Thomas Wilson: Art of Rhetoric (1553)

While Renaissance courtiers like Baldesar Castiglione and Bernardo Dovizi believe in the merrymaking rhetoric of humor which enhances one’s charisma and sophistication, middle-class Protestants like Thomas Wilson believe that humor, as a rhetorical device, promotes one’s social mobility.




(portrait taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Wilson_(rhetorician). Entry: "Thomas Wilson (rhetorician)." December 10, 2010.)

Castiglione, Dovizi, and Wilson, all three share an anxiety to contain humor within limits and rules as to make sure it stays decent and pleasant without resorting to stupidity or scurrility (Figueroa-Dorrego & Larkin-Galiñanes 191-194). One should never "go beyond due bounds" (194):

Therefore, no such should be taunted, or jested withal that either are notable evil livers, and heinous offenders, or else are pitiful caitiffs, and wretched beggars. For everyone thinketh it a better and a meeter deed to punish naughty packs than to scoff at their evil demeanour. And as for wretched souls or poor bodies, none can bear to have them mocked, but think rather that they should be pitied, except they foolishly vaunt themselves. Again, none such should be made any laughing stocks that either are honest of behaviour, or else are generally well beloved. As for other, we may be bold to talk with them and make such game and pastime as their good wits shall give good cause. But yet this one thing, we had need ever to take with us, that in all our jesting we keep a mean, wherein not only it is meet to avoid all gross bourding, and alehouse jesting, but also to eschew all foolish talk and ruffin manners such as no honest ears can once abide, nor yet any witty man can like well or allow. (Arte of Rhetorique Book II)

This anxiety is indeed a Classical concern haunting humoristic discourse since Cicero or even earlier. It is also the fourth issue dealt with in Wilson's Art of Rhetoric on humor (i.e. Book II). Wilson in his book suggests humor be discussed in terms of five issues: the nature of humor, which he argues undefinable; the cause of humor, which he includes deformity, foolishness, and others' evil behavior; the appropriateness of humor as an oratory device, which he confirms; the fourth, as stated above, limits of humor, which he finds necessary to reiterate; the application of humor, which he examines through various methods that make people laugh.

The most particular and original viewpoint of Wilson is that, while his anxiety is "Classical," his stress on limits is courtly, his standpoint is that of the middle class. The highly hierarchized discourse of humor begins to utter a commoner's voice which was foreign to it.