Document Type
Article
Abstract
Many Elizabethan rhetoric and courtesy manuals offer jesting as a powerful rhetorical strategy for managing specific situations. Although highly pragmatic, the manuals' treatments of the subject imply a sociology of humor that classifies jests according to the broader social functions they serve: jests which preserve existing social relations and jests which disrupt, or even challenge, them. What eludes this classificatory scheme, however, are the properties of jesting itself. Jesting is always a flirtation with disorder and often serves conservative and disruptive functions simultaneously. If this is so, then the manuals' discussions of jesting replay (and magnify) ambiguities and anxieties characteristic of Elizabethan culture and Elizabethan rhetorical and courtesy theory in general.
Publication Info
Published in Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, Volume 13, Issue 4, 2000, pages 429-455.
Holcomb, C. (2000). "A man in a painted garment": The social functions of jesting in Elizabethan rhetoric and courtesy manuals. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 13(4), 429-455. DOI: 10.1515/humr.2000.13.4.429
© 2000 Walter de Gruyter.
Rights
Holcomb, C. (2000). "A man in a painted garment": The social functions of jesting in Elizabethan rhetoric and courtesy manuals. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 13(4), 429-455. DOI: 10.1515/humr.2000.13.4.429
© 2000 Walter de Gruyter.