Laughter of Sarah

Catherine Conybeare is Professor of Classics at Bryn Mawr College, USA.

• Introduction: Ridebat de Facto Sara 1. Sarah in the Bible: a Peculiar Laugh 2. Sarah, Philo, and the Laugh beyond Laughter 3. Laughter and Power 4. Laughter and the Body 5. Laughter, Volatility, Instability 6. "Empty Speech": Laughter and Language 7. A Time for Laughter

"This is an ingeniously conceived study of a peculiar and peculiarly important phenomenon: the laughter of sheer delight. Conybeare once again shows us the benefits of being able to blend a classicist's discipline of reading with an unfettered philosophical imagination." - James Wetzel, Professor of Philosophy, Villanova University, US "The Laughter of Sarah is a beautifully written, elegantly conceptualized, and wide ranging meditation on what Conybeare dubs "the laughter of delight." Deftly navigating the thought worlds of theorists both ancient and modern, religious and secular, Conybeare shows us a side of laughter that is often neglected - laughter that is joyous, embodied, eruptive, radically open, and thereby also deeply subversive of reigning assumptions about what it means to know, to be, to live, to love." - Virginia Burrus, Professor, Drew University, USA