Laughter, Jestbooks and Society in the Spanish Netherlands

by Verberckmoes, Johan

• ISBN13: 9780312216092
• ISBN10: 0312216092
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 1999-02-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Prior to the modern age laughter raised passions and activated the body to sweat and shake. Derision was not distinguished from joy. Deceiving the senses by tricks or funny stories made people laugh loudly, high and low class alike. Johan Verberckmoes describes in this innovating book the hodgepodge of comic images and stories in "Flandes" under the rule of the Spanish Habsburgs, from 1500 to 1700. It challenges the Bakhtinian idea of a caesura in the history of laughter around 1600 and pleads to take the laughing body seriously as influencing culture and society in its own right.

Author Biography

Johan Verberckmoes is Lecturer in the History Department at the University of Leuven, Belgium.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Introduction: Historical Laughter	1	(7)
1 Land of Cockaigne	8	(30)
A Laughing Emperor	10	(2)
Ulenspieghel	12	(6)
Fooling by Numbers	18	(5)
Guessing and Laughing	23	(3)
Printed Jests	26	(5)
The Social Circulation of Laughter	31	(7)
2 Laughter Embodied	38	(21)
Physiognomy and the Decorum of the Body	38	(4)
Smiling	42	(3)
Shaking	45	(4)
True and False Laughter	49	(4)
The Whims of the Laughing Body	53	(6)
3 A Cure for the Civilized	59	(24)
Chasing Melancholy	60	(3)
The Seriousness of Monkeys	63	(4)
Civilized Joking	67	(5)
Learning to Laugh	72	(11)
4 The Politics of Joking	83	(26)
The White God	85	(7)
1566 and All That	92	(4)
Vive les Gueux	96	(4)
Communities of Laughter	100	(9)
5 Entremets: Turning Bakht in upside down	109	(13)
Bakhtin and the History of Laughter	109	(5)
Does Laughter have a History at All?	114	(8)
6 Censoring Lies	122	(17)
Against Laughter	123	(5)
Against Comic Books	128	(4)
Against Bared Bottoms	132	(7)
7 Jestbooks in the Spanish Netherlands	139	(15)
Editions and Readers	139	(6)
Under Pressure	145	(9)
8 Counter Reformation Humour	154	(27)
Festivals and Households	155	(4)
Adulteresses and Cuckolds	159	(4)
Inns and Churches	163	(4)
Princes and Dwarfs	167	(5)
The Discipline of Laughter	172	(9)
Postscript: Hispanic Flemish Hotchpotch	181	(5)
Bibliography	186	(23)
Index	209