§03§ §16§Laughter and power are here examined in a variety of contexts, ranging from the satires of Renaissance Humanism through to the polemics of contemporary journalism. How do the powerful use laughter as a cultural weapon which reinforces their position? How do the powerless use laughter as a last resort in their self-defence? Sixteenth-century intellectuals applied their satires to a campaign against intolerance. Seventeenth-century absolutism demanded of comedy that it serve its interests. Yet subversive humour survived, even at the court, and led through the Enlightenment to its apogee in the black humour of Sade. Twentieth-century experimental fiction owes that trend a conscious debt. Meanwhile an aesthetic tradition, represented here by Flaubert, Beckett and Queneau, incites a laughter which releases tension rather than raising awareness. As humour theorists, Bergson, Freud and Koestler help focus these concerns. §02§The Editors: John Parkin has lectured at Bristol University on French literature, language and culture since his appointment in 1972. He has published on a range of sixteenth-century authors, especially Rabelais, as well as editing a volume entitled French Humour (1999) and writing a study of Humour Theorists of the Twentieth Century (1997). John Phillips is Professor of French Literature at London Metropolitan University. He has published widely on aspects of both eighteenth- and twentieth-century French literature, especially the French New Novel and the Marquis de Sade. Books include Nathalie Sarraute: Metaphor, Fairy-tale and the Feminine of the Text (1994), Forbidden Fictions: Pornography and Censorship in Twentieth-century French Literature (1999), Sade: The Libertine Novels (2001), How To Read Sade (2005), and The Marquis de Sade: A Very Short Introduction (2005).
