Download or read book The Senses of Humor written by Daniel Wickberg and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2015-06-18 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do modern Americans believe in something called a sense of humor and how did they come to that belief? Daniel Wickberg traces the cultural history of the concept from its British origins as a way to explore new conceptions of the self and social order in modern America. More than simply the history of an idea, Wickberg's study provides new insights into a peculiarly modern cultural sensibility.The expression "sense of humor" was first coined in the 1840s and the idea that such a sense was a personality trait to be valued developed only in the 1870s. What is the relationship between Medieval humoral medicine and this distinctively modern idea of the sense of humor? What has it meant in the past 125 years to declare that someone lacks a sense of humor? How is the joke, as a twentieth-century quasi-literary form, different from the traditional folktale? Wickberg addresses these questions, among others, using the history of ideas to throw new light on the way contemporary Americans think and speak.The context of Wickberg's analysis is Anglo-American; the specifically British meanings of humor and laughter from the sixteenth century forward provide the framework for understanding American cultural values in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The genealogy of the sense of humor is, like the study of keywords, an avenue into a significant aspect of the cultural history of modernity. Drawing on a wide range of sources and disciplinary perspectives, Wickberg's analysis challenges many of the prevailing views of modern American culture and suggests a new model for cultural historians.

Download or read book From Madman to Crime Fighter written by Roslynn D. Haynes and published by Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM. This book was released on 2017-08-31 with total page 635 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of the scientist in Western culture, from medieval images of alchemists to present-day depictions of cyberpunks and genetic engineers. They were mad, of course. Or evil. Or godless, amoral, arrogant, impersonal, and inhuman. At best, they were well intentioned but blind to the dangers of forces they barely controlled. They were Faust, Frankenstein, Jekyll, Moreau, Caligari, Strangelove—the scientists of film and fiction, cultural archetypes that reflected ancient fears of tampering with the unknown or unleashing the little-understood powers of nature. In From Madman to Crime Fighter, Roslynn D. Haynes analyzes stereotypical characters—including the mad scientist, the cold-blooded pursuer of knowledge, the intrepid pathbreaker, and the bumbling fool—that, from medieval times to the present day, have been used to depict the scientist in Western literature and film. She also describes more realistically drawn scientists, characters who are conscious of their public responsibility to expose dangers from pollution and climate change yet fearful of being accused of lacking evidence. Drawing on examples from Britain, America, Germany, France, Russia, and elsewhere, Haynes explores the persistent folklore of mad doctors of science and its relation to popular fears of a depersonalized, male-dominated, and socially irresponsible pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. She concludes that today’s public response to science and scientists—much of it negative—is best understood by recognizing the importance of such cultural archetypes and their significance as myth. From Madman to Crime Fighter is the most comprehensive study of the image of the scientist in Western literature and film.

Download or read book The faculty of adaptability humour s contribution to human ingenuity written by Alastair Clarke and published by Pyrrhic House. This book was released on 2009-12-17 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive text on the pattern recognition theory of humour. When our species turns inward to analyze itself, the two facets of ingenuity and humour are often held in high regard as examples of its unique abilities, and this theory suggests they are more closely connected than has previously been imagined or acknowledged. While adaptability is a necessary facet of biological evolution, its expression in human beings has become accelerated into an intellectual capacity for inventing non-genetic solutions to environmental challenges, producing a versatility and ingenuity that have come to define the species. How does this ability function, then, and what has led to its unparalleled exaggeration in the human race? According to pattern recognition theory, this abundant resourcefulness has arisen due to the presence of a simple, hardwired faculty that exists precisely to encourage it, operating via the recognition of interesting patterns. This, suggests the author, is known as humour. One of two contrasting theories of humour by Clarke, The Faculty of Adaptability interprets amusement as a creative, adaptive system encouraging the invention and discovery of new information and original ideas. Following a detailed description of a schematic model via which such a system could exist, the book proceeds to suggest a timeframe for the evolution of the faculty before addressing the basis for over 100 common stimuli to humour.

