ANCIENT COMEDY

AND SATIRE

Ancient Humor

• Philogelos = The Lover of laughter– 5th AD– “Hierocles” and

“Pelagrius”– Hierocles 5th century

philosopher flogged for paganism

Ancient Jokes

• Barber shop– Barber: “How should I cut your hair?”– Customer: “In silence”

Egghead series

• There were two twin brother, one of whom died. On bumping into the survivor, the egghead asked:– “Was it you who died, or was it your brother?”

• A man complained to an egghead…– “That slave you sold me has died,”.– “Well, I swear by all the gods, he never did

anything like that when I owned him.”

One of the world's greatest scientists…

• took a train. When the conductor came, he was unable to find his ticket. The conductor said, "Take it easy. You'll find it.” When the conductor returned, the professor still couldn't find the ticket. The conductor, recognizing the famous scientist, said, "I'm sure you bought a ticket. Forget about it.""You're very kind," the professor said, "but I must find it, otherwise I won't know where to get off."

Another contemporary egghead joke

• A very absent-minded professor entered a crowded bus, with no available seats. Suddenly a little girl raised from her seat and offered it to the professor. He was astonished and said to her:

• - You are a very good girl, what's your name?

• - My name is Eve, daddy ...

Fool

• A fool, who was involved in a trial heard that the fairest judges are in Hades.

• So he hanged himself.

Misogynist

• A misogynist stood in the market and advertised that his wife was on sale—without tax.

• “How come?” he was asked.

• “This way I can be sure that they will confiscate her.“

Contemporary

• A woman told her friend:

• For eighteen years my husband and I were the happiest people in the world!

• Then we met.

Horny women 1

• A man with two horny women on his hands said to his slaves: “Give one of them some wine and screw the other”

• The women replied in unison: “I am not thirsty.”

Horny women 2

• A man to his young wife:

• “What shall we do, eat or make love?”

• “Whichever you like; there is no bread”

American, 1950-ies

• An impecunious couple married for love. One day there is nothing for breakfast in the morning, so they make love on the kitchen table; they do the same when the husband comes home for lunch. In the evening, the famished husband finds his wife on the kitchen floor, her feet up on the oven door. “What are you doing?” he asks. “Just warming up your supper, darling.”

The wag

• “I had your wife for nothing,” someone boasted to a wag

• “More fool you; I have to have the ugly bitch; you don’t.”

HUMO(U)R

• Ca. 100 theories used in– Biology– Psychology– Cognitive science– Anthropology– Linguistics– Literary Criticism

TYPES OF THEORIES

• Superiority (Plato & Aristotle)

• Relief (Freud)

• Incongruity (Bergson)

Superiority

• Humor depends on the feeling of superiority regarding the object of the joke.

• We laugh at someone who slipped on a banana peel because we did not slip and feel good about it.

Example of a joke based on superiority

• From LaughLabco.uk

• A woman goes into a cafe with a duck. She puts the duck on a stool and sits next to it. The waiter comes over and says: Hey! That's the ugliest pig that I have ever seen.The woman says: It’s a duck, not a pig. And the Waiter says: I was talking to the duck.

Plato

• Amusement depends on a "mixture of pleasure [the subject’s] and pain [the object’s]”

• The object needs to be weak and ignorant to provoke these feelings

Aristotle

• The audience of a comedy looks down upon its characters as “inferior" to them.

• The ridicule is a subcategory the ugly, something distorted but not quite painful (Poetics, sections 3 and 7).

• Wit = insolence, abuse

Cicero

• Humor is about saying something offensive in an inoffensive manner

Relief

• When we laugh in situations in which we expected to feel some emotion, but—due to some semantic or cognitive twist—we are spared that emotion.

Freud

• Three different sources of laughter – Joking

• the energy that would have been used to repress sexual and hostile feelings is saved and can be released in laughter

– The comic• cognitive energy instead of being used to solve an

intellectual challenge is left over and can be released

– Humor• what might have been an emotion provoking situation

turns out to be something we should treat non-seriously

A Freudian joke

• A royal VIP making a tour of the provinces notices a peasant in the crowd who bears an uncanny resemblance to his own exalted person. He calls him and asks: “My good man, was your mother at one time in service at the Palace?”

• “No, your Highness, but my father was.”

Incongruence

• Humor is born out of mismatch (incongruity) between two or more components

• We laugh when we are surprised to find things “out of place”

Examples

• Two fish in a tank. One turns to the other and says: Do you know how to drive this? (from Laugh Lab)

Aristotle and Cicero

• We laugh when we expect something, but something else happens

Bergson

• The source of humor is the "mechanical encrusted upon the living"

• “The comic does not exist outside of what is strictly human.”

A contemporary modification

• Susan Purdie, 1993

• We all are born to live in a “symbolic order” (Jacques Lacan)

• We laugh when this order is challenged

• Since this order depends on society, humor changes in time

But …

• Philogelos: “The fool broke wind when sharing his bed with a deaf man; when the latter complained, the fool was quite surprised: Come on, how could you hear it? You are supposed to be deaf!”

• Contemporary (elementary school): “Why do farts smell?” “So that deaf people can enjoy them.”

http://laughlab.co.uk/

• RATED THE FUNNIEST JOKE:• Two hunters are out in the woods when one of

them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy whips out his phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps, "My friend is dead! What can I do?". The operator says "Calm down. I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead." There is a silence, then a shot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says "OK, now what?"

Why did the chicken cross the road?

• BILL GATES: I have just released eChicken2008, which will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents, and balance your check book. internet Explorer is an integral part of the Chicken...

• BILL CLINTON: I did not cross the road with THAT chicken! What is your definition of chicken?

Why did the chicken cross the road?

• ERNEST HEMINGWAY: To die in the rain. Alone.• COLONEL SANDERS: Did I miss one? Where did that

sucker go?• DR SEUSS: Did the chicken cross the road? Did he

cross it with a toad?Yes, the chicken crossed the road,But why it crossed I've not been told.

• GEORGE W. BUSH: We don't really care why the chicken crossed the road. We just want to know if the chicken is on our side of the road, or not. The chicken is either against us, or for us. There is no middle ground here.

Goals

• Study ancient Greece and Rome through ritual and literary manifestations of humor– Greek ritual– Greek Old comedy– Roman Ritual– Roman comedy– Roman Satire– Reception of ancient comedy