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(08-21-2015, 04:22 PM)McBeefâ„¢ Wrote: Bit of a tangent, but to respond above, we do actually have records of 'lower class' wit, and they've been recorded through the ages.
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For example the Miller's tale by Chaucer is about as low-brow as it gets. A guy kisses someone's butt, gets farted on, and then sticks a iron poker up it.Â
Quote:This Nicholas just then let fly a fart
As loud as it had been a thunder-clap,
 And well-nigh blinded Absalom, poor chap;
But he was ready with his iron hot
And Nicholas right in the arse he got.
   Off went the skin a hand's-breadth broad, about,
The coulter burned his bottom so, throughout,
That for the pain he thought that he should die.
And like one mad he started in to cry,
"Help! Water! Water! For God's dear heart!"
The Graffiti of Pompeii also has good examples:
http://classicalwisdom.com/dirty-world-a...-graffiti/
“The one who buggers a fire burns his penis.â€
Or the poetic dissing of the Romans, this one starts off with 'I will sodomize and face fuck you'Â
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catullus_16
No doubt someone got a kick out of it, or it wouldn't have been written down.
It's around. Â I think Verad's point was that "wit" was sort of an upper-class distinction made from their literacy, and that their version of "Tiggy likes it in the butt" probably wasn't wit in that time.
There was lower class wit. Â In fact, poets were not always, contrary to popular opinion, gentry. Â Shakespeare actually did write during a time when being a middle-class or even lower-class poet was worthwhile, and they actually could be called witty.
John Donne, for example, is probably one of England's most famous poets. Â He was born a Catholic in 1572 (not the best time to be a Catholic in England), to a family of Welsh ironmongers living in London. Â He lived poor for a healthy chunk of his life. Â Today, he's pretty highly regarded as having been a brilliant writer, probably one of the first well-known satirists. Â He was also pretty well regarded as being quick-witted and intellectual. Â Which isn't bad for someone who grew up in such a state in England.
Still, he at least got famous. Â There are probably people of varying levels of wit all around you, but few people are likely to be publicly recorded that way.