Laughter at the Foot of the Cross

Screech Michael A.

ISBN 10: 022624511X / ISBN 13: 9780226245119

Published by University of Chicago Press, 2015

About this Item

pp. 352.

Seller Inventory # 311920644

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Laughter at the Foot of the Cross
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication Date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 022624511X
• ISBN 13: 9780226245119
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

“Christian laughter is a maze: you could easily get snarled up within it.” 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 Rabelais―who used Plato and Aristotle to interpret the Gospels―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.

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 Clément 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 l’Ordre national du Mérite and then a Chevalier dans la Légion d’Honneur.