The role of humor in conveying a spiritual message

Humor appears as an important component of literature, since it provides stress-coping strategies and mocks misdemeanor, transferral hypertextual spiritual or moral messages and appealing to human cognition as well as to emotion. The paper is designed to discuss the role of idea in illustrating genuine spirituality and virtuousness, in particular, in Boccaccios The Decameron.The Decameron presents an collective perspective of social ethos, primarily finished questioning the existing set and seeking alternatives. Morality and spirituality are not necessarily set forth as dogmas, but rather as the main way of handling unfavorable situations and liberating from burdening conditions. Boccaccio finds that the most convenient and reliable method of proving the necessity of existential application of universal human values is approaching to social pathology from opposite.The narrators, mean solar mean solar day by day, demonstrate that deception and trickery either bring surplus problems directly to an individual or simply turn into absurd or ridiculous tale. For instance, the fourth tale, narrated on the first day, depicts the divergence amidst the piety of clergymen and their factual behavior, which is far from ideal (Boccaccio, 2004). The monastic is caught sinning, that is to say, his sin deserves the most monstrous punishment, but the protagonist manages to get rid of any responsibility, place the cursed upon the abbot. On the one hand, the ref is really amazed by the temperaments inventiveness, but viewing the situation more broadly, it is possible to strike that the situation itself is extremely awkward, so it would be more reasonable to subjugate it through following ethical principles, established for the certain social group.In psychological terms, this technique is known as behavioral learning i.e. the reader, kind of of learning the actual patterns of valued behavior, gets the knowledge about devaluated actions, which merit societal censure. Another prominent example of conveying spiritual message through using humor is the third situation, presented on the third day. In this write up the young woman, enamored of a man, creates the conditions, in which she can gratify her disembodied spirit through misusing the principles of holy confession (Boccaccio, 2004).In this sense, the protagonist naturally abuses the sacred fundamentalism, but this bold actions seems to be favored by the narrator and the author, since in spite of the comic and to some extent unpleasant circumstances, in which she throws her beloved, her wiliness plan finally allows her to reveal her true feelings, which indicates that the rules and social bonds are nerveless against the really strong feeling and that spirituality can sometimes dismiss strict and rigid societal norms.The tenth novel of the third day (ibid) continues the anti-Catholic epopee, as it narrates about the abuse of celibacy. Its humorous tone, however, is aimed at relig ious dogmas cannot get over or inhibit the real human nature in this sense, the fable demonstrates the faultiness of clerical institution and therefore offers social norms concerning marriage as an alternative to religious dogmas, which appear as theatrical performance (putting the Devil into the hell).More interestingly, the second novel of the fourth day provides the logical continuation of the topic, as it demonstrates the clear interrelation between the monks crime and the resulting punishment. This story logically supplements the fact that genuine righteousness and spirituality are rewarded through depicting the execution of punishment, deserved by genuine and absolute wickedness. Again, its humorous attitude towards the situation allows the reader to evaluate the protagonists action in terms of distinguishing between right and wrong.To sum up, Boccaccios stories are particularly important in terms of conveying moral and spiritual messages, since they allows the reader to prepare appropriate conclusions by him/herself through analyzing human experiences, without imposing artificial or abstractive morality.Works citedBoccaccio, G. Decameron, 2004.