Nation, Social Class and Style: a Comparison of the Humour of Britain and America
Christie Davies
Abstract
Historically a much greater range of styles of literary humour were to be found in Bri[1]t sun than in the United States because Bi „.n was a much more hierarchical society with a divined elite and an aristocratic as well as a bourgeois aesthetic. In America there was a single dominant class, that of independent farmers and the businessmen and professional people of medium sized cities whose optimistic, egalitarian, moralistic, culture restricted the range of styles an aspiring American humorous writer could use. This restnctiveness remained long after American had become the world’s leading, richest and most techno[1]logically advanced economy. British humour alone was able to use styles that valued de[1]tachment from conventional morality and also took inequality for granted and hence devi[1]sed torms of aggressive mockery that could be directed downwards. British humour was also able to emplo> a greater reach of allusw eness, vocabulary and sophistication than was possible in America. It was the rise of Jev sh humour in America from a new initially immigrant population that valued things of the intellect for their own sake and which had also mastered the arts of detachment that enabled American literary humour to achieve a comparable degree of vanety and sophistication to that of Britain in the course of the twentith century.
Keywords:
America, Britain, class, cruelty, culture, hierarchy, moralism, sophistication, styleReferences
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