Folk Anecdote

The folk anecdote is a short oral humorous or satirical work with a witty, unexpected ending (a punch line, or pointe), which mocks human failings, social types, or everyday situations. Unlike a tale, the anecdote inclines toward the plausibility of an everyday setting, and the comedy is concentrated in the paradoxical denouement. The Ukrainian tradition created a gallery of comic types: the cunning peasant, the foolish lord, the miser, the sluggard, the liar, and the sly priest. The anecdote is akin to the humorous tale, the true story, and the jest. A rich corpus of Ukrainian anecdotes and jests was gathered by Volodymyr Hnatiuk in 'Galician-Ruthenian Anecdotes' (1899). The folk laughter element of the anecdote nourished Ivan Kotliarevsky's 'Aeneid,' the humoresques of Stepan Rudansky, and the feuilletons of Ostap Vyshnia.