Crush the Infamous Thing

From Rabelais to Voltaire, French laughter did more than amuse: it fought. This book dismantles ridicule as an intellectual weapon, its mechanisms, its targets, its registers, through seven masters: Rabelais and cosmic irony, Pascal and cold irony, Molière, La Fontaine, Fontenelle, Voltaire, and Diderot. Its thesis: the weapon of ridicule is technically separable from the cause it serves. The same device that defends a faith can be turned to attack it; laughter is a tool, not a morality. A comparative anatomy in five dimensions, followed by a reflection on what ridicule cannot do.

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