Download or read book Persona and Humor in Mark Twain s Early Writings written by Don Florence and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Challenging mainstream Twain criticism on many fronts, Florence focuses exclusively on Twain's early writings. He demonstrates how Twain evolved in his early narratives into the "Mark Twain" we now recognize. Florence maintains that this process was evolutionary: Although Twain might have been dependent on Clemens for the initial experiences, they become Twain's experiences, necessary for his development as a persona. Traditionally, critics of Twain have been preoccupied with dualities, but Florence sees this emphasis upon polarities as an oversimplification. He argues that much of Twain's humor strives to shape more and more of the world, giving Twain multiple narrative voices and letting him be inclusive, not exclusive. Finally, this study asserts that there is more continuity to Mark Twain's career than has been generally recognized. Many Twain scholars have argued that Twain's later writings are radically different from his earlier writings because of their emphasis upon illusion and dream. Florence argues that the preoccupation with illusion and fantasy is scarcely new. Whether Twain's mood is exuberant or dark, he emphasizes subjectivity over objectivity, the dominance of fantasy, the creative powers of humor, and his ability as persona to determine what we consider "reality". Florence contends that Twain's early writings show Mark Twain gradually evolving into a masterfully comic persona.

Download or read book Engaging Humor written by Elliott Oring and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2010-10-01 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the structure, motives, and meanings of humor in everyday life In Engaging Humor, Elliott Oring asks essential questions concerning humorous expression in contemporary society, examining how humor works, why it is employed, and what its messages might be. This provocative book is filled with examples of jokes and riddles that reveal humor to be a meaningful--even significant--form of expression. Oring scrutinizes classic Jewish jokes, frontier humor, racist cartoons, blonde jokes, and Internet humor. He provides alternate ways of thinking about humorous expressions by examining their contexts--not just their contents. He also shows how the incongruity and absurdity essential to the production of laughter can serve serious communicative ends. Engaging Humor examines the thoughts that underlie jokes, the question of racist motivation in ethnic humor, and the use of humor as a commentary on social interaction. The book also explores the relationship between humor and sentimentality and the role of humor in forging national identity. Engaging Humor demonstrates that when analyzed contextually and comparatively, humorous expressions emerge as communications that are startling, intriguing, and profound.

Download or read book Aspects of Wit and Humor in Ovid s Metamorphoses written by Daniel Leonard Arnaud and published by . This book was released on 1967 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Benjamin Franklin s Humor written by Paul M. Zall and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2005-12-01 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although he called himself merely a "printer" in his will, Benjamin Franklin could have also called himself a diplomat, a doctor, an electrician, a frontier general, an inventor, a journalist, a legislator, a librarian, a magistrate, a postmaster, a promoter, a publisher -- and a humorist. John Adams wrote of Franklin, "He had wit at will. He had humor that when he pleased was pleasant and delightful... [and] talents for irony, allegory, and fable, that he could adapt with great skill, to the promotion of moral and political truth." In Benjamin Franklin's Humor, author Paul M. Zall shows how one of America's founding fathers used humor to further both personal and national interests. Early in his career, Franklin impersonated the feisty widow Silence Dogood in a series of comically moralistic essays that helped his brother James outpace competitors in Boston's incipient newspaper market. In the mid-eighteenth century, he displayed his talent for comic impersonation in numerous editions of Poor Richard's Almanac, a series of pocket-sized tomes filled with proverbs and witticisms that were later compiled in Franklin's The Way to Wealth (1758), one of America's all-time bestselling books. Benjamin Franklin was sure to be remembered for his early work as an author, printer, and inventor, but his accomplishments as a statesman later in life firmly secured his lofty stature in American history. Zall shows how Franklin employed humor to achieve desired ends during even the most difficult diplomatic situations: while helping draft the Declaration of Independence, while securing France's support for the American Revolution, while brokering the treaty with England to end the War for Independence, and while mediating disputes at the Constitutional Convention. He supervised and facilitated the birth of a nation with customary wit and aplomb. Zall traces the development of an acute sense of humor throughout the life of a great American. Franklin valued humor not as an end in itself but as a means to gain a competitive edge, disseminate information, or promote a program. Early in life, he wrote about timely topics in an effort to reach a mass reading class, leaving an amusing record of early American culture. Later, Franklin directed his talents toward serving his country. Regardless of its origin, the best of Benjamin Franklin's humor transcends its initial purpose and continues to evoke undying laughter at shared human experiences.

