From Sir Thomas More to Robert Burton: the laughing philosopher in the early modern period

Abstract

The serio-comic persona of the philosopher in the early modern period was adopted by many humanist authors with enormous enthusiasm. In the ancient satiric traditions of Old Comedy, Horatian and Juvenalian satire, and Menippean and Lucianic satire, Italian and northern European humanists found a wealth of argumentative strategies that could be deployed against rival schools of philosophy and theology. Such strategies also served to criticise abuses of power perpetrated by princes and popes, magistrates, councillors, scholastic theologians and lawyers. The satiric forms, adapted to contemporary circumstances, had as their fundamental purpose the censure of the guilty and the unmasking of truth. If the aim was serious, the ludus guaranteed the effect. But the use of such serio-comic forms of writing could be as dangerous to the humanist philosopher as to the ancient satirist, despite the distancing techniques of the mask. Juan Luis Vives, glossing Augustine's De civitate Dei on classical Greek and Roman satire, explained both the value and the dangers posed by unfettered freedom of speech to the polis or respublica , and to the satirist himself. Vives was friend to the Dutch Erasmus, and the English courtiers Sir Thomas More and Richard Pace, all associated with the English court of Henry VIII and all aware of the necessity for liberty of speech in promoting a healthy and united Christian commonwealth and of the constraints placed upon that liberty in the papal and secular monarchies of their time.

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