The Laughter of Sarah

The laughter of delight has gone unheard in the Western tradition. This work brings new light to the notion, and has a consistent leitmotif: the delighted laughter of the matriarch Sarah in the book of Genesis, when she gives birth to her son Isaac. This laughter is "heard" through biblical commentaries and twentieth-century theorists of laughter.

"This is an ingeniously conceived study of a peculiar and peculiarly important phenomenon: the laughter of sheer delight. Conybeare once again shows us the benefits of being able to blend a classicist's discipline of reading with an unfettered philosophical imagination." - James Wetzel, Professor of Philosophy, Villanova University, US

"The Laughter of Sarah is a beautifully written, elegantly conceptualized, and wide ranging meditation on what Conybeare dubs "the laughter of delight." Deftly navigating the thought worlds of theorists both ancient and modern, religious and secular, Conybeare shows us a side of laughter that is often neglected - laughter that is joyous, embodied, eruptive, radically open, and thereby also deeply subversive of reigning assumptions about what it means to know, to be, to live, to love." - Virginia Burrus, Professor, Drew University, USA

Autorentext
Catherine Conybeare is Professor of Classics at Bryn Mawr College, USA.

Inhalt
Introduction: Ridebat de Facto Sara 1. Sarah in the Bible: a Peculiar Laugh 2. Sarah, Philo, and the Laugh beyond Laughter 3. Laughter and Power 4. Laughter and the Body 5. Laughter, Volatility, Instability 6. "Empty Speech": Laughter and Language 7. A Time for Laughter