Download or read book The Shadow of a Dream written by Peter A. Coclanis and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1991 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Coclanis here charts the economic and social rise and fall of a small, but intriguing part of the American South: Charleston and the surrounding South Carolina low country. Spanning 250 years, his study analyzes the interaction of both external and internal forces on the city and countryside, examining the effect of various factors on the region's economy from its colonial beginnings to its collapse in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Download or read book The Adventures of David Simple and Volume the Last written by Sarah Fielding and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2014-07-11 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Adventures of David Simple (1744), Sarah Fielding's first and most celebrated novel, went through several editions, the second of which was heavily revised by her brother Henry. This edition includes Henry's "corrections" in an appendix. In recounting the guileless hero's search for a true friend, the novel depicts the derision with which almost everyone treats his sentimental attitudes to human nature. Acclaimed as an accurate portrait of mid-eighteenth-century London, The Adventures of David Simple sets forth some provocative feminist ideas. Also included is Fielding's much darker sequel, Volume the Last (1753).

Download or read book Women in Science written by Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1986 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the ancient Greek physician Agamede to physicist and chemist Marie Curie, in descriptions ranging from a single paragraph to several pages, Women in Science profiles 186 women who as patronesses, translators, popularizers, collectors, illustrators, inventors, and active researchers, made significant contributions to science before 1910. It adds a new dimension to the history of science by rescuing from obscurity the many women who overcame significant cultural barriers to pursue scientific objectives. Was Marie Curie the only woman in science? This question, asked by a college student trying to write an essay on women in science, planted a seed that grew over a decade of research into this informative and accessible biographical dictionary and bibliography. At the heart of this biographical dictionary are profiles of 186 women whose work is representative of the participation of women in the science of their time and culture. Despite the increasing attention devoted to women's history in recent years, our knowledge of many of these women is still meager, and the book will serve as much as a guide to future research as a resource for historians, librarians, students, and the general public. The book opens with a substantial essay relating the general state of science and philosophical ideas about the role of women in society to the actual participation of women in science over the past two and a half millennia. The classified, annotated bibliography that completes the book can be used as a general research tool as well as a source of information about the particular women whose lives are sketched in this work. The entries provide basic information on their subjects, are referenced to primary sources and other materials in the bibliography, and share an easily flowing narrative style. Beyond that, the length, approach, and focus of the entries have been allowed to vary within an appropriate range to suit the particular women whose lives they recount and whose achievements they evaluate.

Download or read book Laughing Matters written by Giorgio Baruchello and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2023-11-06 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The present book addresses the background, rationale, general structure, and particular aims and arguments characterizing our third and last volume about "humor" and "cruelty". A guiding foray is provided into the vast expert literature that can be retrieved in the Western humanities and social sciences on these two terms. Pivotal thinkers and crucial notions are duly identified, highlighted, and examined. Apposite subsidiary references are also included, especially with regard to psychodynamics and clinical psychology, existentialism, feminism, liberalism, Marxism, and representative recent studies in the philosophy of humor and its cognates. The stage is thus set for the exploration and assessment of the conflicts between humor and cruelty unfolding in Part 2 of Volume 3. Being the philosophical terminus of our entire research project, Volume 3 counterbalances, complements, and, occasionally, complexifies the numerous forms of mutual cooperation between humor and cruelty that the preceding Volume 2 had unearthed and discussed.

Download or read book Indi n Humor written by Kenneth Lincoln and published by New York : Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on history, psychology, folklore, linguistics, anthropology, and the arts, this book challenges "wooden Indian" stereotypes to redefine negative attitudes and humorless approaches to Native American peoples. Moving from tribal culture to interethnic literature, Lincoln explores such topics as the traditional Trickster of origin myths, historical ironies, Euroamericans "playing Indian", feminist Indian humor at home, contemporary painters and playwrights reinventing Coyote, popular mixed-blood music, and Red English. Lincoln turns to the texts of Native American authors including Louise Erdrich, James Welch, and N. Scott Momaday, to illustrate the rich tradition of Native American humor: a tradition that evolved as the result of and has survived in spite of a history of unconscionable suffering and sadness during the course of which ninety-seven percent of the native populations were destroyed. A study of the literary humor of poets like Paula Gunn Allen, Diane Burns, and Linda Hogan provides further evidence of the importance of the role of humor in Native American culture. Indi'n Humor documents and interprets the contexts of laughter among Native Americans, as they see and are seen by the rest of the world. The study comes to focus comically on the poets, visual artists, playwrights, and novelists who make up the cultural renaissance of the past twenty years. Focusing on ethnic humor, from jokes in bars and powwows, to intercultural politics, to literature, Indi'n Humor will enlighten and entertain readers interested in Native American culture, as well as scholars of Amen can and Ethnic Studies, and humor theorists.

