This book presents a collection of essays that shows that Renaissance thinkers revived ancient ideas about what inspires laughter and whether it could ever truly be innocent. It reveals the question of whether laughter is acceptable to the God of the Old and New Testaments is a dangerous one.
Biography
M. A. 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. His other books include Erasmus: Ecstasy and the Praise of Folly (Penguin, 1988), Rabelais and Montaigne and Melancholy. All are acknowledged to be classics in their fields. In Latin, he is the editor, with Anne Screech, of Erasmus' Annotations on the New Testament (in three volumes). His highly acclaimed edition of Montaigne's Complete Essays is published in Penguin Classics. Michael Screech was promoted Chevalier dans l'Ordre du Merite in 1982 and Chevalier dans la Legion d'Honneur in 1992.. He was ordained, in Oxford, a deacon in 1993 and a priest in 1994.