The Editors: John Parkin has lectured at Bristol University on French literature, language and culture since his appointment in 1972. He has published on a range of sixteenth-century authors, especially Rabelais, as well as editing a volume entitled French Humour (1999) and writing a study of Humour Theorists of the Twentieth Century (1997).John Phillips is Professor of French Literature at London Metropolitan University. He has published widely on aspects of both eighteenth- and twentieth-century French literature, especially the French New Novel and the Marquis de Sade. Books include Nathalie Sarraute: Metaphor, Fairy-tale and the Feminine of the Text (1994), Forbidden Fictions: Pornography and Censorship in Twentieth-century French Literature (1999), Sade: The Libertine Novels (2001), How To Read Sade (2005), and The Marquis de Sade: A Very Short Introduction (2005).

• Contents: John Parkin/John Phillips: Foreword – Gaëtan Brulotte: Laughing at Power – Barbara Bowen: Obscure Men and Smelly Goats in Neo-Latin Satire – Elizabeth Woodrough: Molière, The Mufti and the Monarch: Laughter and Stage Spectacle in Le Bourgeois gentilhomme – John Phillips: ‘Laugh? I nearly died!’ Humour in Sade’s Fiction – Walter Redfern: A Little Bird Tells Us: Parrots in Flaubert, Queneau, Beckett (and Tutti Quanti) – John Parkin: The Power of Laughter: Koestler on Bergson and Freud – John Phillips: ‘L’insoutenable légèreté du rire’: Laughter and Power in Milan Kundera’s La Lenteur and Vivant Denon’s Point de Lendemain – John Parkin: Doinel dominé: Sexual Humour in Truffaut’s Antoine cycle – Patrick Corcoran: Black Humour: La Vie et demie de Sony Labou Tansi – Jane Weston: Charlie Hebdo and Joyful Resistance.