Apuleius’ The Golden Ass and Juvenal’s Satires 3 and 4 use black humour as a leeway to express the seriousness of the situation through humiliation and dramatization in order to keep the audience entertained. Humour, especially black humour, which often involves a taste for the macabre, is used to make light of something that is considered serious or taboo. In The Golden Ass, black humour is used to illustrate Lucius’ trial where he is made a ridicule of in front of Hypata’s citizens for the festival of laughter enabling the audience to sympathize with him. Lamachus the bandit’s hand getting cut off in The Golden Ass is ironically humorous due to his intentions of robbery. In Juvenal’s Satires 3 and 4, Umbricius uses dramatization to ridicule
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The trial takes place in a theater which seems to be typical of Greek orient as the accused has to persuade the people of their innocence (Summers 514). It imitates a real trial well enough to trick Lucius who is pleading his innocence in fear through tears, resulting in the townspeople being convulsed with laughter (Summers 513). The people of Hypata laugh at his predicament just as the guests at Byrrhena’s dinner party derived pleasure from Thelyphron’s misfortune (Frangoulidis 29). These misfortunes that are seemingly difficult for the main subject involved, allows the audience to gain pleasure from them. Apuleius leads the readers to the trial with a set of organized incidents that make the fear for Lucius very real as they sympathize with his situation (Summers 521). Once it is realized that it is not serious, the reader can de-stress, and be amused by Lucius’ misery, hence the black humour. The humiliation of Lucius acts as foreshadowing for the events that are to come when he is later transformed into an ass (Frangoulidis 29). The wineskins Lucius slays can also be representative of his transformation as he is put into the skin of something else, by having to be something he is …show more content…
Throughout Satire 3, Umbricius, who is leaving Rome due to its corrupted and chaotic nature, expresses his annoyances of city life, claiming he would prefer to live on the country side. When he is voicing his opinions about the nocturnal perils of Rome, he is dramatizing the scene by saying a person would be “most improvident, a catastrophe-happy fool” if they go out to dinner without having first made a will, when pottery thrown from above buildings could kill a person (Juvenal 272-273). He continues on to say everyone better “pray and hope that the local housewives drop nothing worse on [their] head[s] than a pailful of slops” (Juvenal 277). This is considered black humour because of the fact that a person could die from something as simple as a knock to the head from “falling tile” (Juvenal 269). Umbricius goes on to explain the troubles that can be caused by a bully who cannot rest his eyes without having a fight. He states that the bully tends to avoid the rich but goes after the poor, who can only “beg for his last few remaining teeth to be left” (Juvenal 300-301; Dunn 53). This illustrates black humour by showing that the bully only comes after the poor when they are the ones who are most helpless, yet the targets of unfair treatment. The reader is able to sympathize with the poor man as it can be related to real life as well. Since the complaints of Umbricius
The trial takes place in a theater which seems to be typical of Greek orient as the accused has to persuade the people of their innocence (Summers 514). It imitates a real trial well enough to trick Lucius who is pleading his innocence in fear through tears, resulting in the townspeople being convulsed with laughter (Summers 513). The people of Hypata laugh at his predicament just as the guests at Byrrhena’s dinner party derived pleasure from Thelyphron’s misfortune (Frangoulidis 29). These misfortunes that are seemingly difficult for the main subject involved, allows the audience to gain pleasure from them. Apuleius leads the readers to the trial with a set of organized incidents that make the fear for Lucius very real as they sympathize with his situation (Summers 521). Once it is realized that it is not serious, the reader can de-stress, and be amused by Lucius’ misery, hence the black humour. The humiliation of Lucius acts as foreshadowing for the events that are to come when he is later transformed into an ass (Frangoulidis 29). The wineskins Lucius slays can also be representative of his transformation as he is put into the skin of something else, by having to be something he is …show more content…
Throughout Satire 3, Umbricius, who is leaving Rome due to its corrupted and chaotic nature, expresses his annoyances of city life, claiming he would prefer to live on the country side. When he is voicing his opinions about the nocturnal perils of Rome, he is dramatizing the scene by saying a person would be “most improvident, a catastrophe-happy fool” if they go out to dinner without having first made a will, when pottery thrown from above buildings could kill a person (Juvenal 272-273). He continues on to say everyone better “pray and hope that the local housewives drop nothing worse on [their] head[s] than a pailful of slops” (Juvenal 277). This is considered black humour because of the fact that a person could die from something as simple as a knock to the head from “falling tile” (Juvenal 269). Umbricius goes on to explain the troubles that can be caused by a bully who cannot rest his eyes without having a fight. He states that the bully tends to avoid the rich but goes after the poor, who can only “beg for his last few remaining teeth to be left” (Juvenal 300-301; Dunn 53). This illustrates black humour by showing that the bully only comes after the poor when they are the ones who are most helpless, yet the targets of unfair treatment. The reader is able to sympathize with the poor man as it can be related to real life as well. Since the complaints of Umbricius