Since ancient Greece, smart people have been annoyed by puns

It seems there’s nothing new under the pun. Since the height of classical Greek philosophy, writers and poets have been wary of such wordplay.

In a new edition of The Princeton Handbook of Poetic Terms, to be published at the end of August, authors lay out a brief history of “paronomasia,” or puns.

The authors write:

Rhetoricians from Aristotle onward are mostly cautious about paronomasia, chiefly about its overuse, while noting its effectiveness when used appropriately. Some stress its low status. Overuse is a question of competence, but status is simply a question of taste and fashion, which may vary from one era to another.

They trace the reputation of “wordplay based on like-sounding words,” noting that for 19th-century writers like Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear, the pun was chiefly comic, while 18th-century writers were not impressed by all the pun and games.

Some modern poets, like TS Eliot and Wallace Stevens, used puns for serious purposes, “but it is still a question whether paronomasia has regained its earlier status as a figure, lost when 18th-century rhetoricians downgraded the pun,” they write.

The third edition of the handbook is edited by Roland Greene and Stephen Cushman, and published by Princeton University Press.