From Modernist Laughter to Contemporary Writing: Humor in Brazilian Poetry from the Twentieth to the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

This article investigates humor as both a formal and historical operator in Brazilian poetry from the twentieth to the twenty-first century. It argues that laughter does not simply serve as an ornament but acts as a procedure of knowledge and critical mediation. From a diachronic perspective, it traces a thread from the modernist poema-piada to contemporary forms of appropriation and verbal ready-made. This path includes Concrete poetry, marginal poetry, and authors such as Paulo Leminski, José Paulo Paes, and Angélica Freitas. The essay proposes that humor enables the elaboration of recurring tensions in Brazilian literature. These include: the ambiguous construction of national identity, the relationship between formal experimentation and mass culture, and everyday resistance in authoritarian contexts. It also covers the ironic revision of the canon and contemporary disputes surrounding gender and authorship. Finally, digital writing is considered a horizon of development. This is not seen as a linear continuity, but as a field in which montage, repetition, remix, and accelerated circulation reactivate procedures already present in this tradition. By critically examining the use of humor by poets from different generations, this article broadens our understanding of the country’s poetic forms.