Castigating Comedy: Sardonic Laughter and the French Wars of Religion

Professor E. Bruce Hayes is Associate Professor of French and Chair of the Department of French and Italian at the University of Kansas. A world-renowned specialist of farce in the late Middle-Ages and the Renaissance and François Rabelais, he is the author of Rabelais's Radical Farce. LateMedieval Comic Theater and Its Function in Rabelais (Ashgate, 2010). He is also the author of numerous articles and book chapters, and the co-editor of a Special Issue of Yale French Studies celebrating the scholarship of Edwin Duval. His presentation tonight is taken from his current book project, Castigating Comedy: Polemical Humor during and before the French Wars of Religion.