 305. Cited in Herrick, French Comic Theory, 45.
- 63.
Castiglione, Il Cortegiano, 2:47, 153.
- 64.
Fracastoro, De sympathia, fol. 23v. Also cited in Skinner, ‘Why Laughing Mattered’, 442.
- 65.
Peacham, Garden of Eloquence, 34. Also cited in Skinner, ‘Why Laughing Mattered’, 442.
- 66.
Joubert, Traité du Ris, 1:3, 33. Joubert’s examination of the pun is discussed at greater length in De Rocher, Rabelais’s Laughters and Joubert’s Traité du Ris, 13.
- 67.
Manningham, Diary, 40.
- 68.
Ficino, Letters, 4:66, 67. Translation by London School. Cited in O’Rourke Boyle, ‘Gracious Laughter’, 712.
- 69.
Fracastoro, De sympathia, fol. 23v. Also cited in Skinner, ‘Why Laughing Mattered’, 421 and 435.
- 70.
These etymologies are discussed in further detail in Critchley, On Humour, 108.
- 71.
Perkins, Foundation of Christian Religion, A2. Also cited in Ghose, Shakespeare and Laughter, 109.
- 72.
Le Goff, ‘Laughter in the Middle Ages’, 45.
- 73.
Cited in Burke, ‘Popular Culture’, 202.
- 74.
Wilson, Arte of Rhetorique, 75.
- 75.
Cited in Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, 188.
- 76.
Castiglione, Il Cortegiano, 2:41, 147.
- 77.
Ménager, La Renaissance et le Rire, 8.
- 78.
Joubert. Traité du Ris, 3:14, 330.
- 79.
Ibid., 3:14, 335.
- 80.
Ménager, La Renaissance et le Rire, 8.
- 81.
Nancel, Analogia microcosmi ad macrocosmum, III, ‘De risu’, 2220. Many of Nancel’s theories were also inspired by Pierre de la Ramée, who had been principal of the Collège de Presles, where Nancel undertook his training.
- 82.
Mancini, De Risu, 78v.
- 83.
Riccoboni, Poetica Aristotelis, 157. Cited in Herrick, French Comic Theory, 52. Translation by Herrick.
- 84.
Castiglione, Il Cortegiano, 2:45, 152.
- 85.
Scogan, Scoggin’s Jests, 46.
- 86.
Joubert recounts the story of a patient being cured after laughing at a monkey jumping up on a table and drinking (and subsequently throwing away) the medicine that was originally intended for the patient. He describes the monkey as being an ‘animal de soy ridicule’ (a laughable animal in itself). Joubert, Traité du Ris, 3:14, 335.
- 87.
See Nash, ‘Philopolites’, in Miscellanea, sig. nn 3. This anecdote is also cited in Prescott, ‘Humour and Satire’, 285.
- 88.
Spencer, Essays Scientific, 200.
- 89.
Erasmus, The Collected Works of Erasmus, 33:312. Translation by Mynors. Cited in O’Rourke Boyle, ‘Gracious Laughter’, 717.
- 90.
Erasmus, De ratione concionandi, 5:964, 761.
- 91.
Lacroix, ‘Esquisse d’une signification’, 208.
- 92.
Cited in Ménager, La Renaissance et le Rire, 154.
- 93.
Baïf, Les mimes, enseignements, et proverbes, 158.
- 94.
Joubert, Traité du Ris, 2:4, 164.
- 95.
Ibid., 1:25, 1:26, 1:27, 125–34.
- 96.
Ibid., 1:27, 132.
- 97.
Maggi, De Ridiculis, 304. Cited in De Rocher, Rabelais’s Laughters and Joubert’s Traité du Ris, 16.
- 98.
Joubert, Traité du Ris, 1:2, 17. Many others, such as Maggi (De Ridiculis, 302) iterated that no pity must be felt for the object of laughter. Michael Screech discusses the role of pity in laughter at length in his Laughter at the Foot of the Cross, 56–60.
- 99.
Bright, Treatise of Melancholie, 14.
- 100.
Ibid., 14.
- 101.
Ibid., 14.
Bibliography
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by Harris Rackham. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994.
Aristotle. Poetics. Translated by Stephen Halliwell. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995.
Baïf, Jean-Antoine de. Les mimes, enseignements, et proverbes. Edited by Jean Vignes. Geneva: Droz, 1992.
Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and his World. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2009.
Beard, Mary. Laughter in Ancient Rome: On Joking, Tickling, and Cracking Up. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2014.
Borys, Ann Marie. Vincenzo Scamozzi and the Chorography of Early Modern Architecture. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014.
Bowen, Barbara. ‘Rire est le propre de l’homme’. In Études rabelaisiennes 21, edited by Jean Céard and Jean-Claude Margolin, 184–203. Geneva: Droz, 1998.
