Abstract

Since Antiquity, the wise man is a figure belonging to literary didacticism, linked to a culture of seriousness that excludes the festive. Didacticism has been ridiculed by genres such as satire, through a degrading comedy that is ultimately as dogmatic as the object it criticizes. However, other genres such as Platonic dialogues or Menippean satire developed a humorous didacticism, which delves into moral consciousness without giving up a regenerative laughter, through an open and ambivalent wisdom, as well as a portrait of everyday life. The cinematographic medium has inherited an important part of the humorous imagery of literature, highlighting specific cases such as modern Italian cinema. From the neorealism of Rossellini to the new cinema promoted by directors such as Ferreri, Pasolini or Olmi, a wise figure, heir to a historical tradition –Francesco de Asis, Socrates– or directly carnivalesque and popular, who transgresses the narrative of classical cinema, takes center stage, while proposing a non-dogmatic moral exemplarity, thanks to the use of humor. This has ethical implications, since it highlights a different type of moral subject, with roots in the past, but renewed in the light of modernity; a subject whose cognitive and moral autonomy is recognized in the process of formation, as a result of the social bond.

Keywords: literature | didacticism | satire | menippea | humor | cinema