Laughter is a way of expressing one's emotion and also a physiological phenomenon, but sometimes it is more than just this kind of individual definition and carries historical significance as a collective and social expression. Laughter was most feare ...
Laughter is a way of expressing one's emotion and also a physiological phenomenon, but sometimes it is more than just this kind of individual definition and carries historical significance as a collective and social expression. Laughter was most feared by western logic and rhetoric which have been abandoned for two thousands years and in fact, laughter played an essential role in logic and rhetoric-based western totalitarian history being reborn into individualistic history. Laughter suppressed in totalitarian era had spread out into whole society with liberal way of thinking brought by the Renaissance. The sense of absolute values that had suppressed the society for more than one thousand years was collapsed when people started laughing at it. Laughter easily demolished the western medieval fortress built with logic and rhetoric, and it served to enlighten people on the dignity of mankind and the value of their freedom. In this study, we are searching for examples of how the power of laughter functions specifically in French literature in the seventeenth century. Laughter created by comedy and parody novel greatly differs from farcical laughter. Modern comedy was reborn along with the Renaissance and then grew up into a genre that is comparably as good as tragedy in terms of form and aesthetics. It carried out a social duty of forming conceptual bonds in the main body for the French revolution as it passed through the eighteenth century Baumarche. In another words, in the process of forming a modernized society in Europe, a comedy not only offered trivial laughter but it played a crucial role in reflecting life of that society on stage and forming new consciousness of members of that society.
In addition to a comedy, this power of laughter can be felt more directly through a genre, known as a novel. In fact, freedom of ideological expression was restricted in a comedy, which was the most popular literary genre in the seventeenth century. Because the anonymity of an author, who wrote a comedy for public performance, was not guaranteed, censorship could not be overlooked in totalitarian structure. On the other hand, a novel was a genre in which authors could express their thoughts without restraint. The fact that a large number of novels were written by anonymous authors in the seventeenth century, indicates that novels were used for expressing inner thoughts or desires of the authors.
These laughters were one of the ways of expressing modern consciousness which was based on epistemological skepticism that occurred inevitably when fabrication of christian view of the world has emerged after the Renaissance. In the seventeenth century, the authors of litterature comique laughed at the formation of feudalistic reactionary power against the Renaissance revolution. In another words, they did not use one logic for another to confront irrationality and falsehood. Instead, they made use of laughter, which is a physiological phenomenon. Laughter has a power to destroy at once the opinions armed with so called logic. After the Renaissance, with the power of laughter to skillfully avoid danger that could create ideological dispute, European modern comedy has denounced virtual image of strict Christian moral code, overflowing mannerism in society, values that are fabricated, and myth making by ruling class.