Laughter, Jestbooks and Society in the Spanish Netherlands

224 Pages·1999·22.078 MB·English

by  Johan Verberckmoes (auth.)

LAUGHTER, JESTBOOKS AND SOCIETY IN
THE SPANISH NETHERLANDS
EARLY MODERN HISTORY: Society and Culture
General Editors: Rab Houston, Professor of Early Modern History,
University of St Andrews, Scotland, Edward Muir, Professor of History,
Northwestern University, Illinois, and Bob Scribner, sometime
Professor for the History of Western Christianity, Harvard Divinity
School, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
This series encompasses all aspects of early modern history from 1400 to
c. 1800. Broadly conceived to emphasize innovative work in social and
cultural history, it includes not only the traditional venues of British and
European history but also the Americas and other cultures around the
globe. The editors seek fresh and adventurous monographs, especially
those with a comparative and theoretical approach, from both new and
established scholars.
Titles include:
Samantha A. Meigs
THE REFORMATIONS IN IRELAND: Tradition and Confessionalism,
1400-1690
Craig Muldrew
THE ECONOMY OF OBLIGATION: The Culture of Credit and Social
Relations in Early Modern England
Niall 6 Ciosain
PRINT AND POPULAR CULTURE IN IRELAND, 1750-1850
lohan Verberckmoes
LAUGHTER, JESTBOOKS AND SOCIETY IN THE SPANISH
NETHERLANDS
Early Modern History: Society and Culture
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J
Laughter, estbooks and
Society in the Spanish
Netherlands
J ohan Verberckmoes
Lecturer
History Department
Catholic University of Leuven
Belgium
First published in Great Britain 1999 by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London
Companies and representatives throughout the world
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-349-27178-8 ISBN 978-1-349-27176-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-27176-4
First published in the United States of America 1999 by
ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC.,
Scholarly and Reference Division,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010
ISBN 978-0-312-21609-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Verberckmoes, Johan.
Laughter, jestbooks and society in the Spanish Netherlands I Johan
Verberckmoes.
p. em. -(Early modem history)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-312-21609-2 (cloth)
1. Dutch literature-1500-1800---History and criticism. 2. Dutch
wit and humor-History and criticism. 3. Popular literature
-Netherlands-History and criticism. 4. Dutch wit and humor,
Pictorial. 5. Netherlands-History-Wars oflndependence,
1556-1648. 6. Laughter-Social aspects-Netherlands. 7. Literature
and society-Netherlands. I. Title. II. Series.
PT5145.W58V47 1998
839.3'1709-dc21 98-17687
CIP
© Johan Verberckmoes 1999
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 7th edition 1999 978-0-333-66524-4
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made
without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with
written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and
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the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London WIP 9HE.
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to
criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and
sustained forest sources.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I
08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 ()() 99
For Ann
Contents
Preface ix
1
Introduction: Historical Laughter
1 Land of Cockaigne 8
A Laughing Emperor 10
Ulenspieghel 12
Fooling by Numbers 18
Guessing and Laughing 23
Printed Jests 26
The Social Circulation of Laughter 31
2 Laughter Embodied 38
Physiognomy and the Decorum of the Body 38
Smiling 42
Shaking 45
True and False Laughter 49
The Whims of the Laughing Body 53
3 A Cure for the Civilized 59
Chasing Melancholy 60
The Seriousness of Monkeys 63
Civilized Joking 67
Learning to Laugh 72
4 The Politics of Joking 83
The White God 85
1566 and All That 92
Vive les Gueux 96
Communities of Laughter 100
5 Entremets: Turning Bakhtin upside down 109
Bakhtin and the History of Laughter 109
Does Laughter have a History at All ? 114
viii Contents
6 Censoring Lies 122
Against Laughter 123
Against Comic Books 128
Against Bared Bottoms 132
7 Jestbooks in the Spanish Netherlands 139
Editions and Readers 139
Under Pressure 145
8 Counter Reformation Humour 154
Festivals and Households 155
Adulteresses and Cuckolds 159
Inns and Churches 163
Princes and Dwarfs 167
The Discipline of Laughter 172
Postscript: Hispanic Flemish Hotchpotch 181
Bibliography 186
Index 209
Preface
If laughter seems a proper subject for historical writing today, when I fIrst
started doing research on it in the middle of the 1980s few people were
concerned with it. Yet the times were ready for it then, and even more
