Download or read book Laughter, Jestbooks, and Society in the Spanish Netherlands written by Johan Verberckmoes and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 1999 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prior to the modern age laughter raised passions and activated the body to sweat and shake. Derision was not distinguished from joy. Deceiving the senses by tricks or funny stories made people laugh loudly, high and low class alike. Johan Verberckmoes describes in this innovating book the hodgepodge of comic images and stories in "Flandes" under the rule of the Spanish Habsburgs, from 1500 to 1700. It challenges the Bakhtinian idea of a caesura in the history of laughter around 1600 and pleads to take the laughing body seriously as influencing culture and society in its own right.