Download or read book Dickens and the Rhetoric of Laughter written by James Russell Kincaid and published by Oxford : Clarendon Press. This book was released on 1971 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kincaid argues that the funny Dickens and the "dark" Dickens are one, and that our response to his humour is no less important is Little Dorrit than in Pickwick.
Download or read book The Dickens Industry written by Laurence W. Mazzeno and published by Camden House. This book was released on 2008 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Undoubtedly the best-selling author of his day and well loved by readers in succeeding generations, Charles Dickens was not always a favorite among critics. Celebrated for his novels advocating social reform, for half a century after his death he was ridiculed by those academics who condescended to write about him. Only the faithful band of devotees who called themselves Dickensians kept alive an interest in his work. Then, during the Second World War, he was resurrected by critics, and was soon being hailed as the foremost writer of his age, a literary genius alongside Shakespeare and Milton. More recently, Dickens has again been taken to task by a new breed of literary theorists who fault his chauvinism and imperialist attitudes. Whether he has been adored or despised, however, one thing is certain: no other Victorian novelist has generated more critical commentary. This book traces Dickens's reputation from the earliest reviews through the work of early 21st-century commentators, showing how judgments of Dickens changed with new standards for evaluating fiction. Mazzeno balances attention to prominent critics from the late 19th century through the first three quarters of the 20th with an emphasis on the past three decades, during which literary theory has opened up new ways of reading Dickens. What becomes clear is that, in attempting to provide fresh insight into Dickens's writings, critics often reveal as much about the predilections of their own age as they do about the novelist. Laurence W. Mazzeno is President Emeritus of Alvernia University, Reading, Pennsylvania.
Download or read book Dickensian Laughter written by Malcolm Andrews and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-09-19 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does Dickens make his readers laugh? What is the distinctive character of Dickensian humour? These are the questions explored in this book on a topic that has been strangely neglected in critical studies over the last half century. Dickens's friend and biographer John Forster declared that: 'His leading quality was Humour.' At the end of Dickens's career he was acclaimed as 'the greatest English Humourist since Shakespeare's time.' In 1971 the critic Philip Collins surveyed recent decades of Dickens criticism and asked 'from how many discussions of Dickens in the learned journals would one ever guess that (as Dickens himself thought) humour was his leading quality, his highest faculty?' Forty years later, that rhetorical question has lost none of its force. Why? Perhaps Dickens's genius as a humourist is simply taken for granted, and critics prefer to turn to his other achievements; or perhaps humour is too hard to analyse without spoiling the fun? Whatever the reason, there has been very little by way of sustained critical investigation into what for most people has constituted Dickens's special claim to greatness. This book is framed as a series of essays examining and reflecting on Dickens's techniques for making us laugh. How is it that some written incident, or speech, or narrative 'aside' can fire off the page into the reader's conciousness and jolt him or her into a smile, a giggle, or a hearty laugh? That is the core question here. His first novel, Pickwick Papers, was acclaimed at the time as having 'opened a fresh vein of humour' in English literature: what was the social nature of the humour that established this trademark 'Dickensian' method of making people laugh? And how many kinds of laughter are there in Dickens? What made Dickens himself laugh? Victorian and contemporary theories of laughter can provide useful insights into these processes - incongruity theory or the 'relief' theory of laughter, laughter's contagiousness (laughter as a 'social glue'), the art of comic timing, the neuroscience of laughter. These and other ideas are brought into play in this short book, which considers not only Dickens's novels but also his letters and journalism. And to that end there are copious quotations. The aim of the book is to make readers laugh and also to prompt them to reflect their laughter. It should have an interest not only for Dickensians but for anyone curious about the nature of laughter and how it is triggered.
