Cheese, like flatulence, is an evergreen source of ribaldry. The mind immediately recalls the episode of the cheese in Three Men In A Boat. No doubt The Canterbury Tales contains an amusing anecdote about ripe Cheddar. Going that far back, you could possibly invoke Boccaccio also, although the Italians rarely find the subject of food funny. Mozzarella is a serious business and Parmesan a matter of life and death. So, on second thoughts, there are probably no cheese jokes in The Decameron.
The same can be said of Dante, obviously: nobody is condemned to the Inferno for making inappropriate remarks about Gorgonzola, at least not in the translations I've read. And there are zero wry observations about Bel Paese in Pirandello, Calvino or even Umberto Eco (you'd think there might be). Only the filmmaker Pasolini attempts cheese humor, and it's gallows humor, literally, since the protagonist of La Ricotta dies on the cross from indigestion.
Similarly, French literature is devoid of laughs when it comes to cheese. Nothing in Balzac, Dumas, Victor Hugo or Flaubert. Proust chooses an item from his local boulangerie rather than the nearest fromagerie for the witty opening scene of Remembrance of Things Past, an English title I much prefer to the lugubrious In Search Of Lost Time. So once again it falls to a filmmaker, Jacques Tati, to raise a smile about cheese, and then only very briefly towards the end of Playtime.
As for the Dutch, well, the only thing funny about Gouda is the way they pronounce the word. Edam? You might as well present a block of cement as a stand-up comedian. Ditto Belgian Limburger. There are no cheese laughs at all in the low countries. Swiss cheese, I think it's safe to say, is straight-man neutral on the subject and blue cheese is obviously just sad but not in a sad clown kind of way.
But enough of my mirthcentric isolationism. I'm merely suggesting that certain Europeans authors might enhance their reputations by drawing inspiration from the coagulation of milk proteins rather than the missteps of callow youth on the boulevard of life. After all, we all want and need a little more levity in our bedside books these days. More thermophilic starter culture and less high culture, perhaps, is the fastest route to literary immortality in the current climate; and simply reading the word 'cheese' induces a seismic chuckle that can quickly erupt into a convulsing giggle.
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