jest book

The oldest surviving collection of jokes is the Byzantine Philogelos from the first millennium.G. Legman, Rationale of the Dirty Joke (1973) Vol 1 p. 25 In Western Europe, the medieval fabliauB. Ford ed., The Age of Shakespeare (1973) p. 126 and the Arab/Italian novellaG. Legman, Rationale of the Dirty Joke (1973) Vol 1 p. 26

built up a large body of humorous tales; but it was only with the Facetiae of Poggio (1451) that the anecdote first appears rendered down into joke form (with prominent punchline) in an early modern collection.G. Legman, Rationale of the Dirty Joke (1973) Vol 1 p. 37

Like his immediate successors Heinrich Bebel and Girolamo Morlini, Poggio translated his folk material from their original language into Latin, the universal European language of the time.G. Legman, Rationale of the Dirty Joke (1973) Vol 1 p. 25 From such universal collections, developed the particular vernacular jestbooks of the various European countries in the sixteenth century.[http://www.bartleby.com/213/0509.html Jest books]

Tudor and Stuart jest books were typically anonymous collections of individual jests in English,Linda Woodbridge, Vagrancy, Homelessness and English Renaissance Literature (2001) p. 291 a mix of verse and prose perhaps more comparable to the latter-day magazine than to a normal book.B. Ford ed., The Age of Shakespeare (1973) p. 126 Some, however (following a German model), did attempt to link their jokes into a picaresque sort of narrative around one, often roguish hero, as with Richard Tarlton.Linda Woodbridge, Vagrancy, Homelessness and English Renaissance Literature (2001) p. 293 Jest books took a generally mocking tone,B. Ford ed., The Age of Shakespeare (1973) p. 72 with civility, and social superiors like the 'stupid scholar' as favourite targets.G. Legman, Rationale of the Dirty Joke (1973) Vol 1 p. 77

The low-life, realistic tone of the jest book, akin to coney-catching pamphlets, fed into the early English novels (or at least prose fiction) of writers like Thomas Nashe and Thomas Deloney.B. Ford ed., The Age of Shakespeare (1973) p. 73 and p. 126 Jestbooks also contributed to popular stage entertainment, through such dramatists as Marlowe and Shakespeare.B. Ford ed., The Age of Shakespeare (1973) p. 57 Playbooks and jestbooks were treated as forms of light entertainment, with jokes from the one being recycled in the other, and vice versa.M. Straznicky, The Book of the Play (2006) p. 39 and p. 58

Advances in printing meant that quantitatively jestbooks reached their greatest circulation in the 17th and 18th centuries; but qualitatively their contents was increasingly either a repetition of earlier publications or an artificial imitation of what had in the Elizabethan jest book been a genuine folk content.G. Legman, Rationale of the Dirty Joke (1973) Vol 1 p. 27 Bowdlerisation in the 19th century completed the fall of the English-language jest book from Elizabethan vitality to subsequent triviality.G. Legman, Rationale of the Dirty Joke (1973) Vol 1 p. 28

• French jestbooks were widely drawn on in the work of Rabelais.[http://www.bartleby.com/213/0509.html Jest books] Arguably at least, the French jestbook tradition survived unbowdlerised into the twentieth century.G. Legman, Rationale of the Dirty Joke (1973) Vol 1 p. 28 and p. 46
• Germany had a rich tradition of jestbooks, with Till Eulenspiegel as a prominent character.[https://books.google.com/books?id=n_M8AAAAIAAJ&dq=jestbooks+germany&pg=PA243 Jest books]
• The first American jest book was published in 1787, and thereafter the genre flourished for some half a century, before giving way to the twin influence of censorship and the rise of the comic almanac.F. Shuffleton, A Mixed Race (1993) p. 163

• Robert Armin
• Salcia Landmann
• Shakespeare's Jest Book

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• Joseph Fliesler, Anecdota Americana (1927)
• W. C. Hazlitt ed., Shakespeare Jestbooks 3vol (1864)

• [http://www.bartleby.com/214/1628.html Jestbooks (London)]

Category:Fiction forms

Category:Humour

Category:Jokes