Controlling laughter : political humor in the late Roman Republic / Anthony Corbeill.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Corbeill, Anthony, 1960- author.

Series:

Princeton legacy library.

Princeton Legacy Library

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Political oratory--Rome.

Political oratory.

Political ethics--Rome.

Political ethics.

Politics and culture--Rome.

Politics and culture.

Wit and humor--Social aspects.

Wit and humor.

Rome--Politics and government--Humor.

Rome.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (265 pages).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, 1996.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Although numerous scholars have studied Late Republican humor, this is the first book to examine its social and political context. Anthony Corbeill maintains that political abuse exercised real powers of persuasion over Roman audiences and he demonstrates how public humor both creates and enforces a society's norms.Previous scholarship has offered two explanations for why abusive language proliferated in Roman oratory. The first asserts that public rhetoric, filled with extravagant lies, was unconstrained by strictures of propriety. The second contends that invective represents an artifice borrowed from the Greeks. After a fresh reading of all extant literary works from the period, Corbeill concludes that the topics exploited in political invective arise from biases already present in Roman society. The author assesses evidence outside political discourse-from prayer ritual to philosophical speculation to physiognomic texts-in order to locate independently the biases in Roman society that enabled an orator's jokes to persuade. Within each instance of abusive humor-a name pun, for example, or the mockery of a physical deformity-resided values and preconceptions that were essential to the way a Roman citizen of the Late Republic defined himself in relation to his community.Originally published in 1996.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Introduction

Chapter 1. Physical Peculiarities

Chapter 2. Names and Cognomina

Chapter 3. Moral Appearance in Action: Mouths

Chapter 4. Moral Appearance in Action: Mouths

Chapter 5. A Political History o f Wit

WORKS CITED

INDEX LOCORUM ET IOCORUM

GENERAL INDEX

Backmatter

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780691602233

0691602239

9780691631776

0691631778

9781400872893

1400872898

OCLC:

908042194