Greek Laughter
A Study of Cultural Psychology from Homer to Early Christianity

This book shows how the theme of laughter can shed light on ancient Greek ethical values and attitudes to life.

Stephen Halliwell (Author)

9780521889001, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 2 October 2008

632 pages
23.4 x 15.6 x 4 cm, 1.1 kg

'Stephen Halliwell has written a monumental book on the notoriously volatile and elusive phenomenon of laughter. This book is an extraordinary resource. The trouble with laughter - and the delight of it - is that it impinges on practically every socio-cultural dynamic imaginable. Halliwell has given us a rich and remarkable starting point for thinking about such dynamics. That is why every student of the ancient world should attend this book.' Bryn Mawr Classical Review

The first book to offer an integrated reading of ancient Greek attitudes to laughter. Taking material from various genres and contexts, the book analyses both the theory and the practice of laughter as a revealing expression of Greek values and mentalities. Greek society developed distinctive institutions for the celebration of laughter as a capacity which could bridge the gap between humans and gods; but it also feared laughter for its power to expose individuals and groups to shame and even violence. Caught between ideas of pleasure and pain, friendship and enmity, laughter became a theme of recurrent interest in various contexts. Employing a sophisticated model of cultural history, Stephen Halliwell traces elaborations of the theme in a series of important texts: ranging far beyond modern accounts of 'humour', he shows how perceptions of laughter helped to shape Greek conceptions of the body, the mind and the meaning of life.

1. Introduction
2. Inside and outside morality: the laughter of Homeric gods and men
3. Sympotic elation and resistance to death
4. Ritual laughter and the renewal of life
5. Aischrology, shame and Old Comedy
6. Greek philosophy and the ethics of ridicule
7. Greek laughter and the problem of the absurd
8. The intermittencies of laughter in Menander's social world
9. Lucian and the laughter of life and death
10. Laughter denied, laughter deferred: the antigelastic tendencies of early Christianity
Appendix 1. The Greek (body) language of laughter and smiles
Appendix 2. Gelastic faces in visual art.

Subject Areas: Psychology [JM], Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC], Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1], Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB]