Ridiculing the Other The Politics of Humour and Imaging in early modern Dutch moffenkluchten

Abstract

Using theories on the politics of humour from within a recently emerged critical tradition of humour research in combination with theories on the politics of imaging and ‘othering’, this thesis consists of an analysis of the negative and conservative properties of humour in the past through the case study of early modern Dutch moffenkluchten and the imaging of German immigrants through humour on the early modern Dutch stage. The main aim of this thesis is to further explore the political workings of humour through analysing the interaction between humour and (negative) imaging in this conservative genre. Though there is undoubtedly a shift at the end of the eighteenth century to a more explicitly political and more xenophobic type of humour in these farces, I argue that the humour used in these moffenkluchten in relation to the German immigrants has never been ‘innocent’ in the first place.