Abstract
Groin hernia was an object of visual and verbal humor during the Roman Imperial age, late antiquity and beyond. This paper examines the hernia jokes in scoptic epigrams and the Philogelos in the light of Bakhtin’s views on the grotesque body. It will be argued that the jokes are revealing of anxiety over this common condition and that their comicality had a therapeutic effect.
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Copyright 2019 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
2019
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