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Dwelling on the interconnections between parody and festivity as forms of inversion, the essays in this volume delve into the nature and the meanings of festive laughter as depicted in early modern art. Chapters deal most often with Northern Renaissance and Baroque art; themes include grobianism and the grotesque, scatology, popular proverbs with ironic twists, and a wide range of comic reversals, many hinging on ideas of the world upside down.
List of contents
Contents: Sociable laughter, deep laughter, David R. Smith; In praise of folly, Paul Barolsky; Drinking as gods, laughing as men: Velázquez and the gift of Bacchus, Aneta Georgievska-Shine; Hunter rabbits/hares in 15th- and 16th-century northern art: parody and carnival?, Diane Scillia; The early modern lottery in the Netherlands: charity as festival and parody, Jane Kromm; Truth in painting - comedic resolution in Breugel's Landscape with the Magpie on the Gallows, Catherine Levesque; Parody, proverb, and paradox in two late works by Pieter Breugel the Elder, David A. Levine; Exuberant gluttony: Breugel's overeaters, Yemi Onafuwa; Bakhtinian carnivalesque in the clown images of Rouault, Soo Y. Kang; Parodies of life: Baccio del Bianco's comic drawings of dwarfs, Sandra Cheng; Jan van der Heyden's Feast of Purim, David R. Smith; Le Cedille qui Sourit: aesthetic research under the 'sign of humor', Rosemary O'Neill; General bibliography; Index.
About the author
David R. Smith is Professor of Art History at the University of New Hampshire, USA.
