Editing Akkadian literature (section)

===Humorous literature===
Exemplars of comical texts span the genres of burlesque to satire and include humorous love poems and riddles. “At the cleaners” is a tale of the dispute between an insolent scrubber and his client, a “sophomoric fop” who lectures the cleaner in ridiculous detail on how to launder his clothes, driving the exasperated cleaner to suggest that he lose no time in taking it to the river and doing it himself.<ref>[https://archive.today/20121212130021/http://cdli.ucla.edu/cdlisearch/search/index.php?SearchMode=Text&txtID_Txt=P274721 UET 6/2, 414]</ref> The [[Dialogue of Pessimism]] was seen as a saturnalia by Böhl, where master and servant switch roles, and as a burlesque by Speiser, where a fatuous master mouthes clichés and a servant echoes him. Lambert considered it a musing of a mercurial adolescent with suicidal tendencies.<ref>{{ cite journal | title = Humor and Cuneiform Literature | author = Benjamin R. Foster | journal = JANES | volume = 6 | year = 1974 | page = 82 }}</ref>

The ''Aluzinnu'' (“trickster,” a jester, clown or buffoon) text, extant in five fragments from the neo-Assyrian period concerns an individual, ''dābibu, ākil karṣi,'' “character assassin,” who made a living entertaining others with parodies, mimicry, and scatological songs. The [[Poor Man of Nippur]] provides a subversive narrative of the triumph of the underdog over his superior<ref>{{ cite journal | title = Structure, Humor, and Satire in the Poor Man of Nippur | author = J. S. Cooper | journal = Journal of Cuneiform Studies | volume = 27 | number = 3 | date = Jul 1975 | pages = 163–174 | doi=10.2307/1359242| jstor = 1359242 | s2cid = 163822119 }}</ref> while [[Ninurta-Pāqidāt's Dog Bite]] is a school text of a slapstick nature.<ref>{{ cite journal | title = Ninurta-Pāqidāt's Dog Bite, and Notes on Other Comic Tales | author = A. R. George | journal = Iraq | volume = 55 | jstor = 4200367 | year = 1993 | pages = 63–75 | doi = 10.2307/4200367 | s2cid = 192947135 }}</ref>