Long Runs and Epochal Turns

Abstract

Continuity or discontinuity? In historiographic reconstructions, we trace morphological constants and functional or aesthetic fractures. The story of humor writing undoubtedly sees Laurence Sterne as the key of an epochal transformation, which should be meant on a double background: the long continuity of forms and procedures of conversational sociability; the progressive emergence of the modern concept of subjectivity. My book, L'umorismo letterario. Una lunga storia europea (secoli XIV-XX), discussed in this section by Giorgio Forni e Riccardo Donati, tries to meet these requirements.