Download or read book Surprised by Laughter written by Terry Lindvall and published by Thomas Nelson Inc. This book was released on 2012-01-17 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Surprised by Laughter looks at the career and writings of C. S. Lewis and discovers a man whose life and beliefs were sustained by joy and humor. All of his life, C. S. Lewis possessed a spirit of individuality. An atheist from childhood, he became a Christian as an adult and eventually knew international acclaim as a respected theologian. He was known worldwide for his works of fiction, especially the Chronicles of Narnia; and for his books on life and faith, including Mere Christianity, A Grief Observed, and Surprised by Joy. But perhaps the most visible difference in his life was his abiding sense of humor. It was through this humor that he often reached his readers and listeners, allowing him to effectively touch so many lives. Terry Lindvall takes an in-depth look at Lewis's joyful approach toward living, dividing his study of C. S. Lewis's wit into the four origins of laughter in Uncle Screwtape's eleventh letter to a junior devil in Lewis's The Screwtape Letters: joy, fun, the joke proper, and flippancy. Lindvall writes, "One bright and compelling feature we can see, sparking in his sunlight and dancing in his moonlight, is laughter. Yet it is not too large to see at once because it inhabited all Lewis was and did." Surprised by Laughter reveals a Lewis who enjoyed the gift of laughter, and who willingly shared that gift with others in order to spread his faith.
Download or read book Innovation at the Speed of Laughter written by John Sweeney and published by Aerialist Press. This book was released on 2007-12 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using client case studies, individual testimonials, and a lighthearted writing style, this book promotes the hottest new idea process for business--from a comedy theater.
Download or read book The Whole World Laughing at Once written by Rob Albani and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2009-06 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book is about a little girl'sa search for the meaning of God. Along the way she learns how one person truly can change the world.
Download or read book Who Framed Roger Rabbit written by Justine Korman and published by Golden Press. This book was released on 1988 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Falsely accused of a crime, a cartoon rabbit seeks the help of Detective Eddie Valiant.
Download or read book Laughter written by Anca Parvulescu and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2010-08-27 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Uncovering an archive of laughter, from the forbidden giggle to the explosive guffaw. Most of our theories of laughter are not concerned with laughter. Rather, their focus is the laughable object, whether conceived of as the comic, the humorous, jokes, the grotesque, the ridiculous, or the ludicrous. In Laughter, Anca Parvulescu proposes a return to the materiality of the burst of laughter itself. She sets out to uncover an archive of laughter, inviting us to follow its rhythms and listen to its tones. Historically, laughter—especially the passionate burst of laughter—has often been a faux pas. Manuals for conduct, abetted by philosophical treatises and literary and visual texts, warned against it, offering special injunctions to ladies to avoid jollity that was too boisterous. Returning laughter to the history of the passions, Parvulescu anchors it at the point where the history of the grimacing face meets the history of noise. In the civilizing process that leads to laughter's “falling into disrepute,” as Nietzsche famously put it, we can see the formless, contorted face in laughter being slowly corrected into a calm, social smile. How did the twentieth century laugh? Parvulescu points to a gallery of twentieth-century laughers and friends of laughter, arguing that it is through Georges Bataille that the century laughed its most distinct laugh. In Bataille's wake, laughter becomes the passion at the heart of poststructuralism. Looking back at the century from this vantage point, Parvulescu revisits four of its most challenging projects: modernism, the philosophical avant-gardes, feminism, and cinema. The result is an overview of the twentieth century as seen through the laughs that burst at some of its most convoluted junctures.
Download or read book Laughter written by Robert R. Provine and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2001-12-01 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do men and women laugh at the same things? Is laughter contagious? Has anyone ever really died laughing? Is laughing good for your health? Drawing upon ten years of research into this most common-yet complex and often puzzling-human phenomenon, Dr. Robert Provine, the world's leading scientific expert on laughter, investigates such aspects of his subject as its evolution, its role in social relationships, its contagiousness, its neural mechanisms, and its health benefits. This is an erudite, wide-ranging, witty, and long-overdue exploration of a frequently surprising subject.