Burke, Peter. ‘Frontiers of the Comic in Early Modern Italy, c. 1350–1750’. In A Cultural History of Humour, edited by Jan Bremmer and Herman Roodenburg, 61–75. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997.
Burton, Robert. Anatomy of Melancholy. Oxford: John Lichfield and James Short, 1621.
Castelvetro, Lodovico. Poetica d’Aristotele vulgarizzata. Vienna: Gaspar Steinhofer, 1570.
Castiglione, Baldassare. II Cortegiano. Turin: Einaudi, 1965.
Chambers, Edmund. The Elizabethan Stage. Vol. 4. Oxford: Clarendon, 1923.
Chrestien, Florent, Nicolas Rapin, Jean Passerat and Pierre Pithou. Satyre menippée. Edited by Martial Martin. Saint-Étienne: Presses Universitaires Saint-Étienne, 2010.
Cicero. De Oratore. Edited and translated by James May and Jakob Wisse. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
Cortesi, Paolo. Ad Episcopum Ubris Romae Sanctiss. Rome: Castro Cortesio, 1510.
Critchley, Simon. On Humour: Thinking in Action. London: Routledge, 2002.
Della Casa, Giovanni. Galateo. Piacenza: Iacopo and Bernardo Giunti, 1561.
De Rocher, Gregory. Rabelais’s Laughters and Joubert’s Traité du Ris. Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1979.
Derrin, Daniel. ‘Self-Referring Deformities: Humour in Early Modern Sermon Literature’. Literature and Theology 32, no. 3 (2018): 255–69.
Dryden, John. Absalom and Achitophel. Hamden: Archon Books, 1984.
Eamon, William. Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996.
Erasmus, Desiderius. Erasmus, Spiritualia and Pastoralia: Exomologesis and Ecclesiastes: Ecclesiastes sive de ratione concionandi. Edited by Frederick McGinness, Michael Heath, and James Butrica. Translated by James Butrica. Toronto: University of Toronoto Press, 2015.
Erasmus, Desiderius. The Collected Works of Erasmus. Vol. 33. Translated by Roger Aubrey Baskervile Mynors. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991.
Erasmus, Desiderius. The Praise of Folly. Translated by John Wilson. New York: Barnes and Noble, 2004.
Ficino, Marsilio. The Letters of Marsilio Ficino. Vol. 1. Edited and translated by London School. London: Shepheard-Walwyn, 1975.
Fracastoro, Girolamo. De sympathia & antipathia rerum. Venice: Heirs of Lucantonio Giunta, 1546.
Ghose, Indira. Shakespeare and Laughter: A Cultural History. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011.
Giraldi Cinzio, Giovambattista. Discorsi intorno a quello che si conviene a giovane mobile nel servire un gran principe. Pavia: Bartoli, 1565.
Hellinga, Lotte. Texts in Transit: Manuscript to Proof and Print in the Fifteenth Century. Leiden: Brill, 2014.
Herrick, Marvin. French Comic Theory in the Sixteenth Century. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1964.
Hindley, Alan. ‘Pierre Gringore, Satire and Carnival: Le Jeu du Prince des Sotz et de Mère Sotte’. In Court and Humour in the French Renaissance: Essays in Honour of Professor Pauline Smith, edited by Sarah Alyn Stacey, 193–98. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2009.
Joubert, Laurent. Traité du Ris contenant son essance, ses causes, et mervelheus effais, curieusement recerchés, raisonnés et observés par Laurens Joubert. Paris: Nicolas Cheseau, 1579.
Lacroix, Jacques. ‘Esquisse d’une signification du rire chez les novellistes italiens des XVIIIe, XIVe et XVe siècles’. In Le rire au moyen âge dans la littérature et dans les arts: actes du colloque international des 17, 18, et 19 novembre 1988, edited by Thérèse Bouché and Hélène Charpentier, 201–25. Bordeaux: Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, 1990.
Lake Prescott, Anne. ‘Humour and satire in the Renaissance’. In The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, Vol. 3, The Renaissance, edited by Glyn Norton, 284–91. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Le Goff, Jacques. ‘Laughter in the Middle Ages’. In A Cultural History of Humour, edited by Jan Bremmer and Herman Roodenburg, 40–53. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997.
Machiavelli, Niccolò. Opere complete di Niccolò Machiavelli. Florence: Borghi e Compagni, 1833.
Maggi, Vincenzo. In Aristoteles librum de poetica communes explanationes. Venice: Vincenzo Valgrisi, 1550.
Mancini, Celso. De somniis, ac synesi per somnia De risu, ac ridiculis. De synaugia Platonica. Ferrara: Victorium Baldinum, 1591.
