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Self-referring Deformities: Humour in Early Modern Sermon Literature

Derrin, Daniel

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Abstract

Few studies have addressed comprehensively the place of jesting in early modern pulpit rhetoric. This article documents some of the humour—jests and witty speech—in the period’s extant sermon literature. Specifically it identifies the analytical potential of revisiting an ancient, and early modern, idea: that the laughable is a kind of deformitas (deformity). A standard approach in studies of humour from the early modern period has been to identify ‘scorn’ as its centraI emotional category. However, with reference especially to the sermons of Hugh Latimer in the 1540s and Thomas Adams in the first decades of the seventeenth century, I shall argue that scorn for what is deemed ‘other’, and therefore ‘low’, does not exhaust the range of affective rhetoric achieved by jests against ‘deformities’ in sermons. Pulpit jesting also generates what are called here ‘self-referring’ laughable deformities, with much more complex affective purposes.

Citation

Derrin, D. (2018). Self-referring Deformities: Humour in Early Modern Sermon Literature. Literature and Theology, 32(3), 255-269. https://doi.org/10.1093/litthe/frw039

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Sep 29, 2016
Online Publication Date Dec 10, 2016
Publication Date Sep 1, 2018
Deposit Date Jan 26, 2017
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Literature and Theology
Print ISSN 0269-1205
Electronic ISSN 1477-4623
Publisher Oxford University Press
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 32
Issue 3
Pages 255-269
DOI https://doi.org/10.1093/litthe/frw039

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Copyright Statement
This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in Literature and theology following peer review. The version of record Derrin, Daniel (2018). Self-referring Deformities: Humour in Early Modern Sermon Literature. Literature And Theology 32(3): 255-269 is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1093/litthe/frw039




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