Download or read book Laughing at the Darkness Postmodernism and Optimism in American Humour written by Paul McDonald and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2010 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paul McDonald's book is the second in the Humanities Ebooks Contemporary American Literature Series, edited by Christopher Gair and Aliki Varvogli. Given that postmodernism has been associated with doubt, chaos, relativism and the disappearance of reality, it may appear difficult to reconcile with American optimism. Laughing at the Darkness demonstrates that this is not always the case. In examining the work of, among others, Sherman Alexie, Woody Allen, Douglas Coupland, Jonathan Safran Foer, Bill Hicks, David Mamet, and Philip Roth, McDonald shows how American humourists bring their comedy to bear on some of the negative implications of philosophical postmodernism and, in so doing, explore ways of reclaiming value. Paul McDonald is Senior Lecturer in American literature at the University of Wolverhampton, where he is also Course Leader for Creative and Professional Writing.
Download or read book Laughing at the Darkness Postmodernism and Optimism in American Humour written by Paul McDonald and published by Humanities-Ebooks. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paul McDonald’s book is the second in our Contemporary American Literature series, edited by Christopher Gair and Aliki Varvogli. Given that postmodernism has been associated with doubt, chaos, relativism and the disappearance of reality, it may appear difficult to reconcile with American optimism. Laughing at the Darkness demonstrates that this is not always the case. In examining the work of, among others, Sherman Alexie, Woody Allen, Douglas Coupland, Jonathan Safran Foer, Bill Hicks, David Mamet, and Philip Roth, McDonald shows how American humorists bring their comedy to bear on some of the negative implications of philosophical postmodernism and, in so doing, explore ways of reclaiming value.
Download or read book The Dark Side of Stand Up Comedy written by Patrice A. Oppliger and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-04-10 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on the “dark side” of stand-up comedy, initially inspired by speculations surrounding the death of comedian Robin Williams. Contributors, those who study humor as well as those who perform comedy, join together to contemplate the paradoxical relationship between tragedy and comedy and expose over-generalizations about comic performers’ troubled childhoods, addictions, and mental illnesses. The book is divided into two sections. First, scholars from a variety of disciplines explore comedians’ onstage performances, their offstage lives, and the relationship between the two. The second half of the book focuses on amateur and lesser-known professional comedians who reveal the struggles they face as they attempt to hone successful comedy acts and likable comic personae. The goal of this collection is to move beyond the hackneyed stereotype of the sad clown in order to reveal how stand-up comedy can transform both personal and collective tragedies by providing catharsis through humor.
Download or read book The Comedy and Legacy of Music Hall Women 1880 1920 written by Sam Beale and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-09-04 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the comedy and legacy of women working as performers on the music-hall stage from 1880–1920, and examines the significance of their previously overlooked contributions to British comic traditions. Focusing on the under-researched female ‘serio-comic’, the study includes six micro-histories detailing the acts of Ada Lundberg, Bessie Bellwood, Maidie Scott, Vesta Victoria, Marie Lloyd and Nellie Wallace. Uniquely for women in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, these pioneering performers had public voices. The extent to which their comedy challenged Victorian and Edwardian perceptions of women is revealed through explorations of how they connected with popular audiences while also avoiding censorship. Their use of techniques such as comic irony and stereotyping, self-deprecation, and comic innuendo are considered alongside the work of contemporary stand-up comedians and performance artists including Bridget Christie, Bryony Kimmings, Sara Pascoe, Shazia Mirza and Sarah Silverman.
Download or read book The Anthem Companion to Zygmunt Bauman written by Michael Hviid Jacobsen and published by Anthem Press. This book was released on 2023-10-03 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume will illustrate the continuing interest in Bauman’s work through a number of chapters each dealing with the important aspects of his work and shedding light on some new angles and perspectives on his life and work. It seeks to position Bauman within the field of sociology and to provide some examples of his lasting contribution to and relevance for the discipline. Bauman’s ideas remain an important source of inspiration for many scholars and researchers working within a variety of different fields and sub-fields, appealing equally to empirical work and theoretical elaboration. This book contains ten chapters, and all chapters are devoted to the presentation and discussion of themes and ideas that were characteristic of Bauman’s way of doing and writing. The purpose of this volume – as with the other volumes published in the Anthem Press ‘Companion to Sociology’ series – is to provide a comprehensive overview of Zygmunt Bauman’s continued importance within the field of sociology and related social science disciplines.
