Humour in Dutch Culture of the Golden Age

RUDOLF DEKKER is Reader in the Department of History and Art at Erasmus University in Rotterdam. His publications include Holland in Beroering and, with Lotte van de Pol, The Tradition of Female Transvestism in Early Modern Europe.

'Dekker's book is an important contribution to the new socio-cultural history which can also be enjoyed by general readers. Written with a light touch, it should do a good deal to undermine the myth of the humourless Dutch.' - Peter Burke FBA, Professor of Cultural History, University of Cambridge 'Like all humour of the past, that of seventeenth-century Holland is utterly baffling: too obscure, too topical, too coarse by turns; then again startlingly recognizable, modern, universal. In this insightful analysis of the greatest treasure trove of early modern Dutch jokes, Rudolf Dekker has reconstructed the personalities, issues, virtues, and foibles that occasioned discrete smiles and guffawing laughter in the upper echelons of Dutch society. Dekker's comparative historical approach, which ranges well beyond the Netherlands, restores the currency and the flavour of humour in early modern Europe. He made me laugh, too.' - Mariet Westermann

• List of Illustrations Introduction: The Genesis of the Joke Laughing Dutch Humour in Word and Image Aernout van Overbeke and His Jokes Polarity and Inversion Conclusion: Let's Laugh Again Index