This study addresses the underexplored evolution of comic elements in early English literature, challenging the misconception that Old English texts lacked intentional humor. Recognizing the scholarly gap in diachronic comic analysis, the research traces the progression from metaphorical wit in The Exeter Book riddles to explicit satire in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and medieval drama. The study employs close reading, comparative, diachronic, historical-contextual, and intertextual methodologies to examine humor’s rhetorical and social functions across genres and periods. Findings reveal that Old English literature featured subtle humor through irony and innuendo, while Middle English texts employed satire, fabliau, and performative comedy. The transitional Latin-English period maintained comic traditions in allegorical and didactic forms. The research contributes a new perspective to medieval literary studies by positioning humor as a meaningful literary mode, offering both scholarly insight and practical groundwork for further genre-based analysis of medieval texts.
Bahodir Absamadov Urozovich (Fri,) studied this question.