Synopses & Reviews
and#147;Christian laughter is a maze: you could easily get snarled up within it.and#8221; So says Michael A. Screech in his note to readers preceding this collection of fifty-three elegant and pithy essays. As Screech reveals, the question of whether laughter is acceptable to the god of the Old and New Testaments is a dangerous one.
But we are fortunate in our guide: drawing on his immense knowledge of the classics and of humanists like Erasmus and Rabelaisand#151;who used Plato and Aristotle to interpret the Gospelsand#151;and incorporating the thoughts of Aesop, Calvin, Lucian of Samosata, Luther, Socrates, and others, Screech shows that Renaissance thinkers revived ancient ideas about what inspires laughter and whether it could ever truly be innocent. As Screech argues, in the minds of Renaissance scholars, laughter was to be taken very seriously. Indeed, in an era obsessed with heresy and reform, this most human of abilities was no laughing matter.
Review
and#8220;Lavishly erudite, digressive. . . . Screech commands the intellectual and literary history of the sixteenth century. . . . The finished book is a provocative, wide-ranging work of cultural history.and#8221;
Review
andldquo;Laughter can be innocent. . . . But suppose there is an exultation over the foe, can this be Christian? Psalm II suggests it can. For after describing the rage of the heathen and their plots against Godandrsquo;s anointed, it says: andlsquo;He that dwelleth in heaven shall laugh them to scorn: The Lord shall have them in derision.andrsquo; What gives Laughter at the Foot of the Cross its sinew and muscle is the way Screech takes this mocking triumph with the utmost seriousness. . . . Apart from numerous fresh insights along the way and the scholarly erudition, the great importance of this book is a paradoxical one. It is a book about laughter but it forces us to face the reality of evil.andrdquo;
Review
and#8220;A splendid and exciting book, and a learned one. It takes the maxim that man is a laughing animal and enlarges it to encompass the concept that Christianity is a religion centred on laughter. . . . Laughter at the Foot of the Cross is a book that is historical in its thrust, philological at every step in its argument, and vigorously celebratory of the achievement of Erasmus and Rabelais both for their own times and for our own.and#8221;
Synopsis
This book is double-voiced: it is doing two things simultaneously, for the multitude of shattered unities we call revolution brings forth texts with peculiar forms of unity. At one level it is a guidebook for its times, and at another level it is a contribution to historical poetics with time and place.
Synopsis
This classic work by the Russian philosopher and literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) examines popular humor and folk culture in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. One of the essential texts of a theorist who is rapidly becoming a major reference in contemporary thought, Rabelais and His World is essential reading for anyone interested in problems of language and text and in cultural interpretation.
About the Author
Michael A. Screech is an emeritus fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. His scholarship has roots in University College London and the Warburg Institute. He is recognized as a world authority on the Renaissance, especially for his studies on Rabelais, Erasmus, and Montaigne, as well as on Clandeacute;ment Marot, Joachim Du Bellay, Renaissance laughter, and religious ecstasy. His translation of Montaigne was immediately welcomed for its discrete learning and elegance. His concept and practice of translation arose from his living with the Japanese language as a soldier at the end of the Second World War. The same approach marks his subsequent translation of Rabelais. In recognition of his achievements, the French Republic made him a Chevalier dans landrsquo;Ordre national du Mandeacute;rite and then a Chevalier dans la Landeacute;gion dandrsquo;Honneur.
Table of Contents
FOREWORD Krystyna Pomorska
PROLOGUE Michael Holquist
INTRODUCTION
ONE Rabelais in the History of Laughter
TWO The Language of the Marketplace in Rabelais
THREE Popular-Festive Forms and Images in Rabelais
FOUR Banquet Imagery in Rabelais
FIVE The Grotesque Image of the Body and Its Sources
SIX Images of the Material Bodily Lower Stratum
SEVEN Rabelais Images and His Time
INDEX