Greek laughter : a study of cultural psychology from Homer to early Christianity / Stephen Halliwell.
Halliwell, Stephen.
2008
BF575.L3 H35 2008 (Mapit)
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Title Greek laughter : a study of cultural psychology from Homer to early Christianity / Stephen Halliwell.
Author Halliwell, Stephen.
ISBN 9780521717748 (pbk.)
0521717744 (pbk.)
9780521889001
0521889006
Publication Details Cambridge, UK ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Language English
Description xiii, 616 p. ; 23 cm.
Call Number BF575.L3 H35 2008
Dewey Decimal Classification 152.4/30938
Summary This is 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.
Bibliography, etc. Note Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
Linked Resources Contributor biographical information
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Introduction: Greek laughter in theory and practice
Inside and outside morality: the laughter of Homeric gods and men
Sympotic elation and resistance to death
Ritual laughter and the renewal of life
Aischrology, shame and old comedy
Greek philosophy and the ethics of ridicule
Greek laughter and the problem of the absurd
The intermittencies of laughter in Menander's social world
Lucian and the laughter of life and death
Laughter denied, laughter deferred: the antigelastic tendencies of early Christianity.

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