I have to admit, I was unconvinced by the Classics=humor article. Maybe I'm imparting too strong of an argument to the article than was really intended; and of course I admit the existence of some humor in every classic, humor in some form or another is present in almost every work. But if you take stuff like the Iliad or the Odyssey, ar…
I have to admit, I was unconvinced by the Classics=humor article. Maybe I'm imparting too strong of an argument to the article than was really intended; and of course I admit the existence of some humor in every classic, humor in some form or another is present in almost every work. But if you take stuff like the Iliad or the Odyssey, are people remembering them for Therisites's speech? Helen being compared to Artemis? I somehow doubt it. It's the much bolder more dramatic elements, the seances and the battle carnage, the howling rampage of revenge over the death of a best friend/possible lover and the homecoming to triumph after a decade at sea which is what draws in readers.
To put my own cast on it, I would say that the real classics need to make large numbers of people react to them viscerally, with a strong emotional imprint that is consistent across large audiences separated both temporally and culturally. They need to speak to something of that baseline human in all of us and draw it out. Humor can be an important element in that emotional cocktail, and any work without any humor to lighten it will probably drag to some extent, but I don't think it's the most important determinant.
I have to admit, I was unconvinced by the Classics=humor article. Maybe I'm imparting too strong of an argument to the article than was really intended; and of course I admit the existence of some humor in every classic, humor in some form or another is present in almost every work. But if you take stuff like the Iliad or the Odyssey, are people remembering them for Therisites's speech? Helen being compared to Artemis? I somehow doubt it. It's the much bolder more dramatic elements, the seances and the battle carnage, the howling rampage of revenge over the death of a best friend/possible lover and the homecoming to triumph after a decade at sea which is what draws in readers.
To put my own cast on it, I would say that the real classics need to make large numbers of people react to them viscerally, with a strong emotional imprint that is consistent across large audiences separated both temporally and culturally. They need to speak to something of that baseline human in all of us and draw it out. Humor can be an important element in that emotional cocktail, and any work without any humor to lighten it will probably drag to some extent, but I don't think it's the most important determinant.