BBC - h2g2 - The History of Sarcasm

Sarcasm has a rich and ancient history. From the time when cavemen said "unk" when they meant "eeunk", it has been part of human tradition. The earliest recorded sarcastic comments date from the time of the Ancient Greeks, when philosophers would say really quite biting things about triangle theorums and the like.

However, it was the Romans who really made sarcasm into an art form. Horace, to name but one of the great authors, wrote innumerable satires and epistles which were as filled with sarcasm as a football match is with surpressed violence.

Sadly, with the fall of the Romans, sarcasm laid fallow for some considerable time, reappearing Europe-wide with the Rennaissance. Its renewed popularity led to the writing of many a sarcastic play, some so witty that the actors in them developed puckered mouths after only 10 minutes on stage.

In Britain, in particular, sarcasm flourished, and has continued to do so ever since, except for the brief period between the reigns of Charles I and II. During these years Oliver Cromwell the "protector", a staunch Puritan, all he could to outlaw dancing, games, sarcasm, and all the other evil forms of fun, which he saw as the tool of Satan. However, sarcasm survived in full health, and has continued unabated.

This could be seen as odd, since the Royal family of England are incapable of understanding sarcasm or what it does. This has been the case since Georgian times. It is said that when George I discovered he must learn English to rule England, a genetic mutation occurred that led to this phenomenon. It was subsiquently passed on and continues today. It is interesting to note that our present Queen Mother is the only member of the Windsor family that does not possess this genetic defect, and therefore is able to use and understand sarcasm as well as you or I. This singular fact was used to try and declare her illegitemate at one time, but the ignorence of sarcasm of our present Queen and her siblings soon quashed that, and it is now presumed to be simply a fluke.

Sarcasm exists in many forms, almost all of them in some way adulterated. The most prevelant of these impure forms is American Sarcasm, called after its place of origin.

Probably the purest form of sarcasm that ever existed was confined to Chinese monastry for much of the 18th and early 19th century, before becoming more widely known around China in the late 19th. Tragically, this exquisite form was completely obliterated in the Cultural Revolution of the 20th century.

Little is known of the sarcasm of South America, but from what clues we can piece together, it seems that the Incas and one of the indigenous peoples of Peru developed astonishingly complex forms of sarcasm that baffle explanation today. All known peoples of the Amazonian jungle enjoyed sarcasm to a greater or lesser extent, notably those in the south-west of the continent.

We can only hypothesize about the lyrical sarcastis dream-stories of the Aborigany people, as they mysteriously disappeared at the end of the 18th century. At this time, Britain had been using the island as a dumping ground for its criminals for a number of years. After the crocodile dundee movies of the 1970s and 80s, it is impossible that sarcasm will ever resurge anywhere in Australasia.

Russia is an interesting case as far as sarcasm is concerned. The Russian language does not have a word for "sarcasm", so instead they employ an odd form of stating the obvious to acheive the same effect. This is very difficult to translate into English.