Laughter At The Foot Of The Cross

 “Christian laughter is a maze: you could easily get snarled up within it.” So says Michael A. Screech in his note to readers preceding this collection of fifty-three elegant and pithy essays. As Screech reveals, the question of whether laughter is acceptable to the god of the Old and New Testaments is a dangerous one. But we are fortunate in our g

Table of Contents:
To the Reader -- A Note on Translations -- Introduction -- Laughter is the Property of Man -- Laughter in an Evil World -- Christian Humanists -- Jewish and Gentile 'Schoolmasters' -- The Mocking of the Crucified King -- The Old Testament Gospel -- Words and their Meanings -- The Mocking of Christ in the Old Testament -- Unholy Railing -- Good Holy Railing -- Diasyrm -- A God who Laughs to Scorn -- Erasmus on Diasyrm -- The Laughter of Jesus and the Laughter of the Father in the New Testament -- More Irony from Jesus -- Pitiless Laughter at Ugliness -- Ignorance or Madness? The Importance of a Gamma -- Madman Laughs at Madman -- Laughing at Christ and Laughing at Carabba -- Laughing Back -- Christ as Divine Madman -- Madness Providentially Feigned by David: a Silenus -- Theophylact and a Lunatic's Chains -- Laughing with the Great Cardinal of Saint-Cher -- Jesus in Ecstatic Madness -- Lessons in Exegesis -- Plato and Christian Madness -- Drunk with God and Drunk with Wine -- Christ's Mad Disciples: Erotic Madness -- The Philosophy of Christ -- The Foolishness of God -- Socrates -- Christian Laughter all but Nipped in the Bud: Eutrapely Condemned -- The Gospel according to Lucian: Christianity is once again Stupid and Mad -- Lucian in the Pulpit -- A Taste of Lucianic Laughter in the Colloquies -- Laughter in the Annotations -- He who Calleth his Brother a Fool -- Fools in Cap-and-Bells? -- Caps and Bells Sneak In -- Obscure Men -- Dutch Wit, Gallic Licence and the Liturgical Year -- Christian Wit and Christian Comedy: 'The Great Jester of France' -- Christian Laughter at Shrovetide -- Seeking for Signs -- Christian Laughter for Faithful Folk -- Laughter at the Philosophy of Christ -- God's Coadjutors: Deed and Words and Christian Laughter -- Laughing at Idolatry -- Laughter and Christian Mythology -- Gluttony -- Realist Laughter: Laughter and Eternity -- Charity and Joy

About the Author :
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.