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'''''Le gai savoir''''' est un ouvrage de Friedrich Nietzsche, publié en 1882, sous le titre original ''Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, la gaya scienza''.

== Préface à la seconde édition ==
Dans sa préface, Grecs anciens auraient été, de son avis philologique "''superficiels... par profondeurs !''", en passant par la conjecture que les personnes de sa trempe sont destinées à vivre une existence tragique, ressentie comme délivrance, par opposition "''au troupeau''", qui se nourrirait de certitudes satisfaites.

== ''Plaisanteries, ruse et vengeance'' et ''Chansons du prince Vogelfrei'' ==
Il s'agit de 63 poèmes espiègles et d'anecdotes contrastées, mis en vers et rimés, comme en amuse-gueule avant les cinq livres, de même que les 13 ''Chansons du prince Vogelfrei'' en appendice interviennent comme en récréation, à moins que les cinq livres soient leur prétexte, pour ce que Friedrich Nietzsche y traduit pleinement,sa gaieté, en écho au §84 sur ''L'origine de la poésie'', où il pose la question : « ''N'est-ce pas une chose extrêmement plaisante que de voir les philosophes les plus sérieux, si sévères qu'ils soient le reste du temps avec toute certitude, en appeler sans cesse à des'' sentences de poètes ''pour assurer force et crédibilité à leur pensée ?'' »

Entre l'amuse-gueule et la récréation, ou bien l'essentiel encadrant les cinq livres, sens donnent forme au monde, alors qu'il ne s'agirait que d'anthropomorphismes.

== Les cinq livres ==

== Situation de l'ouvrage dans l'œuvre de Nietzsche ==

{{Infobox Book 
| name          =The Gay Science
| title_orig    =Die fröhliche Wissenschaft
| translator    =Walter Kaufmann 
| image         =thumb|200px|center 
| image_caption =Cover of the 1974 Random House edition 
| author        =Friedrich Nietzsche 
| illustrator   = 
| cover_artist  = 
| country       =Germany 
| language      =German 
| series        = 
| subject       =the death of God 
| genre         =philosophy, poetry 
| publisher     = 
| release_date  =1882 
| english_release_date =
| media_type    =Paperback, hardcover 
| pages         =416 (1974 Random House ed.) 
| isbn          =ISBN 978-0394719856 (1974 Random House ed.)
| preceded_by   =Daybreak (1881)
| followed_by   =Thus Spoke Zarathustra<br />(1883–1885) 
}}'''''The Gay Science''''' <nowiki>[</nowiki>German: ''Die fröhliche Wissenschaft ("la gaya scienza")''<nowiki>]</nowiki>, is a book written by Thus Spoke Zarathustra'' and ''Beyond Good and Evil'', in 1887. This substantial expansion includes a fifth book and an appendix of songs. It was noted by Nietzsche to be "the most personal of all my books". It contains the most poetry ever published by him.

==Title==
The book's title uses a phrase that was well-known at the time.  It was derived from a Provençal expression for the technical skill required for poetry-writing. It had already been used by Emerson and E. S. Dallas and in inverted form by Thomas Carlyle (see dismal science). However, it was first translated into English as ''The Joyous Wisdom''. Nevertheless ''The Gay Science'' has become the canonical translation of the title since Walter Kaufmann's version in the 1960's. Kaufmann references ''The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary'' (1955) that lists "The gay science (=Pr[ovençal] gai saber): the art of poetry."  The title should not be read with any homosexual connotation. 

Nietzsche himself comments in ''Ecce Homo'' about the poems in the Appendix, saying they were,

:''written for the most part in Sicily, are quite emphatically reminiscent of the Provençal concept of ''gaya scienza''—that unity of ''singer'', ''knight'', and ''free spirit'' which distinguishes the wonderful early culture of the Provençals from all equivocal cultures. The very last poem above all, "To the Mistral", an exuberant dancing song in which, if I may say so, one dances right over morality, is a perfect Provençalism.''

This alludes to the birth of modern European poetry that occurred in Provence around the 12th century, whereupon, after the culture of the troubadours fell into almost complete desolation and destruction due to the Albigensian Crusade (1209-1229), other poets in the 14th century ameliorated and thus cultivated the ''gai saber'' or ''gaia scienza''. In a similar vein, in ''Beyond Good and Evil'' Nietzsche observed that, 

:''love ''as passion''—which is our European speciality—[was invented by] the Provençal knight-poets, those magnificent and inventive human beings of the ''"gai saber"'' to whom Europe owes so many things and almost owes itself.'' (Section 260)

Another indicator of the deficiency of the original translation as ''The Joyous Wisdom'' is that the German ''Wissenschaft'' never indicates "wisdom", but a propensity toward any rigorous practice of a poised, controlled, and disciplined quest for knowledge, and is typically translated as "science". 

The book is usually placed within Nietzsche's middle period, when his work extolled the merits of science, scepticism and intellectual discipline as routes to mental freedom. The affirmation of the Provencal tradition is also one of a joyful affirmation of life.