Speaking of jokes, I was reading about Renaissance historiography today and I came across this little gem. It's a joke by Francesco Patrizi (1529-97), who was the Dane Cook of the Renaissance, and it goes like this:
Q: What would you call the writer who told you about effects without looking for any causes?
A: A historian.
Cue laughter as endless and pure as that of the YouTube baby; the laughter of men and women all across the Renaissance.
Thinking about old-timey humor often makes me believe the Enlightenment analogy of national history to the progress of a human from infancy to mature adulthood. But then I think of Dane Cook and Robin Williams and my beautiful narrative falls apart. It's like Dane Cook:humor::shocking and unprecedented violence of WWI-Holocaust:history.
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1 comment:
Liz, the joke goes:
Q: What do you call...?
A: A historian
Farmer: It's an automatic milking machine and it won't stop til it gets 20 GALLONS!!!
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