Download or read book The Humour and Pathos of Charles Dickens written by Charles Dickens and published by . This book was released on 1884 with total page 490 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Dickensian Laughter written by Malcolm Andrews and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-09-19 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does Dickens make his readers laugh? What is the distinctive character of Dickensian humour? These are the questions explored in this book on a topic that has been strangely neglected in critical studies over the last half century. Dickens's friend and biographer John Forster declared that: 'His leading quality was Humour.' At the end of Dickens's career he was acclaimed as 'the greatest English Humourist since Shakespeare's time.' In 1971 the critic Philip Collins surveyed recent decades of Dickens criticism and asked 'from how many discussions of Dickens in the learned journals would one ever guess that (as Dickens himself thought) humour was his leading quality, his highest faculty?' Forty years later, that rhetorical question has lost none of its force. Why? Perhaps Dickens's genius as a humourist is simply taken for granted, and critics prefer to turn to his other achievements; or perhaps humour is too hard to analyse without spoiling the fun? Whatever the reason, there has been very little by way of sustained critical investigation into what for most people has constituted Dickens's special claim to greatness. This book is framed as a series of essays examining and reflecting on Dickens's techniques for making us laugh. How is it that some written incident, or speech, or narrative 'aside' can fire off the page into the reader's conciousness and jolt him or her into a smile, a giggle, or a hearty laugh? That is the core question here. His first novel, Pickwick Papers, was acclaimed at the time as having 'opened a fresh vein of humour' in English literature: what was the social nature of the humour that established this trademark 'Dickensian' method of making people laugh? And how many kinds of laughter are there in Dickens? What made Dickens himself laugh? Victorian and contemporary theories of laughter can provide useful insights into these processes - incongruity theory or the 'relief' theory of laughter, laughter's contagiousness (laughter as a 'social glue'), the art of comic timing, the neuroscience of laughter. These and other ideas are brought into play in this short book, which considers not only Dickens's novels but also his letters and journalism. And to that end there are copious quotations. The aim of the book is to make readers laugh and also to prompt them to reflect their laughter. It should have an interest not only for Dickensians but for anyone curious about the nature of laughter and how it is triggered.
Download or read book The Humor and Pathos of Charles Dickens written by Charles Dickens and published by . This book was released on 1884 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Narrative Art of Charles Dickens written by Harvey Peter Sucksmith and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 1970 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on author's thesis, University of Nottingham.
Download or read book Victorian Comedy and Laughter written by Louise Lee and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-08-06 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This innovative collection of essays is the first to situate comedy and laughter as central rather than peripheral to nineteenth century life. Victorian Comedy and Laughter: Conviviality,Jokes and Dissent offers new readings of the works of Charles Dickens, Edward Lear,George Eliot, George Gissing, Barry Pain and Oscar Wilde, alongside discussions of much-loved Victorian comics like Little Tich, Jenny Hill, Bessie Bellwood and Thomas Lawrence. Tracing three consecutive and interlocking moods in the period, all of the contributors engage with the crucial critical question of how laughter and comedy shaped Victorian subjectivity and aesthetic form. Malcolm Andrews, Jonathan Buckmaster and Peter Swaab explore the dream of print culture togetherness that is conviviality, while Bob Nicholson, Louise Lee, Ann Featherstone,Louise Wingrove and Oliver Double discuss the rise-on-rise of the Victorian joke — both on the page and the stage — while Peter Jones, Jonathan Wild and Matthew Kaiser consider the impassioned debates concerning old and new forms of laughter that took place at the end of the century.
Download or read book Secret Journeys written by Nicholas H. Morgan and published by Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work argues that Dickens's novels form a multifaceted canon with strong family resemblances (and differences) among its members. The book creates a dynamic model of the Dickensian universe by following three aspects of the canon: the dialectic between fancy and authority, the psychology of symbol and memory, and the relationship between narrator and reader. Illustrated.
Download or read book Oliver written by Marc Napolitano and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-09-12 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the show was first produced in 1960, at a time when transatlantic musical theatre was dominated by American productions, Oliver! already stood out for its overt Englishness. But in writing Oliver!, librettist and composer Lionel Bart had to reconcile the Englishness of his Dickensian source with the American qualities of the integrated book musical. To do so, he turned to the musical traditions that had defined his upbringing: English music hall, Cockney street singing, and East End Yiddish theatre. This book reconstructs the complicated biography of Bart's play, from its early inception as a pop musical inspired by a marketable image, through its evolution into a sincere Dickensian adaptation that would push English musical theatre to new dramatic heights. The book also addresses Oliver!'s phenomenal reception in its homeland, where audiences responded to the musical's Englishness with a nationalistic fervor. The musical, which has more than fulfilled its promise as one of the most popular English musicals of all time, remains one of the country's most significant shows. Author Marc Napolitano shows how Oliver!'s popularity has ultimately exerted a significant influence on two separate cultural trends. Firstly, Bart's adaptation forever impacted the culture text of Dickens's Oliver Twist; to this day, the general perception of the story and the innumerable allusions to the novel in popular media are colored heavily by the sights, scenes, sounds, and songs from the musical, and virtually every major adaptation of from the 1970s on has responded to Bart's work in some way. Secondly, Oliver! helped to move the English musical forward by establishing a post-war English musical tradition that would eventually pave the way for the global dominance of the West End musical in the 1980s. As such, Napolitano's book promises to be an important book for students and scholars in musical theatre studies as well as to general readers interested in the megamusical.
Download or read book A Study Guide for Charles Dickens s Oliver Twist written by Gale, Cengage Learning and published by Gale, Cengage Learning . This book was released on 2016-06-29 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Study Guide for Charles Dickens's "Oliver Twist," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.
