The Humanist Comedy
1st Edition
Published on 27. May 2014
280 pages
978-0-300-20686-9 (ISBN)
Description
For about three thousand years comedy has applied a welcome humanist perspective to the world’s religious beliefs and practices. From the ancient Greek comedies of Aristophanes, the famous poem by Lucretius, and dialogues of Cicero to early modern and Enlightenment essays and philosophical texts, together with the inherent skepticism about life after death in tragicomedies by Plautus, Shakespeare, Molire, and nineteenth-century novels by such as Dickens and Hugo, the literary critic and historian Alexander Welsh analyzes the prevalence of openness of mind and relieving good humor in Western thought.The Humanist Comedy concludes with close examination of a postmodern novel by the Nobel Prize winner Jos Saramago.
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Alexander Welsh
The Humanist Comedy
Book
05/2014
Yale University Press
€34.00
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Alexander Welsh is Emily Sanford Professor Emeritus of English Literature at Yale University. His many publications include The City of Dickens, Reflections on the Hero as Quixote, and Hamlet in His Modern Guises. He lives in Bethany, CT.
Content
- Cover
- SCENES FROM THE COMEDY
- Prologue
- ACT ONE: Laughter at the Gods in Classical Times
- 1. Old Comedy in Aristophanes' Hands
- 2. Lucretius on the Unholy Nature of Things
- 3. Laughter Overheard by Cicero
- 4. Lucian Laughing Outright
- ACT TWO: Humanist Games in Christian Times
- 1. Erasmus's Praise of Folly
- 2. Montaigne's Que sais-je?
- 3. Hobbes's Braving of the Dark
- 4. Spinoza's Deification of the Whole Lot
- 5. Bayle's Send-up of a Comet
- 6. Hume's Jesting with Natural Religion
- 7. Whose Aberglaube?
- ACT THREE: Laughter at the Passing Generations
- 1. New Comedy in the Hands of Plautus and Shakespeare
- 2. Unfailing Impersonations by Molière
- 3. Adaptation of the Tragicomedy by Novelists
- 4. Jesus vs. God in Saramago's Novel
- Notes
- Index
- A
- B
- C
- D
- E
- F
- G
- H
- I
- J
- K
- L
- M
- N
- O
- P
- R
- S
- T
- V
- W
- Y
- Z
