In analogy with lexical models as ‘Romanticism’ or ‘Neo-classicism’, it is possible and necessary to create a new English term, that is ‘Humourism’, in order to define a polymorphous literary and artistic movement born in the Nineteenth Century. This multifarious (as for genres, styles, themes etc.) movement was nourished of comic, satiric tradition and modern, wandering, irony, of boisterous laughter and witty smile: to be brief of Rabelais and Sterne, both considered as the exemplary representatives of a long, centuries old, chain of literary and artistic experiences. As we shall see, eminent European writers — Balzac, Leopardi, Baudelaire, Collodi etc. — gave a important contribution to Humourism thanks to an original interpretation of culture and of modern and ancient literature. The main aim of these authors was that to criticize Modernity and its social and cultural ‘pathologies’, by often working together with brilliant caricaturists such as Gavarni, Daumier, Philipon, Tricca and so forth.
The spontaneous question is why those authors wanted to join laughter and smile, irony and comic, grotesque and wit, humour and satire in a polyphonic and stratified formal system. There are two probable answers. The first one is advised by Sterne himself, who was deeply interested in Rabelais’ work, as it is known, and quoted it very often. The second answer is suggested by Joseph Addison, whose writings were or had been very famous and authoritative at that time. For instance, Giacomo Leopardi owned the whole series of ‘The Spectator’, and there are evident traces of Addison’s thought in his observations on «ridiculous». In the number 35 of ‘The Spectator’ (10 April 1711), Addison outlined the genealogy of Humour in a very interesting way by writing:
TRUTH was the Founder of the Family, and the Father of GOOD SENSE. GOOD SENSE was the Father of WIT, who married a Lady of a Collateral Line called MIRTH, by whom he had Issue HUMOUR. HUMOUR therefore being the youngest of this IllustriousFamily, and descended from Parents of such different Dispositions, is very various and unequal in his Temper; sometimes you see him putting on grave Looks and a solemn Habit, sometimes airy in his Behaviour and fantastick in his Dress: insomuch that at different times he appears as serious as a Judge, and as jocular as a Merry-Andrew. But as he has a great deal of the Mother in his Constitution, whatever Mood he is in, he never fails to make his
Company laugh». In this way, by a complex relationship among serious (Truth) and comic, Humour was authoritatively connected with wit, laughter and ridiculous or clownish (Merry Andrew).
From Enthymema, 2, 2010