Download or read book Philip Roth through the Lens of Kepesh written by Paul McDonald and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2016 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Kepesh trilogy spans three decades of Philip Roth's career, beginning with The Breast in 1972, and continuing with the Professor of Desire in 1977 and The Dying Animal in 2001. This study demonstrates that the trilogy is not only worthy of critical analysis in its own right, but also that an appreciation of its themes and strategies deepens our understanding of his entire fictional enterprise, offering an invaluable perspective on one of the world's most important novelists. Paul McDonald works at the University of Wolverhampton where he is Senior Lecturer in American Literature, and Course Leader for Creative Writing. Among his other HEB titles are The Philosophy of Humour (2012), and Reading Beloved (2014). Samantha Roden is a Lead Practitioner for English at North East Wolverhampton Academy. She writes educational resources, digital pedagogical guides and conducts national webinars for Cambridge University Press. Her first full collection of poetry, Catch Ourselves in Glass, is forthcoming.
Download or read book Reading Catch 22 written by Paul McDonald and published by Humanities-Ebooks. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 82 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comic novelist and critic, Paul McDonald, provides an accessible, revealing guide to Joseph Heller’s seminal anti-war novel, Catch-22. In order to help readers deepen their understanding of this perplexing comedy, McDonald succinctly contextualises it both in relation to the author’s life, and key developments in modern American literature. The book offers a thorough summary and analysis of the plot of Catch-22, addresses important characters such as Colonel Cathcart, Lieutenant Scheisskopf, Milo Minderbinder, Major Major, and Doc Daneeka, and explains the various ways in which Yossarian’s hilarious predicament has been interpreted. Among other things it considers Yossarian’s status as a mythic hero, an individualist hero, and a postmodern hero, assessing his relevance to contemporary America, and his re-emergence in the sequel to Catch-22, Closing Time, published in 1994. It also offers a descriptive bibliography of important secondary sources, and links to useful online texts.
Download or read book The Philosophy of Humour written by Paul McDonald and published by Humanities-Ebooks. This book was released on 2013-03-01 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comic novelist and critic Paul McDonald explores the philosophy of humour in a book that will appeal to philosophers and creative writers alike. One aim of this book is to assess theories of humour and laughter. It concentrates mainly on philosophical approaches to humour- including those of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Descartes, Hobbes, Bergson, Kant, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Freud and Bakhtin, but also explores such fields as cultural studies, literary theory, religion, psychoanalysis, and psychology; this broad focus makes for a richer account of humour, its relationship with philosophical thought, and its bearing on the human condition. Readers are invited to engage in creative writing exercises designed to exploit this crucial facet of humour, and to help them explore relevant issues imaginatively. In this way they will deepen their understanding of those issues, whilst at the same time cultivating their own creative skills. REVIEW COMMENT "The philosophical study of humour has a complex and fitful history: few people have been brave enough to write about humour seriously, and those who have tend to disagree with one another. For those seeking an entry point, Paul McDonald’s 'The Philosophy of Humour' (2012) gives a useful overview of the major theories. There are those who believe that laughter derives from a sense of superiority (Hobbes and Bergson) or from a sense of relief, or release of energy (Freud’s “economy of psychic expenditure”). But the earliest, most primal examples of humour all seem to have some sort of incongruity at their heart. McDonald gives the example of “the Lion Man figure found in 1939 in the Swabian Alps”, which is thought to be about 35,000 years old. Having the body of a lion and the legs of a man, it is thought to be one of the earliest examples of represented incongruity, dating from the time when human beings first developed “an ability to juxtapose disparate concepts”. Jonathan Coe, The Guardian.
Download or read book Philip Roth Through the Lens of Kepesh written by McDonald and published by . This book was released on with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A critical study of Philip Roth's Kepesh trilogy.
Download or read book From Puritanism to Postmodernism written by Richard Ruland and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-14 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Widely acknowledged as a contemporary classic that has introduced thousands of readers to American literature, From Puritanism to Postmodernism: A History of American Literature brilliantly charts the fascinating story of American literature from the Puritan legacy to the advent of postmodernism. From realism and romanticism to modernism and postmodernism it examines and reflects on the work of a rich panoply of writers, including Poe, Melville, Fitzgerald, Pound, Wallace Stevens, Gwendolyn Brooks and Thomas Pynchon. Characterised throughout by a vibrant and engaging style it is a superb introduction to American literature, placing it thoughtfully in its rich social, ideological and historical context. A tour de force of both literary and historical writing, this Routledge Classics edition includes a new preface by co-author Richard Ruland, a new foreword by Linda Wagner-Martin and a fascinating interview with Richard Ruland, in which he reflects on the nature of American fiction and his collaboration with Malclolm Bradbury. It is published here for the first time.
