The Humour of Italy

For a Victorian reader, this collection opened a window onto a Mediterranean wit they'd only guessed at. Italian humor, the compiler argues, moves on a spectrum from broad farce to the most subtle drollery, and both registers reveal something essential about the Italian character. Here you'll find Calandrino, the guileless painter easily fooled by his friends into searching for imaginary stones that make one invisible, a comic masterpiece of credulous simplicity. There is the clever miller who turns the tables on a cruel lord, and Dante himself, appearing to humorously reprimand a blacksmith who took his poetry far too literally. These are not mere diversionary tales. They are acts of social retribution, where wit becomes the weapon of the common person against pretension and power. This is Italian humor as survival mechanism, as cultural identity, as the people's secret commentary on the great and small tyrants of their world.