Facetia

a humorous anecdote; an urban literary genre that was particularly popular during the Renaissance and that satirized the nobility and clergy.

The first writer of facetiae is considered to be the Italian humanist Poggio Bracciolini (15th century), whose collection of facetiae in Latin was translated into a number of European languages and inspired imitations by H. Bebel and N. Frischlin. A collection of facetiae was published in Poland in the 16th century and went through many editions. In the late 17th century it was translated into Russian and circulated in Russia in manuscript copies; it was soon supplemented by original Russian tales and by short stories from other translated collections. In the 18th century some of the tales from this collection of facetiae were incorporated in N. G. Kurganov’s Pis’movnik (1769), the first popular Russian encyclopedia. They were also used by fabulists, and later became part of lubok literature and folktales.