today, as the history of mentalities has turned into historical
anthropology. What is crucial in this branch of cultural history is the
focus on the individual and his body as the intermediary and perpetrator
of cultural and social change in society. A thoughtless and ordinary
activity, or rather bodily action, as laughter is, is historical to the extent
that it unravels the secret ways in which such abstract notions as culture,
power, social distinction, education, civility, christian refonn and so on
appear and function in a society. In that sense I consider this book to
belong to a form of cultural history which is very conscious of the social
origins and orientations of cultural practices and ideas.
The fIrst, Dutch version of this book was presented as a doctoral
dissertation in the History Department of Leuven University, in the fall of
1993. Papers I read since then at conferences in Amsterdam, Prato,
London, Brussel and Leuven and the response I got from the respective
audiences, convinced me even more than in the original version that a
unifying approach starting from a certain defInition of comic and laughter
more distorted the historical laughter I retrieved from the sources than
actually giving it its rightful place in the history book. That is why the
different perspectives in this book are not all focussing on the same
question, rather to the contrary. Only by using a large variety of sources
and respecting the divergent questions they raise something can be told
about how in the Southern Netherlands under the Spanish Habsburgs
(more or less the territory of today's Belgium) and, more generally
speaking in early modem Europe, laughter was a part of culture and
society.
I do not intend to inflate trivial laughter to a phenomenon of fIrst
importance in early modem Europe, although retrieving one's subject
from oblivion and grandizing it to a key feature is a much preferred
rhetorical tric among historians. Laughter, however, is already by nature
omnipresent in society, today no less than in the middle ages, as I see it.
What makes it stand apart between 1500 and 1700 (what makes it
historical) are the many situations in which laughter was apparently
appropriate or simply taking place, some of which occasions are not in
any way provoking laughter today, let alone create humour.
x Preface
This last point may be illustrated by referring to one of the practical
jokes by my grandfather, which were definitely an important
autobiographical reason why I started studying laughter in the first place.
Once, on a hot summer day in the pre-computer era, my grandfather
spouted all his colleagues in the office wet with a fire-hose. Since then he
was nicknamed the squirt ("de spruit" in my native "Waasland" tongue).
In spurting anecdotes and explanations in this book I am only vaguely
mimicking his gesture of refreshing other people's minds and heads.
From the moment I started doing research on this topic under his
supervision until this book was fmished Professor Eddy Stols encouraged
me with advice, criticism and inspiration. His Brazilian flair made him
recognize historical laughter as part of the wonderful creativity of the
past. Many thanks to Eddy and his wife, Haydee Hokumura, for their
loyalty and warm friendship. The research for this book and the actual
writing was done in excellent conditions at Leuven University. Many
friends, colleagues and students shared their enthusiasm and knowledge
with me and I thank them all. I have benefitted greatly from the advice
and assistance of Professors Emiel Lamberts, Karel Porteman, Michel
Cloet, Reginald de Schryver, Hugo Soly, Herman Van der Wee and Jan
Roegiers. For the purpose of this book I rewrote in English the original
Dutch text, which was published in February 1998 as Schertsen,
schimpen en schateren. Geschiedenis van het lachen in de Zuidelijke
Nederlanden, zestiende en zeventiende eeuw (Nijmegen, SUN). For this
English edition chapters were rearranged, arguments refined and some
conclusions added, which makes that I consider this English version to be
the most complete. I am particularly grateful to the editors of this series
for giving me their confidence. Margaret Mary Malone was so
courageous and kind to correct my English where necessary; I thank her
for that. lowe special thanks to Herman Roodenburg and Rudolf Dekker,
who had discovered the potential of laughter for historical research before
me. They proved to be true friends and honest critics. Patricia Beersaerts
assisted me kindly and joyfully as ever in fmishing the book technically.
For everything they have done over the years lowe my parents loving
gratitude. My greatest source of inspiration has been and remains Ann.
She shared my pleasure in fmding old laughter and cheered me up when I
got tired of the jokes. I dedicate this book to Ann with all my heart.