Laughter, Jestbooks and Society in the Spanish Netherlands / by Johan Verberckmoes

London : Palgrave Macmillan UK : Imprint: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999. 1st edition. Hardcover. Fine cloth copy in an equally fine dust-wrapper. Particularly well-preserved overall; tight, bright, clean and especially sharp-cornered. Physical description; 214 pp. Notes; Includes bibliographical references and index. Contents; Introduction : historical laughter -- Land of cockaigne. A laughing emperor ; Ulenspieghel ; Fooling by numbers ; Guessing and laughing ; Printed jests ; The social circulation of laughter -- Laughter embodied. Physiognomy and the decorum of the body ; Smiling ; Shaking ; True and false laughter ; The whims of the laughing body -- A cure for the civilized. Chasing melancholy ; The seriousness of monkeys ; Civilized joking ; Learning to laugh -- The politics of joking. The white god ; 1566 and all that ; Vive les Gueux ; communities of laughter -- Entremets : turning Bakhtin upside down ; Bakhtin and the history of laughter ; does laughter have a history at all? -- Censoring lies. Against laughter ; Against comic books ; Against bared bottoms -- Jestbooks in the Spanish Netherlands. Editions and readers ; Under pressure -- Counter Reformation humour. Festivals and households ; Adulteresses and cuckolds ; Inns and churches ; Princes and dwarfs ; the discipline of laughter -- Postscript : Hispanic Flemish Hotchpotch. Subjects; Europe-History. History, Modern. Intellectual life. Dutch literature 1500-1800 History and criticism. Sociology. Humor. Netherlands History Eighty Years' War, 1568-1648. Netherlands Civilization Spanish influences.