Studies in jocular literature

One of the Anglo-Saxon kings gave the manor of Walworth to his jester Nithardus; and we have all heard how the magnificent benefaction of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, subsequentl...

ORIGIN OF THIS CLASS OF LITERATURE, AND ITS DEPENDENCE ON THE CONDITIONS OF SOCIETY--JESTS BEFORE JEST-BOOKS--INFLUENCE OF THE ARTS OF WRITING AND PRINTING LONG SUBSEQUENT TO TH...

Literature and the Drama have been the most munificent contributors to our ANA. If the sayings reported of or by actors and authors were subtracted from the grand total, the res...

A justification for the present inquiry may be found, then, in the historical, biographical and literary interest with which it abounds, and in the multiplicity of aspects under...

To the same class of production as the _Deipnosophistæ_ belongs the _Attic Nights_ of Aulus Gellius. The information which the latter affords is kindred in scope and character;...

The Greek anthology offers to our view, in the main, a body of national sentiment and local costume. The witticisms or smart turns are generally so much a part of the life of th...

The literary formulation of the Jest, though it seems to be a matter which should go without saying, is, on the contrary, an aspect of the inquiry which presents itself least of...

The sophistication of anecdotes is undertaken for the sake of constructing fresh material for the entertainment of the general reader without resorting to original sources. It i...

A singular _lusus artis_ is the marred anecdote, of which the most familiar specimen is the threadbare story of Goldsmith and the stale greens. But this was a very old Joe, and...

But it must not be supposed that those who have interested themselves in the manufacture of these agreeable diversions made any rule of waiting for the objects of appropriation...

The normal jest-book limits itself to stories of the ordinary jocular cast relative to incidents either of the current or past time. Neither the compiler nor the peruser, as a r...

The influence of Erasmus, More, and a few of their illustrious contemporaries, at the revival of learning, contributed a good deal to make extracts from the ancient writers popu...

There is, however, a second hypothesis bearing on the parentage of the _Tales_. In the _Interlude of the Four Elements_, which came from the same press a few years before, there...

But there is a second work which, in point of date and character, is sufficiently near to that which we have just quitted to warrant a conclusion that the editor had in its prod...

Leaving behind us these two admirable productions, we encounter an interesting group of compilations, which differ essentially from them in structure and treatment. They constit...

arras, and his pockets are turned out, disclosing a tavern account, in which the charge for sack is the principal item, and for bread only a halfpenny is set down; whereupon Pri...

It was not till the Greeks and Romans had arrived at an advanced stage of civilisation that scope was afforded to the class of writers of whom we are accustomed to regard Athenæ...

The taste for these _Analecta_ grew with the supply. They proved popular and easy reading, and did not exact much reflection on the part of the peruser or a large amount of lite...

Possibly it might be more correct to regard _Joe Miller’s Jests_ as marking a new era in this branch of literature and department of ingenuity than as a work possessing pretensi...

Having now dealt at reasonable length with those points of view which have reference to the sophistication and affiliation of Jests, let us proceed to regard this highly fruitfu...

Besides these two repertories, the _Merry Tales of Skelton_ contain a racy and diverting account of a trick played by the poet on a Kendal man, with whom he was riding from Oxfo...