Abstract
Goethe's description of the sealed final version of Faust II as ernste Scherze' has teased generations of scholars with the enigmatic implications of the oxymoron jests. The expression also placed Goethe in the long, but relatively neglected, literary tradition of serious humor. It was singularly appropriate that Goethe first used the phrase in a letter to Sulpiz Boisseree, because the long friendship between the aging poet and his much younger admirer had in itself a paradoxical quality. Boissere'e, a collector of medieval art works, was a close friend of leading romanticists, and the development of his friendship with Goethe had involved a modification of extreme views on both sides. As Goethe wrote to Boisseree on June 16, 1826:
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