Serious Humor: The Play of Style and Thought in G.K. Chesterton’s Essays

Abstract

G.K. Chesterton has often been labelled a flippant, light, and amusing essayist; however, a further examination of his work reveals a deeper relationship between the forms he utilizes – often humorous and whimsical – and his subjects. Chesterton’s view of essay style and his practice of it are consistent rebuttals of the idea that the serious and the humorous are mutually exclusive. Instead, he argues and demonstrates that the serious and the foundational are necessary building blocks of the humorous, and that the style of any essay is largely a working out of thought rather than an ornament to it. This thinking as well as Chesterton’s careful attention to the shades of meaning in words inflects and complicates the work of essay theorists such as Theodor Adorno, György Lukács, and others who have grappled with the relationship between the essay, humor, and foundational thought.