Abstract
This essay analyzes More’s use of humor in The Sadness of Christ and A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation, and finds that rhetorical devices such as satire, parody and the telling of merry tales play an integral role in engaging the reader’s imagination. In these two late works, dealing with the most serious of subjects, the humanist More embraces the rhetorical tradition of Antiquity which assigned a creative function to the imagination and recognized mockery, irony and humor as means of rational persuasion. The essay finds that More provokes laughter for three interrelated aims—to correct and inform the understanding, to strengthen communal bonds, and ultimately to express the joyful hope of the beatific vision.
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