{"product_id":"laughter-moliere-weapon-the-powerful-cannot-confiscate-paris-ad-1664-9798195715861","title":"Laughter: Molière Weapon the Powerful Cannot Confiscate Paris AD 1664","description":"\u003cp\u003e • Author(s): Michael McGilbourne\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher: Independently Published\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher Imprint: Independently Published\u003cbr\u003e • BISAC: Historical - Renaissance\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eMoli�re Weapon the Powerful Cannot Confiscate Paris AD 1664\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis book takes you to one of the most electrifying moments in that story.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eParis, France. AD 1664.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eA playwright writes a comedy about a holy man who is not holy.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe Archbishop of Paris threatens excommunication for anyone who watches it.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe King laughs - then bans it anyway.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eFor five years, the most dangerous play in France cannot be performed.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe man who wrote it dies on stage, playing a hypochondriac, genuinely dying.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Church denied him a Christian burial. The King intervened. He was buried in the dark, without ceremony, in a piece of ground obtained by supplication.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe arguments about what comedy can and cannot say have never stopped.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eLaughter\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e asks what it would have meant to be inside that moment.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNot as a king. Not as an Archbishop. But as the ordinary woman - the laundress who stood in the cheap section of the Palais-Royal and watched a banned play finally performed - and laughed before she had decided to.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWhat does it cost an ordinary person to see clearly in a world organized around the performance of surfaces?\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWhat is the difference between a holy man and a man who has learned to \u003ci\u003espeak\u003c\/i\u003e holiness - when everyone around him cannot tell?\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eCan a laugh do what an argument cannot?\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe facts are extraordinary enough.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003ci\u003eTartuffe\u003c\/i\u003e was written in 1664, banned within days of its first performance, rewritten twice, banned twice, and finally permitted in 1669 - five years later.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe Archbishop threatened excommunication not just for watching the play, but for reading it, or speaking of it favorably.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMoli�re wrote to the King: \u003ci\u003e\"To condemn a portrait of a hypocrite is not to defend holiness. It is to defend the hypocrite.\"\u003c\/i\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe word \u003ci\u003etartuffe\u003c\/i\u003e entered the French language as a common noun within Moli�re's lifetime. It is still in the dictionary.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe streets of the Left Bank smelled of river cold and bread smoke and the waste of ten thousand households sharing a city that had not yet solved the problem of where to put what it produced. A woman woke before dawn and built her fire. She had never been to the theatre. A ticket arrived on her windowsill.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThey were asking the same questions we ask. They performed something that is still performing itself - in every room where power has learned to speak the language of virtue. This book is the attempt of one ordinary witness - a woman who understood things by seeing them clearly - to answer.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eFor homeschooling families: \u003c\/b\u003e You are already doing the most important thing - putting the story of humanity directly into your children's hands. The \u003ci\u003eBeyond His Story We Stand\u003c\/i\u003e series was written for you. Each book takes one moment in human history and makes it lived rather than memorised, felt rather than filed away. Not a textbook. Not a syllabus. A story your child will not want to put down - and that will leave them asking the questions that no curriculum can generate for them. \u003ci\u003eThe questions that only wonder produces.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eLaughter\u003c\/i\u003e - part of the \u003cb\u003eBeyond His Story We Stand\u003c\/b\u003e series - a chronological journey through human history, told through the eyes of the people official history forgot to record.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe laugh cannot be arrested.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cb\u003eIt had already happened before the ban was issued.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cb\u003eIt is still happening.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Independently Published","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":47882736074903,"sku":"9798195715861","price":1264.0,"currency_code":"INR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0666\/3471\/1191\/files\/9798195715861.webp?v=1781096664","url":"https:\/\/atlanticbooks.com\/products\/laughter-moliere-weapon-the-powerful-cannot-confiscate-paris-ad-1664-9798195715861","provider":"Atlantic Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}