Manningham, John. John Manningham, of the Middle Temple, and of Bradbourne, Kent, Barrister-at-Law, 1602–1603. London: J. B. Nicholls and Sons, 1868.
McCutcheon, Elizabeth. ‘Laughter and Humanism: Unity and Diversity in Thomas More’s Epigrammata’. Moreana 52, no. 201–2 (2015): 221–33.
Ménager, Daniel. La Renaissance et le Rire. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1995.
Minamino, Hiroyuki. ‘Fabricated Laughter: Wit and Humor in Renaissance Music’. Discoveries: South-Central Renaissance Conference News and Notes 18, no. 1 (Spring 2001), 1–12.
Minturno, Antonio. De poeta. Venice: Franceso Rampazzetto, 1559.
More, Thomas. Epigrammata clarissimi dissertissimique viri Thomae Mori, pleraque e Graecis versa. Basel: Johann Froben, 1520.
More, Thomas. The Answer to a Poisoned Book. Edited by Stephen Merriam Foley and Clarence Miller. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985.
More, Thomas. The Complete Works of St. Thomas More. Vol. 3. Edited by Clarence Miller, Leicester Bradner, Charles A. Lynch, and Revilo P. Oliver. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984.
Nancel, Nicolas de. Analogia microcosmi ad macrocosmum. Paris: Jacques de Nancel, 1611.
Nash, Thomas. Miscellanea, or a fourefold way to a happie life. London: J. Dawson, 1639.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil. Translated by Richard Hollingdale. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990.
O’Rourke Boyle, Marjorie. ‘Gracious Laughter: Marsilio Ficino’s Anthropology’. Renaissance Quarterly 52, no. 3 (1999): 712–41.
Parkin, John., ed. French Humour: papers based on a Colloquium held in the French department of the Unievrsity of Bristol, November 30th 1996. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999.
Peacham, Henry. The Garden of Eloquence. London: H. Jackson, 1577.
Pelletier du Mans, Jacques. L’Art poétique. Lyon: Jean de Tournes, 1555.
Perkins, William. Foundation of Christian Religion Gathered into Six Principles. London: Christopher Barker, 1591.
Plato. Philebus, Edited and translated by Justin Gosling. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975.
Quintilian. Institutio Oratoria, Vol. 6. Edited and translated by Donald Russell. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.
Rabelais, François. Gargantua. Paris: Gallimard, 1969.
Riccoboni, Antonio. Poetica Aristotelis ab Antonio Riccobono latine conversa. Padua: Paolo Meietti, 1587.
Robertson, Clare. Il Gran Cardinale: Alessandro Farnese, Great Patron of the Arts. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.
Rousse, Michel. ‘Le pouvoir royal et le théâtre des farces’. In Le pouvoir monarchique et ses supports idéologiques, edited by Jean Dufournet, Adeline Fiorato, and Augustin Redondo, 185–97. Paris: Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1990.
Roy, Bruno. Une culture de l’équivoque. Montreal: Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 1992.
Scogan, John. Scoggin’s Jests: Full of Witty Mirth, and Pleasant Shifts; Done by Him in France and Other Places, being a Preservative against Melancholy. Edited by Andrew Boord and William Carew Hazlitt. London: Willis and Sotheran, 1864.
Screech, Michael. Laughter at the Foot of the Cross. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015.
Skinner, Quentin. ‘Why Laughing Mattered in the Renaissance: The Second Henry Tudor Memorial Lecture’. History of Political Thought 22, no. 3 (2001): 418–47.
Sidney, Philip. The Prose works of Sir Philip Sidney. Edited by Albert Feuillerat. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962.
Spencer, Herbert. Essays Scientific, Political, and Speculative. Vol. 1. London: Williams and Norgate, 1868.
Spingarn, Joel Elias. A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1899.
Terence. P. Terentii Afri Comoediae Sex, Accedunt Interpretes Vetustioresm Aelius Donatus, Eugraphius, Calphurnius. Vol. 1. The Hague: Peter Gosse, 1726.
Trissino, Gian Giorgio. La quinta e la sesta diuisione della poetica del Trissino. Venice: Andrea Arrivabene, 1563.
Valleriola, Francisco. Enarrationum medicinalium libri sex. Venice: Baldassare Costantino, 1555.
Wiles, David. Shakespeare’s Clown: Actor and Text in the Elizabethan Playhouse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Wiley, William. The Early Public Theatre in France. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995.
Wilson, Thomas. Arte of rhetorique. London: Richard Grafton, 1553.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Rayfield, L. (2020). Rewriting Laughter in Early Modern Europe. 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_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56646-3_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-56645-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-56646-3
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)