Download or read book Redeeming Laughter written by Peter L. Berger and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2014-10-14 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Amid the variety of human experiences, the comic occupies a distinctive place. It is simultaneously ubiquitous, relative, and fragile. In this book, Peter L. Berger reflects on the nature of the comic and its relationship to other human experiences. Berger contends that the comic is an integral aspect of human life, yet one that must be approached and analyzed circumspectly and circuitously. Beginning with an exploration of the anatomy of the comic, Berger addresses humor in philosophy, physiology, psychology, and the social sciences before turning to a discussion of different types of comedy and finally suggesting a theology of the comic in terms of its relationship to folly, redemption, and transcendence. Along the way, the reader is treated to a variety of jokes on a variety of topics, with particular emphasis on humor and its relationship to religion. Originally published in 1997, the second edition includes a new preface reflecting on Berger’s work in the intervening years, particularly on the relationship between humor and modernity.
Download or read book The Man Who Laughs written by Victor Hugo and published by The Floating Press. This book was released on 2011-05-01 with total page 821 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moving away from the explicitly political content of his previous novels, Victor Hugo turns to social commentary in The Man Who Laughs, an 1869 work that was made into a popular film in the 1920s. The plot deals with a band of miscreants who deliberately deform children to make them more effective beggars, as well as the long-lasting emotional and social damage that this abhorrent practice inflicts upon its victims.
Download or read book Laughing Gods Weeping Virgins written by Ingvild Sælid Gilhus and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Laughing Gods, Weeping Virgins analyses how laughter has been used as a symbol in myths, rituals and festivals of Western religions, and has thus been inscribed in religious discourse. The Mesopotamian Anu, the Israelite Jahweh, the Greek Dionysos, the Gnostic Christ and the late modern Jesus were all laughing gods. Through their laughter, gods prove both their superiority and their proximity to humans. In this comprehensive study, Professor Gilhus examines the relationship between corporeal human laughter and spiritual divine laughter from c`ussical antiquity, to the Christian West and the modern era. She combines the study of the history of religion with social-scientific approaches, to provide an original and pertinent exploration of a universal human phenomenon, and its significance for the development of religions.
Download or read book 7 1 2 Reasons Why I Hate This World a laugh out loud and thrilling coming of age story written by Michael D. A. Clarke and published by Michael D. A. Clarke. This book was released on with total page 131 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Very comical and so very relatable. If you don’t feel some pull on your heart strings reading this then you are a robot. One of the best books I’ve read in a long time!" - Danny Lilly "You can absolutely feel the emotions in this book. The writer has clearly written it from the heart." - Karina Cox The Gardener family suspected that their holiday would be a difficult one, given that it fell on the one-year anniversary of the traumatic events that changed everything for them. However, nobody suspected that things would go quite so disastrously wrong during that weekend away. This dramatic and heartbreaking tale is told through the perspective of each family member. Once the narrative - interlaced with a comical subtext - unfolds through the numerous points-of-view, you'll soon realise that things are not always what they seem in both the past and present. 7 1/2 Reasons Why I Hate This World is a no-holds barred coming-of-age story that doesn't pull any punches – likely to be a relatable read for anyone who has battled to repair their own psyche. If you like funny, thrilling, and tragic coming of age stories such as The Perks of Being a Wallflower and The Fault in Our Stars, you'll likely love this book too.
Download or read book Smile How Young Charlie Chaplin Taught the World to Laugh and Cry written by Gary Golio and published by Candlewick. This book was released on 2019-03-26 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An award-winning author and a Caldecott Medalist take a creative look at the early life of comedic genius Charlie Chaplin. Once there was a little slip of a boy who roamed the streets of London, hungry for life (and maybe a bit of bread). His dad long gone and his actress mother ailing, five-year-old Charlie found himself onstage one day taking his mum’s place, singing and drawing laughs amid a shower of coins. There were times in the poorhouse and times spent sitting in the window at home with Mum, making up funny stories about passersby. And when Charlie described a wobbly old man he saw in baggy clothes, with turned-out feet and a crooked cane, his mother found it sad, but Charlie knew that funny and sad go hand in hand. With a lyrical text and exquisite collage imagery, Gary Golio and Ed Young interpret Charlie Chaplin’s path from his childhood through his beginnings in silent film and the creation of his iconic Little Tramp. Keen-eyed readers will notice a silhouette of the Little Tramp throughout the book that becomes animated with a flip of the pages. An afterword fills in facts about the beloved performer who became one of the most famous entertainers of all time.
