ABOUT THIS BOOK

Laurent Joubert (b. 1529) was an important figure in the medical world of the French Renaissance. His monumental Treatise on Laughter provides categories and examples of the laughable. The work describes laughter, its causes and effects, its types and differences. His subdivisions and categories, along with their examples, furnish today's critic and reader with a Renaissance vision of comic commonplaces. It is this vision that may prove to be of great value in analyzing comic literature of the Renaissance.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Laurent Joubert (1529–1582) was a French physician who became a significant figure in a movement that sought to challenge medical superstitions and ignorance in France. Busy as he was with the obligations of his practice, Joubert found time to compose several medical works. He wrote voluminously in Latin and in French, edited the important Grande Chirurgie of Guy de Chauliac, and published his Erreurs populaires to considerable scandal. Three years before his death Joubert published his first written and most cherished work, the Traité du Ris, or Treatise on Laughter.

Gregory David de Rocher is an editor and translator of many volumes, including Popular Errors, The Second Part of the Popular Errors, and Rabelais’s Laughers and Joubert’s Traité du Ris. He currently resides in Athens, Georgia.

REVIEWS

“This edition and translation leaves a very favorable impression on the reader. The appearance of this extremely attractive volume is to be welcomed as a useful addition to the material available to students and scholars of the literary and medical history of the Renaissance.”
—Bibliothèque d’'Humanisme et Renaissance
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments
Preface
Introduction
(Brief biography of Joubert. Some of his most important works. Translation from Latin and publication of the treatise. Nature of Joubert’s Treatise on Laughter. Its interest. Joubert’s thought. Joubert’s style. Joubert’s erudition. The present translation. System of notes. Selected bibliography.)
The Treatise on Laughter
Notes
Index of Proper Names and Types of Laughter