| Sumario: | Moore sets out to show how sardonic laughter is used in The Life of Saint Mary, The Life of Saint Sebastian and The Life of Saint Lawrence to assert the superiority of the righteous over the unrighteous. He utilizes Thomas Hobbes' superiority theory of humor and relies on close reading to explicate these texts. The Life of Saint Mary and The Life of Saint Sebastian were translated from Latin into Old English by Bishop Ælfric circa 1000 A.D. and included in his Lives of Saints and Catholic Homilies. Although The Life of Saint Mary of Egypt is included in Walter Skeat's edition of Lives of Saints, Ælfric did not translate the Latin text, perhaps because of the nearly heretical subject matter-a vita surrounding the life of a reformed prostitute who subsequently runs around naked in the deserts of Egypt for many years.
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