One might imagine that farting, or flatulence if one insists on behaving as in polite company, would not be a common topic of literature. You might imagine it confined to bathroom stall walls (here I sit, brokenhearted…) and juvenile notes passed in grade school.

You would be gravely mistaken.

Among the more notable writers who broached the subject were Jonathan Swift, Benjamin Franklin, Shakespeare, and Geoffrey Chaucer.

Swift, an Anglican cleric best known for Gulliver’s Travels and my favorite, A Modest Proposal, penned a poem entitled, The Benefit of Farting Explained. He published the piece as written by,

“Don Fartinando Puff-Indorst, Professor of Bumbast in the University of Crackow.” The title page asserts that the essay was “translated into English at the Request and for the Use of the Lady Damp-Fart, of Her-fart-shire” by “Obadiah Fizzle, Groom of the Stool to the Princess of Arse-Mini in Sardinia.”

And the opening lines include the ode to the benefit of a good “wind” as “Cure of cholick, cure of gripes, tuneful drone of lower pipes.”

And he was not alone in embracing a good treatise on a blunderbuss from behind…

In The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer penned the line, “..let fly a fart with a noise as great as a clap of thunder, so that Absalom was almost overcome by the force of it.”

I bet they skipped that part in High School English. Perhaps we are banning the wrong books?

The oldest known recorded joke in human history dates back to 1800 BCE and the Sumerians (who also invented beer so it seems natural) and it was a fart joke.

“Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband’s lap.”

Ben Franklin, known for insightful wit and compelling prose, once wrote a letter to the Royal Academy suggesting serious inquiry in how to deal with the aromatic quality (or lack thereof) of the noxious discharges of humans and other creatures.

Permit me then humbly to propose one of that sort for your consideration, and through you, if you approve it, for the serious Enquiry of learned Physicians, Chemists, &c. of this enlightened Age.

It is universally well known, That in digesting our common Food, there is created or produced in the Bowels of human Creatures, a great Quantity of Wind.

That the permitting this Air to escape and mix with the Atmosphere, is usually offensive to the Company, from the fetid Smell that accompanies it.

That all well-bred People therefore, to avoid giving such Offence, forcibly restrain the Efforts of Nature to discharge that Wind…

He further requested…

My Prize Question therefore should be, To discover some Drug wholesome & not disagreable, to be mix’d with our common Food, or Sauces, that shall render the natural Discharges of Wind from our Bodies, not only inoffensive, but agreable as Perfumes.

Thus a man who stood in a lightning storm with a kite and key pleaded for a solution to noxious odors. I suppose we should not be shocked.

Even Shakespeare cleverly used his quill to interject such “airs” into his work.

“Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow!” (King Lear)

And

“A man may break a word with you, sir, and words are but wind Ay, and break it in your face, so he break it not behind” (The Comedy of Errors)

It is even in the Bible!

“If any man among you becomes unclean because of a nocturnal emission, then he shall go outside the camp. He shall not come inside the camp,”*

Thus one should not be offended by a loud resounding fart, the aftermath thereof, or even a mention of it in conversation. If it is good enough for Shakespeare et.al. It is good enough for me.

I shall test my theory next time I find myself on an elevator shortly after a bean and cheese burrito washed down with beer.

*I have no doubt someone will claim this is about a different kind of discharge, thus the variety of interpretations of the Bible.