ABSTRACT
Humorous folktales whose theme is the nation-state of Lanka and its citizens have always been the forbidden textual universe of both the tale collectors and intellectuals, despite their popularity among people. Such tales are omitted from folktale collections or are ignored in academic discourse. The reason might be the ‘fear’ that humouring an entity as ‘sacred’ as a ‘nation’ might entail. But do such folktales denigrate or deny the nation? Or do they achieve the opposite? A text in public circulation does not speak unless one interrogates it, and this chapter sets out to achieve that task. Undertaking a literary re-reading of a sample of folktales that humours the Lankan state and Lankans, this study attempts to explore the thresholds of humour and how humour manages (or manipulates) the nation into its own terrain and what such acts of humour tell the listener/reader of a folktale about the nation and its people.
