Pieter Bruegel and the Art of Laughter - AAAARG.ORG

notes to pages 24–26 173
are cited in Pikhaus 1988–89, p. 134: in one tafelspel, a player urges his audience
to “maecht vreucht in desen recreatie!” that is, to take joy in this
recreation, or play.
81. Adapted from Horace 1991, pp. 6, 7 (Satires 1.1.24), or Al lachende de waerheit
seggen in the Netherlandish of Bruegel’s time; see Cornelis Kiliaan,
Dictionarium Teutonicolatinum, 1574, quoted in Sullivan 1999, p. 245. For the
relationship between instruction and delight in the sixteenth century and
later, see Lee 1967, pp. 32–34; and, with some reservations, Pleij 1974–75.
82. In his Responsio (Basel: Froben, 1529), a reply to Alberto Pio’s condemnation
of The Praise of Folly, quoted in Gilmore 1978, p. 114. In his defense
of the same work in a letter to Martin Dorp (1514), Erasmus elaborates
on this function of laughter with a quotation from Horace (Satires
1.1.24–25): “There is nothing to prevent you from telling the truth, as
long as you do it with a smile,” and he further alludes to Lucretius, who
likens pleasure to the honey that doctors who are treating children smear
on a cup of bitter medicine. See Sullivan 1994, pp. 47–69; and Erasmus-
Miller 1979, p. 143. I owe the latter reference to Mark Meadow.
83. Graf 1997, p. 29. Ramakers 2002, p. 35, observes that it is erroneous to
believe that comedy functioned chiefly to criticize a particular social group.
Cf. also Ramakers 1996, p. 134.
84. The term klucht signified any entertaining story or incident; see n. 53 above;
and Lambrecht 1945, p. 62, s.v., “Clute oft cluchte”: “Farce, bourde ou gaberië.”
Hence we have both kluchtboeken, or jest books, and kluchten, or farces.
85. For a succinct but useful definition of the farce, see Barbara Bowen, “Towards
a Definition of the Farce as a Literary ‘Genre,’” Modern Language
Review 56 (1961): 558–660.
86. For the original manuscript of the play, see Jan Van der Stock, ed., La ville
in Flandre: culture et société, 1477–1787 (Brussels: Credit Communal and
Vlaamsche Gemeenschap, 1991), pp. 534–535, cat. no. 327.
87. For the Baltens painting, and similar kermis scenes attributed to Pieter
Bruegel the Younger, see Marlier 1969, pp. 294–305; Hummelen 1989,
pp. 32–33; and Ramakers 2002, pp. 42–45.
88. For the text of the play, see Hans van Dijk et al., “Plaijerwater. A Sixteenth-
Century Farce, with an English Translation,” Dutch Crossing, no. 24 (1984):
32–81. Plaijerwater as a variant of a popular medieval German story is discussed
by Schmidt 1963, pp. 327–342. My translation of the play ’s title