UC Irvine

Humor and laughter are quintessentially human, yet they are often ignored in scholarly studies. The Humanities in particular tend to privilege “serious” literature, especially with works that were produced during oppressive regimes. In the case of Spain and Francisco Franco’s dictatorship, this academic tendency engenders a flawed outsider’s view of two generations of Spaniards—representing them as laughless and therefore less human—despite the fact that public expressions of humor persisted and evolved during the regime. This dissertation focuses on two of the foremost examples of popular Spanish humor under Franco: the magazine La Codorniz (1941-1978) and the comedian Miguel Gila (1919-2001), important cultural touchstones that are almost completely unknown outside of Spain. Gila’s famous war monologues and La Codorniz’s shift from abstract to politically-engaged humor exemplify the major polemics of humor studies, synthesizing many of the binaries posited by scholars over millennia. Is humor irrational or wise? Is it an antisocial weapon or a stress-relieving social lubricant? Does it undermine authority or perpetuate the status quo?

Chapter 1 gives an overview of the three historically dominant theories of humor: Superiority, Relief, and Incongruity. I present the major arguments of each theory and evaluate them primarily for their usefulness in understanding popular, public humor in Spain under Franco. Chapter two examines the intellectual underpinnings of the weekly humor magazine La Codorniz, beginning with Ramón Gómez de la Serna and his application of avant-garde ideals to el humor nuevo español. The bulk of the chapter considers the evolution of Spanish humor as demonstrated in La Codorniz under its two famous directors: Miguel Mihura (1941-1944) and Álvaro de Laiglesia (1944-1977), examining works by Tono, Mihura, Wenceslao Fernández Flórez, Édgar Neville, and Evaristo Acevedo, among others. Chapter 3 analyzes Gila’s war monologues—their history and reception in postwar Spain and beyond. And Chapter 4 presents original transcriptions and translations of these classic performances based on the earliest recordings (1957 and 1959), with a brief introduction that draws connections between humor and translation in a sketch of the humorist as translator.