Controlling Laughter: Political Humor in the Late Roman Republic

by Anthony Corbeill

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0691602239
• ISBN13: 9780691602233
• Release Date: March 2015
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Length: 266 Pages
• Weight: 0.83 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.1" x 9.2"