Abstract
This article proposes that we add to the small number of Renaissance works on the art of creating or using facetiae an almost unknown De arte iocandi by an almost unknown Mattheus Delius, who died young. The work is a poem in four books, in Ovidian elegiac couplets, obviously inspired by the De arte bibendi of Vincentius Obsopoeus; both works have been assumed to be paradoxical encomia but are in fact serious albeit playful compendia of rules. Delius is interested not in the rhetorical use of jokes as weapons, but in something very close to Erasmus’s festivitas. The preface by Melanchthon almost qualifies as an independent art of joking, and together they add valuable information to our knowledge of Reformation wit.
- Journal
- Rhetorica
- Published
- 2003-06-01
- DOI
- 10.1353/rht.2003.0007
- CompPile
- Open Access
- Closed
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