The Humor of Skepticism: Therapeutic Laughter in Early Modern Literature.

Abstract

“The Humor of Skepticism: Therapeutic Laughter in Early Modern Literature” examines how laughter becomes integral to both medical and philosophical conceptions of therapy beginning in mid-sixteenth century France and concluding in the early English Restoration. By foregrounding the therapeutic function of laughter in poetry and prose works of the period, this study argues that early modern thinkers appropriate and ultimately transform the ancient ideal of tranquility or “ataraxia.” Bridging work on the cultural history of the emotions and classical reception, “The Humor of Skepticism” provides new grounds for theorizing early modern affect and epistemology together. Whether laughter helps to regulate the fluctuations of the Galenic humoral body or to ease the perturbations of the soul, it furnishes an imperative to cultivate the self, to interrogate the terms and limits of political engagement, and to renegotiate the role of pleasure in everyday life.

Chapter one locates laughter at the heart of a distinctly early modern skeptical tradition by reading the playful preface to Henri Estienne’s influential translation of the “Outlines of Pyrrhonism” alongside Michel de Montaigne’s “Essays.” Chapters two and three develop the medical and spiritual dimensions of therapeutic laughter by turning respectively to Robert Burton’s “The Anatomy of Melancholy” and a variety of works by John Donne including “The Courtier’s Library,” “Elegy XIX,” “Satire III,” and select sermons. The final chapter considers the role of therapeutic laughter in Lucy Hutchinson’s translation of “De rerum natura” and contrasts the larger impact of Lucretius on her “Order and Disorder” with Milton’s “Paradise Lost.”

Although early modern skepticism has primarily been associated with tragedy, melancholy, and narratives of crisis, this study directs critical attention toward a wider spectrum of emotions including mirth, cheerfulness, and joy. Unlike dominant Christian and Neo-stoic models of emotional management, therapeutic laughter seeks not to control or inhibit the self, but to reconcile its physical and spiritual dimensions. While contemporary theorists have debated laughter’s capacity to resist power or critique ideology, “The Humor of Skepticism” suggests that early modern laughter is often more ethical in nature, tending toward what Michel Foucault has called freedom rather than liberation.