Family album

Abstract

In an 1821 article dedicated to the great German satiric Jean Paul, Thomas de Quincey - the famous author of Confessions of an English opium-eater, a book very beloved by Baudelaire and Poe - asserted that "[...] into every act of the humorous mood there is an influx of the moral nature: rays direct or refracted, from the will and the affections, from the disposition and the temperament, enter into all humour; and thence it is, that humour is of a diffusive quality, pervading an entire course of thoughts". This is an observation that seems to me in line with the landscape traced by Giancarlo Alfano in L'umorismo letterario. Una lunga storia europea, where the humor writing is described as a result of a variety of factors.