Prior to the modern age laughter raised passions and activated the body to sweat and shake. Derision was not distinguished from joy. Deceiving the senses by tricks or funny stories made all people laugh loudly, regardless of class. Johan Verberckmoes describes, in this innovating book, the hotchpotch of comic images and stories in ''Flandes'' during the rule of the Spanish Habsburgs, from 1500 to 1700. It challenges the Bakhtinian idea of a caesura in the history of laughter around 1600.