Download or read book Laugh at the End of the World written by Bill Knott and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Three decades of the Knott at his iconoclastic best, showcasing his versatility & ironic wit. Contains many Knott poems which are not otherwise available in print.
Download or read book The Morality of Laughter written by F. H. Buckley and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2010-03-25 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Bravo! I’ll say nothing funny about it, for it is a superior piece of work.” —P. J. O’Rourke “F. H. Buckley’s The Morality of Laughter is at once a humorous look at serious matters and a serious book about humor.” —Crisis Magazine “Buckley has written a . ne and funny book that will be read with pleasure and instruction.” —First Things “. . . written elegantly and often wittily. . . .” —National Post “. . . a fascinating philosophical exposition of laughter. . . .” —National Review “. . . at once a wise and highly amusing book.” —Wall Street Journal Online “. . . a useful reminder that a cheery society is a healthy one.” —Weekly Standard
Download or read book This Book Needs No Title written by Raymond Smullyan and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1986-10-15 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Simon & Schuster, This Book Needs No Title is Raymond Smullyan's budget of living paradoxes—the author of What is the Name of This Book? Including eighty paradoxes, logical labyrinths, and intriguing enigmas progress from light fables and fancies to challenging Zen exercises and a novella and probe the timeless questions of philosophy and life.
Download or read book The Stability of Laughter written by James Nikopoulos and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-12-17 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A "sad and corrupt" age, a period of "crisis" and "upheaval"—what T.S. Eliot famously summed up as "the panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history." Modernism has always been characterized by its self-conscious sense of suffering. Why, then, was it so obsessed with laughter? From Baudelaire, Nietzsche, Bergson and Freud to Pirandello, Beckett, Hughes, Barnes, and Joyce, no moment in cultural history has written about laughter this much. James Nikopoulos investigates modernity’s paradoxical relationship with mirth. Why was the gesture we conventionally associate with happiness deemed the only sensible way of responding to a world, as Max Weber wrote, that had been "disenchanted of its gods?" In answering these questions, Nikopoulos also delves into our ongoing relationship with laughter. He looks to contemporary research in emotion and evolutionary theory, as well as to the two-thousand-plus-year history of the philosophy of humor, in order to propose a novel way of understanding laughter, humor, and their complicated relationships with modern life. The Stability of Laughter explores how art unsettles the simplifications we revert to in our attempts to make sense of human history and social interaction.
Download or read book The Comedians written by Kliph Nesteroff and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2015-11-03 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Funny [and] fascinating . . . If you’re a comedy nerd you’ll love this book.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Named a Best Book of the Year by Kirkus Reviews, National Post, and Splitsider Based on over two hundred original interviews and extensive archival research, this groundbreaking work is a narrative exploration of the way comedians have reflected, shaped, and changed American culture over the past one hundred years. Starting with the vaudeville circuit at the turn of the last century, the book introduces the first stand-up comedian—an emcee who abandoned physical shtick for straight jokes. After the repeal of Prohibition, Mafia-run supper clubs replaced speakeasies, and mobsters replaced vaudeville impresarios as the comedian’s primary employer. In the 1950s, the late-night talk show brought stand-up to a wide public, while Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, and Jonathan Winters attacked conformity and staged a comedy rebellion in coffeehouses. From comedy’s part in the civil rights movement and the social upheaval of the late 1960s, to the first comedy clubs of the 1970s and the cocaine-fueled comedy boom of the 1980s, The Comedians culminates with a new era of media-driven celebrity in the twenty-first century. “Entertaining and carefully documented . . . jaw-dropping anecdotes . . . This book is a real treat.” —Merrill Markoe, TheWall Street Journal
Download or read book Recreating Words Reshaping Worlds written by Aïssata G. Sidikou and published by Africa Research and Publications. This book was released on 2001 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
