Laughter at the foot of the cross

353 Pages·2015·19.79 MB·English

by  Grafton

Laughter at the Foot
of the Cross
michael a. screech
Foreword by Anthony Grafton
the university of chicago press
chicago
For Dr. Bernard Curchod of Lausanne
a good friend and the ideal reader
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© M. A. Screech, 1997
Foreword ©1998 Anthony Grafton
All rights reserved.
The University of Chicago Press edition 2015
Printed in the United States of America
24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 1 2 3 4 5
ISBN: 978-0-226-24511-9 (paper)
ISBN: 978-0-226-24525-6 (e-book)
DOI: 10.728/chicago/9780226245256.001.0001
First published by Allen Lane the Penguin Press 1997
Published in the United States by Westview Press in 1999
A version of the foreword was originally published in the Times Literary Supplement in 1998.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Screech, M. A. (Michael Andrew), author.
Laughter at the foot of the cross / Michael A. Screech ; foreword by Anthony Grafton.
pages cm
“First published by Allen Lane the Penguin Press 1997. Published in the United States by Westview
Press in 1999. A version of the foreword was originally published in the Times Literary Supplement in
1998.”—Title page verso.
ISBN 978- 0- 226-2 4511- 9 (paperback : alkaline paper) — ISBN 978- 0- 226- 24525- 6 (ebook) 1. Laughter—
Religious aspects—Christianity. I. Grafton, Anthony, writer of preface. II. Title.
BT709.S64 2015
233—dc23
2014048344
o This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).
I saw Him—Him—and I laughed at Him
Kundry, in Wagner’s Parsifal
This book was written during
my tenure of an Emeritus Fellowship
from the Leverhulme Trust.
I am most grateful to the Trustees
for their generosity.
M. A. S.
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, Eras-
mus, 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.
List of Illustrations viii
Foreword ix
Abbreviations
LAUGHTER AT THE FOOT OF THE CROSS
18 Madman Laughs at Madman 68
19 Laughing at Christ and Laughing at
Carabba 78
20 Laughing Back 80
21 Christ as Divine Madman 84
22 Madness Providentially Feigned by David:
a Silenus 90
23 Theophylact and a Lunatic's Chains 93
24 Laughing with the Great Cardinal of
Saint-Cher 96
25 Jesus in Ecstatic Madness 98
26 Lessons in Exegesis 102
27 Plato and Christian Madness 107
28 Drunk with God and Drunk with Wine III
29 Christ's Mad Disciples: Erotic Madness II6
30 The Philosophy of Christ 122
31 The Foolishness of God 124
32 Socrates I27
33 Christian Laughter all but Nipped in the
Bud: Eutrapely Condemned 132
34 The Gospel according to Lucian:
Christianity is once again Stupid and Mad 141
35 Lucian in the Pulpit lSI
36 A Taste of Lucianic Laughter in the
Colloquies 154
37 Laughter in the Annotations 161
38 He who Calleth his Brother a Fool q6
39 Fools in Cap-and-Bells? 186
40 Caps and Bells Sneak In 194
41 Obscure Men 205
42 Dutch Wit, Gallic Licence and the
Liturgical Year 2II
43 Christian Wit and Christian Comedy:
'The Great Jester of France' 220
44 Christian Laughter at Shrove tide 226
45 Seeking for Signs 233
vi
CONTENTS
46 Christian Laughter for Faithful Folk 240
47 Laughter at the Philosophy of Christ 255
48 God's Coadjutors: Deed and Words and
Christian Laughter 262
49 Laughing at Idolatry 278
50 Laughter and Christian Mythology 286
51 Gluttony 289
52 Realist Laughter: Laughter and Eternity 293
53 Charity and Joy 306
Index 315
vii
Illustrations
(PAGES 196-201)
Wisdom preaching from the Stultifera Navis ('Ship of Fools'), 10.
de Olpe, 1497 (reproduced from a copy in the Codrington Library
by courtesy of the Warden and Fellows of All Souls College, Oxford).
Wisdom preaching from Morice encomium ('Praise of Folly'), Theo
dore Martens, Antwerp, 1512 (reproduced by courtesy of the British
Library, London).
An ignorant fool preaching, hiding the truth, from the Stultifera
Navis ('Ship of Fools'), 10. de Olpe, 1497 (reproduced from a copy
in the Codrington Library by courtesy of the Warden and Fellows
of All Souls College, Oxford).
The title page of La Declamation des louenges de follie ('Praise of
Folly'), P. Vidoue for Galiot Du Pre, Paris, 1520.
The Fool and the Astrologer, from the Stultifera Navis ('Ship of
Fools'), 10. de Olpe, 1497 (reproduced from a copy in the Codrington
Library by courtesy of the Warden and Fellows of All Souls College,
Oxford).
The Fool and the Astrologer, from Rabelais, Pantagrueline Prognos
tication, Fran'i=ois Juste, Lyons [I532?] (reproduced from a facsimile
- in fact a forgery - in private possession).
Foreword
Why is it funny to expose one’s genitals or bottom? The Renais-
sance physician Laurent Joubert had an answer: “Because that
action is ugly, yet not worthy of pity, it incites those who see it
to laugh.” In a full-scale Treatise on Laughter, which appeared
in 1579, Joubert developed this thesis at length. He tried to fi x
the boundaries of the laughable. Nothing, he argued, could kill
a good joke like pity. “If someone were to come along and put
a red-hot iron” on the exposed arse, for example, our “laughter
would give way to compassion.” But not every branding of an
exposed buttock would provoke pity. When the hot iron was
applied as the punishment for stupidity and coarseness, its touch
would make the onlookers laugh even harder than the victim’s
bare arse had on its own.
Joubert identifi ed some actions as too harsh ever to be funny:
“If, in order to avoid a greater evil, you desire, with or without his
consent, to excise a man’s penis, it is not possible to laugh because
the ensuing pain by which pity surprises us and checks us as, in an
ecstasy of displeasure, we contemplate that operation.” Readers
of the fi fteenth-century manual on witchcraft, the Malleus malefi -
carum, will recall the striking passages in which its Dominican
authors described castration as a basic practice of witches who
menaced European society.
No social task is harder than explaining a joke to someone
who does not get it. And no intellectual task is harder than trying
to understand what made jokes funny in another society, or in
the earlier history of one’s own. Confronted with an ironic or
ix