Download or read book The Primer of Humor Research written by Victor Raskin and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2008-11-06 with total page 679 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book is intended to provide a definitive view of the field of humor research for both beginning and established scholars in a variety of fields who are developing an interest in humor and need to familiarize themselves with the available body of knowledge. Each chapter of the book is devoted to an important aspect of humor research or to a disciplinary approach to the field, and each is written by the leading expert or emerging scholar in that area. There are two primary motivations for the book. The positive one is to collect and summarize the impressive body of knowledge accumulated in humor research in and around Humor: The International Journal of Humor Research. The negative motivation is to prevent the embarrassment to and from the "first-timers," often established experts in their own field, who venture into humor research without any notion that there already exists a body of knowledge they need to acquire before publishing anything on the subject-unless they are in the business of reinventing the wheel and have serious doubts about its being round! The organization of the book reflects the main groups of scholars participating in the increasingly popular and high-powered humor research movement throughout the world, an 800 to 1,000-strong contingent, and growing. The chapters are organized along the same lines: History, Research Issues, Main Directions, Current Situation, Possible Future, Bibliography-and use the authors' definitive credentials not to promote an individual view, but rather to give the reader a good comprehensive and condensed view of the area.
Download or read book Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist and Other Essays written by Paul Kingsnorth and published by Graywolf Press. This book was released on 2017-08-01 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A provocative and urgent essay collection that asks how we can live with hope in “an age of ecocide” Paul Kingsnorth was once an activist—an ardent environmentalist. He fought against rampant development and the depredations of a corporate world that seemed hell-bent on ignoring a looming climate crisis in its relentless pursuit of profit. But as the environmental movement began to focus on “sustainability” rather than the defense of wild places for their own sake and as global conditions worsened, he grew disenchanted with the movement that he once embraced. He gave up what he saw as the false hope that residents of the First World would ever make the kind of sacrifices that might avert the severe consequences of climate change. Full of grief and fury as well as passionate, lyrical evocations of nature and the wild, Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist gathers the wave-making essays that have charted the change in Kingsnorth’s thinking. In them he articulates a new vision that he calls “dark ecology,” which stands firmly in opposition to the belief that technology can save us, and he argues for a renewed balance between the human and nonhuman worlds. This iconoclastic, fearless, and ultimately hopeful book, which includes the much-discussed “Uncivilization” manifesto, asks hard questions about how we’ve lived and how we should live.
Download or read book The Troubles With Postmodernism written by Stefan Morawski and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-06-17 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this original and eye-opening study, Stefan Morawski sheds light on the often confused debate about postmodernism, postmodernity and human values. Drawing upon a wide range of evidence from the experience of everyday life in the sciences, religion, visual arts, literature, film, television and contemporary music, The Troubles with Postmodernism is an indispensable guide to our understanding and evaluation of contemporary literature.
Download or read book Cloud Atlas written by David Mitchell and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2010-07-16 with total page 596 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the New York Times bestselling author of The Bone Clocks | Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize A postmodern visionary and one of the leading voices in twenty-first-century fiction, David Mitchell combines flat-out adventure, a Nabokovian love of puzzles, a keen eye for character, and a taste for mind-bending, philosophical and scientific speculation in the tradition of Umberto Eco, Haruki Murakami, and Philip K. Dick. The result is brilliantly original fiction as profound as it is playful. In this groundbreaking novel, an influential favorite among a new generation of writers, Mitchell explores with daring artistry fundamental questions of reality and identity. Cloud Atlas begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his home in California. Along the way, Ewing is befriended by a physician, Dr. Goose, who begins to treat him for a rare species of brain parasite. . . . Abruptly, the action jumps to Belgium in 1931, where Robert Frobisher, a disinherited bisexual composer, contrives his way into the household of an infirm maestro who has a beguiling wife and a nubile daughter. . . . From there we jump to the West Coast in the 1970s and a troubled reporter named Luisa Rey, who stumbles upon a web of corporate greed and murder that threatens to claim her life. . . . And onward, with dazzling virtuosity, to an inglorious present-day England; to a Korean superstate of the near future where neocapitalism has run amok; and, finally, to a postapocalyptic Iron Age Hawaii in the last days of history. But the story doesn’t end even there. The narrative then boomerangs back through centuries and space, returning by the same route, in reverse, to its starting point. Along the way, Mitchell reveals how his disparate characters connect, how their fates intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like clouds across the sky. As wild as a videogame, as mysterious as a Zen koan, Cloud Atlas is an unforgettable tour de force that, like its incomparable author, has transcended its cult classic status to become a worldwide phenomenon.
Download or read book Seeing Like a State written by James C. Scott and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-17 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “One of the most profound and illuminating studies of this century to have been published in recent decades.”—John Gray, New York Times Book Review Hailed as “a magisterial critique of top-down social planning” by the New York Times, this essential work analyzes disasters from Russia to Tanzania to uncover why states so often fail—sometimes catastrophically—in grand efforts to engineer their society or their environment, and uncovers the conditions common to all such planning disasters. “Beautifully written, this book calls into sharp relief the nature of the world we now inhabit.”—New Yorker “A tour de force.”— Charles Tilly, Columbia University
Download or read book Explaining Postmodernism written by Stephen R. C. Hicks and published by Scholargy Publishing, Inc.. This book was released on 2004 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Poetics of Postmodernism written by Linda Hutcheon and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-09-02 with total page 527 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1988. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