Download or read book Bibliography of Dickensian Criticism 1836 1974 written by Reginald Charles Churchill and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-12-30 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Sellout written by Paul Beatty and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2015-03-03 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Man Booker Prize Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction Winner of the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature New York Times Bestseller Los Angeles Times Bestseller Named One of the 10 Best Books of the Year by The New York Times Book Review Named a Best Book of the Year by Newsweek, The Denver Post, BuzzFeed, Kirkus Reviews, and Publishers Weekly Named a "Must-Read" by Flavorwire and New York Magazine's "Vulture" Blog A biting satire about a young man's isolated upbringing and the race trial that sends him to the Supreme Court, Paul Beatty's The Sellout showcases a comic genius at the top of his game. It challenges the sacred tenets of the United States Constitution, urban life, the civil rights movement, the father-son relationship, and the holy grail of racial equality—the black Chinese restaurant. Born in the "agrarian ghetto" of Dickens—on the southern outskirts of Los Angeles—the narrator of The Sellout resigns himself to the fate of lower-middle-class Californians: "I'd die in the same bedroom I'd grown up in, looking up at the cracks in the stucco ceiling that've been there since '68 quake." Raised by a single father, a controversial sociologist, he spent his childhood as the subject in racially charged psychological studies. He is led to believe that his father's pioneering work will result in a memoir that will solve his family's financial woes. But when his father is killed in a police shoot-out, he realizes there never was a memoir. All that's left is the bill for a drive-thru funeral. Fueled by this deceit and the general disrepair of his hometown, the narrator sets out to right another wrong: Dickens has literally been removed from the map to save California from further embarrassment. Enlisting the help of the town's most famous resident—the last surviving Little Rascal, Hominy Jenkins—he initiates the most outrageous action conceivable: reinstating slavery and segregating the local high school, which lands him in the Supreme Court.
Download or read book It s a Funny Thing Humour written by Antony J. Chapman and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2013-10-22 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's a Funny Thing, Humour contains the papers presented at the International Conference on Humor and Laughter, held in Cardiff in July 1976. The symposium provides a platform from which authors from different professional and personal background can talk about their own definition and analysis of humor. The book is structured into 10 main sections that reflect the structure of the conference and presents various studies and research on the nature of humor and laughter. Contributions range from theoretical discussions to practical and experimental expositions. Topics on the psychoanalytical theory of humor and laughter; the nature and analysis of jokes; cross-cultural research of humor; mirth measurement; and humor as a tool of learning are some of the topics covered in the symposium. Psychologists, sociologists, teachers, communication experts, psychiatrists, and people who are curious to know more about humor and laughter will find the book very interesting and highly amusing.
Download or read book The Comic Mode in English Literature written by Murray Roston and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2011-10-27 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales to Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary, this is a comprehensive guide to comedy in the English literary canon. Beginning with a critical exploration of historical and philosophical theories of humour, the book then supplies close-readings of a wide range of major texts, authors and genres from the Medieval period to the present. The Comic Mode in English Literature examines such texts as: "Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream" Pope's The Rape of the Lock Austen's Emma "Dickens" The Pickwick Papers Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest Amis's Lucky Jim Covering poetry, prose and drama, this comprehensive guide will be essential reading for students of comic writing, literary history and genre.
Download or read book The Rhetoric of Charles Dickens written by Earl Benedict Brown and published by . This book was released on 1971 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Fools and Jesters in Literature Art and History written by Vicki K. Janik and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 1998-05-21 with total page 571 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jesters and fools have existed as important and consistent figures in nearly all cultures. Sometimes referred to as clowns, they are typological characters who have conventional roles in the arts, often using nonsense to subvert existing order. But fools are also a part of social and religious history, and they frequently play key roles in the rituals that support and shape a society's system of beliefs. This reference book includes alphabetically arranged entries for approximately 60 fools and jesters from a wide range of cultures. Included are entries for performers from American popular culture, such as Woody Allen, Mae West, Charlie Chaplin, and the Marx Brothers; literary characters, such as Shakespeare's Falstaff, Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel, and Singer's Gimpel; and cultural and mythological figures, such as India's Birbal, the American circus clown, the Native American Coyote, Taishu Engeki of Japan, Hephaestus, Loki the Norse fool, schlimiels and schlimazels, and the drag queen. The entries, written by expert contributors, are critical as well as informative. Each begins with a biographical, artistic, religious, or historical background section, which places the subject within a larger cultural and historical context. A description and analysis follow. This section may include a discussion of the fool's appearance, gender role, ethical and moral roles, social function, and relationship to such themes as nature, time, and mortality. The entry then discusses the critical reception of the subject and concludes with an extensive bibliography of general works.
