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I've just been reading an interesting review/essay by Mary Beard in the most recent New York Review of Books called "Isn't it funny?" The piece reviews a couple of new books about humor through the ages, both written and iconographic. I think everyone agrees that what we think is funny is hugely determined by culture, but Beard gives quite an example of that: apparently a carving on a Roman victory column of a soldier tearing a child from his captive mother's arms was meant "as a joke." Boy, those Romans were tough.
On the other hand, some situational jokes are pretty universal across the millennia. She gives an example, apparently the only one from the Roman world in which "we can follow in detail the story of a laugh, and share something of its physical experience." It describes a bunch of Senators watching Commodus (Marcus Aurelus's pathetically evil son) demonstrating his bravery in the arena by cutting the head off an ostrich. One of them, Dio, describes his emotions:
"He came up to where we were sitting, carrying the head in his left hand and in his right hand holding up his bloody sword. He spoke not a word, yet he wagged his head with a grin, indicating that he would treat us in the same way. And many would indeed have perished by the sword on the spot, for laughing at him (for it was laughter rather than indignation that overcame us), if I had not chewed some laurel leaves, which I got from my garland, myself, and persuaded the others who were sitting near me to do the same, so that in the steady movement of our jaws we might conceal the fact that we were laughing."
Beard continues:
"Whatever theory of laughter we choose to adopt, the combination of fear, embarrassment, and almost irrepressible giggles is one that must be recognized by almost everyone, even across all those centuries. We can feel for, and with, Dio. We all have at some time in our lives bitten on the modern equivalent of laurel wreaths."
Yet in spite of a couple of centuries and language, most of us still think Rabelais (Gargantua and Pantagruel) and Sterne (Tristram Shandy) are funny. So that's been pretty constant.
On the other hand, some situational jokes are pretty universal across the millennia. She gives an example, apparently the only one from the Roman world in which "we can follow in detail the story of a laugh, and share something of its physical experience." It describes a bunch of Senators watching Commodus (Marcus Aurelus's pathetically evil son) demonstrating his bravery in the arena by cutting the head off an ostrich. One of them, Dio, describes his emotions:
"He came up to where we were sitting, carrying the head in his left hand and in his right hand holding up his bloody sword. He spoke not a word, yet he wagged his head with a grin, indicating that he would treat us in the same way. And many would indeed have perished by the sword on the spot, for laughing at him (for it was laughter rather than indignation that overcame us), if I had not chewed some laurel leaves, which I got from my garland, myself, and persuaded the others who were sitting near me to do the same, so that in the steady movement of our jaws we might conceal the fact that we were laughing."
Beard continues:
"Whatever theory of laughter we choose to adopt, the combination of fear, embarrassment, and almost irrepressible giggles is one that must be recognized by almost everyone, even across all those centuries. We can feel for, and with, Dio. We all have at some time in our lives bitten on the modern equivalent of laurel wreaths."
Yet in spite of a couple of centuries and language, most of us still think Rabelais (Gargantua and Pantagruel) and Sterne (Tristram Shandy) are funny. So that's been pretty constant.