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.

What made the Romans laugh? Was ancient Rome a carnival, filled with practical jokes and hearty chuckles? Or was it a carefully regulated culture in which the uncontrollable excess of laughter was a force to fear—a world of wit, irony, and knowing smiles? How did Romans make sense of laughter? What role did it play in the world of the law courts, the imperial palace, or the spectacles of the arena? Laughter in Ancient Rome explores one of the most intriguing, but also trickiest, of historical subjects. Drawing on a wide range of Roman writing—from essays on rhetoric to a surviving Roman joke book—Mary Beard tracks down the giggles, smirks, and guffaws of the ancient Romans themselves. From ancient “monkey business” to the role of a chuckle in a culture of tyranny, she explores Roman humor from the hilarious, to the momentous, to the surprising. But she also reflects on even bigger historical questions. What kind of history of laughter can we possibly tell? Can we ever really “get” the Romans’ jokes?

Dr. Brian King is a psychologist and stand-up comedian whose humor therapy seminars are attended by more than ten thousand people each year. In The Laughing Cure, King combines wit with medical research to reveal the benefits of laughter and humor on physical and emotional health. King’s language is humorous and uplifting, and his advice is backed by science. Studies featured in The Laughing Cure show how laughter lowers blood pressure, reduces stress hormones, increases muscle flexion, boosts immune systems, and triggers endorphins. They show how laughter relieves depression, and even makes us more productive, loving, and kind. The tips and techniques featured inside can be used for current conditions and as preventative medicine. Through humor and science King explains why much–talked-about but little-understood methods of therapy such as laughter yoga actually work and how we can better incorporate humor into our lives. Very few doctors have the ability to heal the way that King does; his method is cheap, easy, and chemical-free. Even fun! This wonderful, transformative, and provocative read shows how—and why—laughter saves lives.

Solve toddler challenges with eight key mindshifts that will help you parent with clarity, calmness, and self-control. In Why is My Child in Charge?, Claire Lerner shows how making critical mindshifts—seeing children’s behaviors through a new lens —empowers parents to solve their most vexing childrearing challenges. Using real life stories, Lerner unpacks the individualized process she guides parents through to settle common challenges, such as throwing tantrums in public, delaying bedtime for hours, refusing to participate in family mealtimes, and resisting potty training. Lerner then provides readers with a roadmap for how to recognize the root cause of their child’s behavior and how to create and implement an action plan tailored to the unique needs of each child and family. Why is My Child in Charge? is like having a child development specialist in your home. It shows how parents can develop proven, practical strategies that translate into adaptable, happy kids and calm, connected, in-control parents.

Part road-trip comedy and part social science experiment, a scientist and a journalist travel the globe to discover the secret behind what makes things funny, questioning countless experts, including Louis C.K., along the way.

In this fresh, accessible, and beautifully illustrated book, his third to examine an aspect of Roman visual culture, John R. Clarke explores the question, "What made Romans laugh?" Looking at Laughter examines a heterogeneous corpus of visual material, from the crudely obscene to the exquisitely sophisticated and from the playful to the deadly serious—everything from street theater to erudite paintings parodying the emperor. Nine chapters, organized under the rubrics of Visual Humor, Social Humor, and Sexual Humor, analyze a wide range of visual art, including wall painting, sculpture, mosaics, and ceramics. Archaeological sites, as well as a range of ancient texts, inscriptions, and graffiti, provide the background for understanding the how and why of humorous imagery. This entertaining study offers fascinating insights into the mentality of Roman patrons and viewers who enjoyed laughing at the gods, the powers-that-be, and themselves.

Using Lacanian psychoanalysis, as well as its pre-history and afterlives, In the Event of Laughter argues for a new framework for discussing laughter. Responding to a tradition of 'comedy studies' that has been interested only in the causes of laughter (in why we laugh), it proposes a different relationship between laughter and causality. Ultimately it argues that laughter is both cause and effect, troubling chronological time and asking for a more nuanced way of conceiving the relationship between subjects and their laughter than existing theories have accounted for. Making this visible via psychoanalytic ideas of retroactivity, Alfie Bown explores how laughter – far from being a mere response to a stimulus – changes the relationship between the present, the past and the future. Bown investigates this hypothesis in relation to a range of comic texts from the 'history of laughter,' discussing Chaucer, Shakespeare, Kafka and Chaplin, as well as lesser-known but vital figures from the comic genre.