Thomas More's Humor in his Religious Polemics
Thomas More's humor was influenced by his studies of Greek Old and New Comedy and Lucian's Dialogues. He was fascinated by the multiple ways human follies could be exposed to provoke laughter. Although aware of the anti-laughter tradition of the Early Church Fathers, he asserted that the...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Edinburgh University Press
[2016]
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| In: |
Moreana
Year: 2016, Volume: 53, Issue: 1/2, Pages: 7-50 |
| Further subjects: | B
Lutheran heresies
B Religious Polemics B Lucian B Lucian's Dialogues B Catholic doctrine B Martin Luther B Simon Fish B William Tyndale B Anticlericalism B Greek Old Comedy B Humor B Thomas More |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | Thomas More's humor was influenced by his studies of Greek Old and New Comedy and Lucian's Dialogues. He was fascinated by the multiple ways human follies could be exposed to provoke laughter. Although aware of the anti-laughter tradition of the Early Church Fathers, he asserted that the intellectual, moral, and spiritual superiority of the man who laughed justified using humor to provoke critical laughter as an effective rhetorical strategy to ridicule the comic incongruities and corruption of the inferior man who was laughed at. In his religious polemics: Responsio ad Lutherum, Supplication of Souls, Dialogue Concerning Heresies, and Confutation of Tyndale's Answer, More enjoyed using invectives, lampoons, and scholastic parody to denigrate Lutherans and their heretical doctrines. He considered laughter an appropriate response to heresy, and his vituperative humor provided a rhetorical punishment of derision as an alternative to the horrifying physical punishment of execution proscribed for heretics. More’s humor was intended to discourage his readers from accepting Lutheran doctrines, but it also invited them to share his joyful superior affirmation of faith in the tenets of the Catholic Church that will lead them to “the eternal merriment of heaven.” |
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| ISSN: | 2398-4961 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Moreana
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.3366/more.2016.53.1-2.3 |