Laughter in Ancient Rome: On Joking, Tickling, and Cracking Up (Sather Classical Lectures) Hardcover – June 25, 2014
by Mary Beard (Author)
What made the Romans laugh? Was ancient Rome a carnival, filled with practical jokes and hearty chuckles? Or was it a carefully regulated culture in which the uncontrollable excess of laughter was a force to fear—a world of wit, irony, and knowing smiles? How did Romans make sense of laughter? What role did it play in the world of the law courts, the imperial palace, or the spectacles of the arena?
Laughter in Ancient Rome explores one of the most intriguing, but also trickiest, of historical subjects. Drawing on a wide range of Roman writing—from essays on rhetoric to a surviving Roman joke book—Mary Beard tracks down the giggles, smirks, and guffaws of the ancient Romans themselves. From ancient “monkey business” to the role of a chuckle in a culture of tyranny, she explores Roman humor from the hilarious, to the momentous, to the surprising. But she also reflects on even bigger historical questions. What kind of history of laughter can we possibly tell? Can we ever really “get” the Romans’ jokes?
Editorial Reviews
Review
“'Laughter in Ancient Rome: On Joking, Tickling, and Cracking Up,' which has just been published, is an engaging exploration of what made the Romans laugh—bad breath, among other things—but it also explores dimensions of Roman sensibility that have become elusive to us."
(Rebecca Mead New Yorker 2014-09-01)
"Few things are more tiresome than seeing a joke analyzed. . . . Beard’s book avoids pedantry but also its opposite, the archness that preens itself on 'not taking humor too seriously' and signals inane wordplays with 'pun intended!' More importantly, her treatment makes one look with new eyes . . . even at works she does not herself discuss . . . [a] stimulating book."
(Gregory Hays New York Review of Books 2014-07-10)
"[Beard] makes the Romans come alive and through them, gets readers to ponder that most fundamental and uniquely human facility—laughter. The phenomenal Ms. Beard has written another cracking book, one of her best, I think."
(Yasmin Alibhai-Brown The Independent 2014-05-29)
"Expect to be engaged by an enthralling book."
(Harry Mount The Spectator 2014-06-07)
"[Beard's] central question is simple: what made the Romans laugh? Her answers are pleasingly complex. . . . Beard is always enlightening, and writes with a perfect balance of forensic detail and wide-ranging intellect." (The Scotsman 2014-06-15)
"Superbly acute and unashamedly complex. . . . To our vision of the solemn grandeur that was Rome, she restores a raucous, ghostly laughter."
(Iona McLaren The Telegraph 2014-07-01)
"Written in Beard's trademark combination of erudition and effortless prose, Laughter in Ancient Rome is a fascinating combination of history, psychology, linguistic exploration and humor. This is scholarly writing at its best."
(Pamela Toler Shelf Awareness for Readers 2014-07-01)
"You can read hundreds of books on Roman emperors and conquests; this represents a valiant attempt to bring a little understanding of a smaller, but no less important, part of what made Rome run."
(Rob Hardy Columbus Commercial Dispatch 2014-07-21)
"Rich and provocative."
(Roy Gibson TLS 2014-08-13)
From the Inside Flap
“Laughter in Ancient Rome is a masterwork, simultaneously a sophisticated work of historical and literary scholarship and an unputdownable read. Beard never loses sight of the specificities of Roman culture, yet she encompasses an extraordinary range of ancient and modern theorizing. Her book will appeal to psychologists and anthropologists, as well as to classicists and indeed anyone who has ever thought about the much-debated question of why we laugh.”
—William V. Harris, William R. Shepherd Professor of History at Columbia University, and author of Dreams and Experience in Classical Antiquity
“With a bounty of suggestive and unfailingly intelligent conclusions about the situation of laughter within ancient Roman culture, Beard’s remarkable learning is displayed on every page. Laughter in Ancient Rome is unmistakably a work of scholarship, but it is also an unpretentious and inviting exploration available to anyone who is interested. As a literary attainment, this book is marvelous.”
—Dylan Sailor, Associate Professor of Classics at University of California, Berkeley
Product Details
Series: Sather Classical Lectures (Book 71)
Hardcover: 336 pages
Publisher: University of California Press (June 25, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0520277163
ISBN-13: 978-0520277168
Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
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