Download or read book Widener Library Shelflist English literature written by Harvard University. Library and published by . This book was released on 1971 with total page 672 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Expedition of Humphry Clinker Second International Student Edition Norton Critical Editions written by Tobias Smollett and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2016-04-04 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This revised Norton Critical Edition restores the original full title to the 1771 epistolary and picaresque novel. In choosing supporting materials, Evan Gottlieb emphasizes the growing recognition of Smollett as both a major British author and a central player in eighteenth-century London’s vibrant publishing world. In his last and finest novel, Tobias Smollett uses multiple letter writers to create a very funny and nearly kaleidoscopic vision of life in mid eighteenth-century Britain. As his protagonists travel about the countryside on their quest to restore patriarch Matthew Bramble’s health, they unwittingly succeed in uniting Britain across boundaries of nation, class, religion, and gender. The text of this Norton Critical Edition is again based on the first edition of 1771. It is accompanied by explanatory footnotes, illustrations by Thomas Rowlandson for the 1793 edition, and a map by Charles Scavey. A new “Backgrounds and Contexts” section includes selections from Smollett’s popular early poetry as well as important later nonfiction writing on history and the novel and the Anglo-Scottish Union, among others. “Criticism” is divided into two sections and presents the most important reviews and scholarly assessments of The Expedition of Humphry Clinker. “Early Reviews and Criticism” collects four major reviews from 1771 along with Sir Walter Scott’s 1821 preface to the novel. “Contemporary Criticism” focuses on recent scholarship, with its emphasis on Smollett’s connection and relevance to topics of critical interest, including nationalism, colonialism, the history of the novel, gender studies, and the histories of religion and medicine. Contributors include Eric Rothstein, John Zomchick, Robert Mayer, Charlotte Sussman, David Weed, Evan Gottlieb, Tara Ghoshal Wallace, Misty G. Anderson, and Annika Mann. A chronology of Smollett’s life and work and a selected bibliography are also included.

Download or read book In the Classic Mode written by Donald Elwin Stanford and published by University of Delaware Press. This book was released on 1978 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this study Dr. Stanford surveys and evaluates the major achievements of Robert Bridges (1844-1930), an important poet, dramatist, scholar, and man of letters whose work has been unjustifiably neglected in recent years. Making use of Bridge's letters, Dr. Stanford has written a volume of criticism that reflects both the poet and the man.

Download or read book Laughter and the Grace of God written by Brian Edgar and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2020-01-01 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We cannot really love anybody with whom we never laugh, and this is true of our relationship with God. Thomas Aquinas spoke of the sin of having too little laughter as well as the danger of having too much, while Martin Luther said, ‘If you’re not allowed to laugh in heaven, I don’t want to go there.’ Having a sense of humour is essential for maturity in faith and holiness, but sadly, the role that laughter plays in life and spirituality have often been neglected. Laughter and the Grace of God restores laughter to its central place in Christian spirituality and theology by examining its role in Scripture and highlighting its presence in unexpected places, including the story of Abraham and the formation of the covenant, and the tragedy of Job. Laughter can be found in the incarnation, the resurrection, and even the crucifixion – Jesus is himself the great laugh-maker – and it is nothing less than a participation in the life and love of God.

Download or read book Humor and Life Stress written by Herbert M. Lefcourt and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph reflects a culmination of influences. Over a decade ago, a graduate student at the University of Waterloo, Dr. Carl Sordoni, had worked with one of the present authors (H.L.) to develope a dissertation concerned with humor. At that time, the literature on humor was scanty. There was much that had been written by philosophers and scholars in literature. But in psychology, especially empirical research in psychology, there was not an overwhelming literature to give substance to the belief that humor was an important element in human affairs. Memories of that dissertation are fond. The findings were disappoint ing, but the execution of the research provided us with much hilarity. Though the dissertation research did not pan out as we had hoped, we had begun to look for the influence of humor in other investigations that we were conducting. Two published studies from that era are described in this book, one of which grew as an off-shoot of a dissertation by Dr. Paul Antrobus. In these studies not only did we find evidence that humor could be predicted and understood within particular contexts, but again we found enjoyment in doing the studies.