Fordham University Masthead Logo DigitalResearch@Fordham Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Philosophy Collections 2006 Nietzsche’s “Gay” Science Babette Babich Fordham University,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://fordham.bepress.com/phil_babich Part of the Classical Literature and Philology Commons, Continental Philosophy Commons, Esthetics Commons, German Language and Literature Commons, Medieval History Commons, Musicology Commons, Other French and Francophone Language and Literature Commons, Philosophy of Science Commons, and the Rhetoric and Composition Commons Recommended Citation Babich, Babette, "Nietzsche’s “Gay” Science" (2006). Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections. 18. https://fordham.bepress.com/phil_babich/18 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Philosophy at DigitalResearch@Fordham. It has been accepted for inclusion in Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections by an authorized administrator of DigitalResearch@Fordham. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. A Companion to Nietzsche Edited by Keith Ansell Pearson Copyright © 2006nietzsche by Blackwell’s “gay Publishing” science Ltd 6 Nietzsche’s “Gay” Science BABETTE E. BABICH Nietzsche’s conception of a gay science is alluringly seductive, comic, and light – and accordingly many readers have celebrated it as the art of laughter. And, to be sure, the first edition of The Gay Science began with a teasing series of light, joking rhymes.1 Taking this teasing further, the 1887 title page replaces the 1882 epigraph from Emerson with a gently unserious rhyme, adding a fifth book and finishing it off with an additional cycle of songs – Songs of Prince Vogelfrei2 – invoking at once the knightly as well as the chastely3 erotic character of the troubadour (and recurring in the arch allusions of Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo).