Greek Laughter: A Study of Cultural Psychology from Homer to Early Christianity

Description

The first book to offer an integrated reading of ancient Greek attitudes to laughter. Taking material from various genres and contexts, the book analyses both the theory and the practice of laughter as a revealing expression of Greek values and mentalities. Greek society developed distinctive institutions for the celebration of laughter as a capacity which could bridge the gap between humans and gods; but it also feared laughter for its power to expose individuals and groups to shame and even violence. Caught between ideas of pleasure and pain, friendship and enmity, laughter became a theme of recurrent interest in various contexts. Employing a sophisticated model of cultural history, Stephen Halliwell traces elaborations of the theme in a series of important texts: ranging far beyond modern accounts of 'humour', he shows how perceptions of laughter helped to shape Greek conceptions of the body, the mind and the meaning of life. Cover Half-title Title Copyright Contents Preface Note to the reader Abbreviations Chapter 1 Introduction: Greek laughter in theory and practice Nature and culture, bodies and minds The dialectic of play and seriousness To laugh or not to laugh? Chapter 2 Inside and outside morality: the laughter of Homeric gods and men Between pathos and bloodlust: the range of homeric laughter Divine conflict and pleasure in the iliad Thersites and the volatility of laughter Sex and hilarity on olympus From debauchery to madness: the story of the suitors Epilogue: achilles’ only smile Chapter 3 Sympotic elation and resistance to death Dreaming of immortality Face-to-face tensions: intimacy and antagonism Satyric and tragic versions of sympotic laughter Socratic complications: xenophon’s symposium Chapter 4 Ritual laughter and the renewal of life Worshipping the gods with laughter A map of ritual laughter F1a F1b F1c F1d F1e F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 F6a F6b F6c F7 F8 F9 F10 F11 F12a F12b F13 Patterns and explanations Is old comedy a form of ritual laughter? Chapter 5 Aischrology, shame and Old Comedy Who is shamed by shameful speech? The sociolinguistics of aischrology The speech habits of theophrastus’ characters Aristophanic shamelessness Chapter 6 Greek philosophy and the ethics of ridicule Archaic anxieties Laughter on (and behind) the face of socrates Stoic compromises: laughing at self and others How aristotle makes a virtue of laughter Chapter 7 Greek laughter and the problem of the absurd Existential absurdity: predicaments ancient and modern Laughing democritus (and weeping heraclitus) What made cynics laugh? Chapter 8 The intermittencies of laughter in Menander’s social world The confusions of laughter and tears Menandrian perspectivism Laughter blocked and released Chapter 9 Lucian and the laughter of life and death The view from the moon Other aerial perspectives (or head in the clouds?) The view from hades The absurd suicide of peregrinus Chapter 10 Laughter denied, laughter deferred: the antigelastic tendencies of early Christianity Mocking ‘the king of the jews’ Clement of alexandria: the protocols of the christian body John chrysostom and the dance of the devil Ascetic disciplines for the face and the soul Epilogue: a disputed legacy Appendix 1 The Greek (body) language of laughter and smiles Appendix 2 Gelastic faces in visual art Ancient perceptions of smiling/laughing faces in art The ‘archaic smile’ in sculpture Gorgons Masks Satyrs Portraits Final reflections Bibliography Index of selected authors and works Greek Texts Latin Texts Index of selected Greek terms General index