"It is almost impossible for jokes that are centuries old to retain any life. The fact that a few of the jokes of Shakespeare or Rabelais or Cervantes continue to make us smile is something of a miracle. Almost six hundred years old, Poggio's Facetiae is by now largely interesting only as a symptom. These relics, like the remains of long-dead insects, tell us what once buzzed about in the air of the Vatican."
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Sources
Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve (2011), ch. 6
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Facetiae
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