Great IdeasStories, art and words

Comedy and satire

Laughter that delights, and laughter that corrects.

The question

What makes us laugh, and what is laughter for? Can comedy make people better?

The stops on a time line 10 stops, from 405 BC to 1815. Each number is a stop below, placed at its year.
  1. 1 Aristophanes 405 BC
  2. 2 Aristotle 335 BC
  3. 3 Geoffrey Chaucer 1390
  4. 4 Desiderius Erasmus 1511
  5. 5 François Rabelais 1534
  6. 6 William Shakespeare 1595
  7. 7 Molière 1668
  8. 8 Jonathan Swift 1726
  9. 9 Voltaire 1759
  10. 10 Jane Austen 1815

How the books answer

Oldest first. Each stop is our own short summary of what the author argued; follow the link to the rung for the whole lesson.

  1. 425–388 BC

    Aristophanes, The Frogs

    Aristophanes wrote wild comedies full of jokes, singing frogs and flying beetles. He made fun of politicians, philosophers and poets by name. Behind the laughter, he gave Athens advice about peace and good sense.

    “Brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax! / Brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax!”

    Aristophanes, The Frogs. Translated by Benjamin Bickley Rogers (The Harvard Classics, vol. 8, P. F. Collier and Son, 1909). Project Gutenberg.

    Go to the rung: Aristophanes: The Comedies

  2. c. 335–322 BC

    Aristotle, Rhetoric and Poetics

    Aristotle says comedy shows people as worse than average, but in ways that are laughable rather than painful or harmful. A comic mask is ugly and twisted but causes no pain. His book on comedy is lost, but this short definition shaped later thinking.

    Go to the rung: Aristotle: Rhetoric and Poetics

  3. c. 1387–1400

    Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales

    Chaucer's pilgrims tell all kinds of tales, from noble romances to rowdy jokes. He laughs at a greedy pardoner and a vain monk with sly, gentle humor. Some tales are rude, so families usually read selections.

    Go to the rung: Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales

  4. 1511

    Desiderius Erasmus, The Praise of Folly

    Erasmus lets Folly herself give a speech praising foolishness. She mocks proud scholars, greedy officials and quarreling theologians. The joke turns serious at the end, praising the holy 'foolishness' of simple faith.

    Go to the rung: Erasmus: The Praise of Folly

  5. 1532–1564

    François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel

    Rabelais tells the adventures of giant kings with huge appetites and huge learning. His comedy is loud, silly and sometimes rude, but it mocks bad schools and stuffy officials. He says laughter is part of being human.

    “Because to laugh is proper to the man.”

    Rabelais, Gargantua, "Rabelais to the Reader". Translated by Sir Thomas Urquhart (Book I, London, 1653). Project Gutenberg.

    Go to the rung: Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel

  6. c. 1590–1602

    William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, and the other comedies

    In Shakespeare's comedies, lovers get mixed up, people wear disguises and fairies play tricks, but everything ends in marriage and celebration. The mischievous fairy Puck laughs at human foolishness. The plays are funny and also wise about love.

    “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”

    William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act III, scene 2 (Puck). (First printed in the First Folio, 1623). Project Gutenberg.

    Go to the rung: Shakespeare: The Comedies

  7. 1662–1673

    Molière, The School for Wives, Tartuffe, Don Juan, The Miser, The Would-Be Gentleman, The Would-Be Invalid

    Molière laughs at hypocrites, misers, snobs and people who think they are sick. In The Miser, Harpagon loves his money more than his children. Molière believed comedy could correct faults by making them ridiculous.

    “We must eat to live, and not live to eat.”

    Molière, The Miser, Act III, Scene V. Translated by Charles Heron Wall (The Dramatic Works of Molière, George Bell & Sons, 1876). Project Gutenberg.

    Go to the rung: Molière: The Comedies

  8. 1726

    Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels

    Swift's satire is sharper. Lilliputians go to war over which end to break an egg; scientists try to get sunlight out of cucumbers. He laughs to show how silly and proud people can be.

    Go to the rung: Swift: Gulliver's Travels

  9. 1759

    Voltaire, Candide

    Voltaire's Candide rushes from disaster to disaster while his teacher Pangloss insists all is for the best. The comedy is fast and biting. It makes readers laugh and then think hard about suffering and false comfort.

    Go to the rung: Voltaire: Candide

  10. 1815

    Jane Austen, Emma

    Austen's comedy is quiet: misunderstandings, matchmaking gone wrong and silly neighbors who talk too much. Emma's mistakes are funny because we see them coming. In the end the comedy teaches her, and us, to see more clearly.

    Go to the rung: Jane Austen: Emma

For young readers

Comedy is the art of making people laugh. Funny stories often have mix-ups, silly characters and happy endings.

Some comedy is just for fun, like a joke about a frog. Other comedy, called satire, pokes fun at people being proud or greedy, to help everyone see how silly it is. Write a funny short scene where two characters get mixed up!

Talk about it

  • What makes you laugh the hardest?
  • Rabelais says laughing is part of being human. Do animals laugh?
  • Is it okay to make fun of someone? When is it kind and when is it not?
  • Molière said comedy can fix bad habits. How?
  • What is the funniest story you know?

Where else on the site

Every rung tagged with this idea:

These pages are our own short synthesis, written for families. They were inspired by Mortimer J. Adler's Syntopicon, the index of great ideas in volumes 1 and 2 of Great Books of the Western World, but the questions, summaries and groupings are ours, not the Syntopicon's. Short excerpts come from public-domain translations, credited where they appear.

@teddyrookbook GitHub Sources and credits