Laughter at the Foot of the Cross

Screech, M A

ISBN 10: 0713990120 / ISBN 13: 9780713990126

Published by Allen Lane, United Kingdom, 1998

About this Item

hardback, octavo, publisher stamp to bottom closed edges, a very good tightly bound copy in a part faded but well preserved pictorial dust wrapper, the text is clean and unmarked, 328pp.

Seller Inventory # 231260

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Laughter at the Foot of the Cross
• Publisher: Allen Lane, United Kingdom
• Publication Date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0713990120
• ISBN 13: 9780713990126
• Binding: hardback
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

This book examines changing Christian attitudes to laughter and their deep influence on literary practice. Rabelais often comically distorted the words of Jesus, making us laugh at his grotesque character, the gluttonous Gargantua, whilst Erasmus adopted the satirical style of Lucian (a Greek author openly contemptuous of Christianity) to poke fun at clerical abuses. Screech, a master scholar, brilliantly illuminates both the background to their works and their extraordinary individual achievements.

About the Author

MICHAEL SCREECH is an Extraordinary Fellow of Wolfson College and an Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Literature, and a Fellow of University College London. He is a Renaissance scholar of international renown, and he has edited, translated and written extensively for Penguin.