Laughter in Ancient Rome: On Joking, Tickling, and Cracking Up

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 Best Read [ Laughter in Ancient Rome: On Joking, Tickling, and Cracking Up ] By [ Mary Beard ] For Kindle ePUB or eBook – kino-fada.fr I thought I d give Beard another shot after Confronting the Classics left me so cold and sick to my stomach, after reading her commentary on the eroticism of pedagogy My mistake Beard manages the signal accomplishment of making a book on laughter boring and impenetrable Again, she focuses on theory and academic debates, instead of getting to the heart of what readers care about and what the book falsely promises an examination of what made the Romans laugh, and what laughter meant to I thought I d give Beard another shot after Confronting the Classics left me so cold and sick to my stomach, after reading her commentary on the eroticism of pedagogy My mistake Beard manages the signal accomplishment of making a book on laughter boring and impenetrable Again, she focuses on theory and academic debates, instead of getting to the heart of what readers care about...Holy crap Mary Beard has a true gift for making things people thought they knew practically unrecognizable This time the study is Roman laughter but evenbroadly speaking, the idea of laughter as a field of historical inquiry whether to study the practice of laughter itself or simply the theories, again she doesn t exactly know There are about a million questions raised in this book, some of them are incredibly introspective and made my head spin when considering For example Is Holy crap Mary Beard has a true gift for making things people thought they knew practically unrecognizable This time the study is Roman laughter but evenbroadly speaking, the idea of laughter as a field of historical inquiry whether to study the practice of laughter itself or simply the theories, again she do...I d previously heard Mary Beard interviewed on radio and had therefore picked up and read her book on Roman triumphs This new title came as a gift from a Canadian bookseller friend.If you re expecting to join in the hilarity of the ancients, I doubt that this book will do the trick Only four of the jokes quoted within elicited anything approaching a chuckle from me This, of course, raises the issue of the appropriation of meaning between distant cultures, a matter Beard treats at some length, I d previously heard M...This is a largely academic but entertaining account of laughter in Rome It s very engaged with the secondary literature, often in a disputatious manner Beard is also clearly in possession of a magisterial knowledge of primary source materials, and she hops around in time to marshal evidence to her points She includes a decent survey and treatment on theories of laughter, but she remains agnostic about universalist accounts The reason this book is extremely my s t is that Beard traces in a This is a largely academic but entertaining account of laughter in Rome It s very engaged with the secondary literature, often in a disputatious manner Beard is also clearly in possession of a magisterial knowledge of primary source materials, an...I found this to be an entertaining read with a great deal of historical detail The Romans, in a sense p 209 , invented the joke This is just great p 8than four hundred years earlier, seems to refer to from 161 BCE to 192 CE p 1 which I would think is 353 years, which, again, I would think is LESS than 400 years Professor Beard was incredibly gracious and thanked me for my correction My daughter disagrees, but I am now claiming that I have made a contribution to classical I found this to be an entertaining read with a great deal of historical detail The Romans, in a sense p 209 , invented the joke This is just great p 8than four hundred years earlier, seems to refer to from 161 BCE to 192 CE p 1 which I would think is 353 years, which, again, I would think is LESS than 400 years Professor Beard was incredibly gracious and thanked me for my correct...I just finished Beard s fascinating book Full disclosure, I am writing a book on laughter and humor lh This is an extant from a larger essay in which I take issue with Beard s view that a universal theory of lh is possible Is laughter and humor a feature of human nature It is, but there is little collaboration among s...I enjoyed this book It s really an academic assessment of humour as a way of better understanding certain aspects of Roman society I suppose we can only guess at what role humour really played as sources are limited but it s interesting to see all the ...This is one of my favorite kinds of history books the kind where the historian writing the book is ready to get in the ring and box it out with other historians over difference of opinions on historical theories Fight for the knife I don t think anyone can beat the Tudor historians for taking things to a personal level although the Richard III historians debating did he or didn t he come close but here we get the great twist of Mary Beard trying to be above it all, merely reporting how all This is one of my favorite kinds of history books the kind where the historian writing the book is ready to get in the ring and box it out with other historians over difference of opinions on historical theories Fight for the knife I don t think anyone can beat the Tudor historians for taking things to a personal level alth...This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers To view it, click here Theories of laughter superiority, incongruity, psychic release and its paradoxes can include and exclude people, can be controlled and politicised or uncontrollable, means of socially policing those who do not conform but also of resisting and challenging boundaries very meaningful, but essentially nonsensical universal, but uncontrollable laughter depends on individual s assumptions and experiences, controlled socially encouraged laughter depend...It reads like a collection of lectures, which is how it started life It can be repetitive and disjointed, but in the end the topic is so interesting how do we reconstruct the sound of ancient laughter that Beard carries it off very well As most of her work seems to do, this speaks to tropes in the modern world almost as much as the ancient Not an easy read by any means, despite occasionally sounding off handed and snarky which mostly...

• English
• 07 October 2018
Mary Beard
• Hardcover
• 336 pages
• 0520277163
• Mary Beard
• Laughter in Ancient Rome: On Joking, Tickling, and Cracking Up