Literature, Principally Belletristic - University of Tennessee, Knoxville

· INTELLECTU AL LIFE IN THE COLONIAL SOUTH '
southern monstrosities and the kindred more general tendency to exagger­
ate, and in the laughter that springs from discomfort.
SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY HUMOR AND SATIRE, INCLUDING IRONY
The English-speaking peoples, perhaps equally with their neighbors the
French, had before 1607 been expressing in their writing various degrees
of amusement as they observed the incongruous, which often for them
included the strange. When the first English reached Jamestown, they
sometimes-it is difficult to tell now how frequently-saw in themselves,
the aboriginals, and the New World surroundings qualities of the unusual
which provoked good-humored laughter or at least a smile and quite fre­
quently a sharp and sometimes sharp-edged depiction of what they considered
the ridiculous, or the disproportionate. Then occasionally from first
landfall to the Revolution, they were moved to irony and sarcasm, often
to the satiric, and less often to invective in their righteous indignation (as
they considered it ) at the obtuseness or stubbornness or callousness of
those back in Britain who should have supplied and protected them. The
flashes of the comic spirit which provoked volleys of silvery laughter
were there, but they were often obscured by the bitter (in varying degree)
satiric comments on their world and the European officials back at home.
John Smith and others of the first groups at Jamestown record what they
saw with the eyes of both good-natured humor and resentful irony. As early
as A True Relation of 1608, Smith's amusement at certain interactions be­
tween white and red man shows through. When he describes the royal regalia
bestowed upon Powhatan and the attendant aboriginal oration, his
tone is humorous disparagement of the whole situation, for he did not approve
of such methods of obtaining Indian friendship. In the same passage
he stresses Powhatan's loud laughter and joking, with its politically sinister
background, when the old chief fails to obtain the guns he asked for simply
because they were made too heavy for his men to lift. A little later Smith
describes a day spent with the red man "in trading, dancing, and much
mirth." 59 In A Map of Virginia of 1612 he makes the straight-faced com­
ment that he and his men found "that abundance of fish lying so thicke
with their heads above the water, that for the want of nets . . . we at­
tempted to catch them with a frying pan; but we found it a bad instru­
ment to catch fish with." There is more contempt in his humorous or
sardonic comment on the folly of the elaborate political machinery set
up after his departure, with the
appointing the Lord De-Ia-ware for Governour, with many great and
stately officers, and offices under him, as doth belong to a great Kingdom,