The Popular and Urban Roots of Hungarian Joke (original) (raw)

Abstract

Hungarian humour went through significant changes in the 20th century. Though the urban middle-class way of living and culture had developed by the early 20th century, they had to coexist all over the country as well as in ethnic Hungarian territories abroad with the traditions of rural culture and folklore until the middle of the century. Consequently, Hungarian humour is made up of two important layers of folklore: popular funny stories that have been developing among the peasantry for centuries, and jokes, a genre that emerged from urban oral culture in the last third of the 20th century. In this paper, we examine the thematic categories of this genre of popular and urban humour and their popularity.