Download or read book Laughter Down the Centuries written by Siegfried Jäkel and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Laughter in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times written by Albrecht Classen and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2010-09-22 with total page 864 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite popular opinions of the ‘dark Middle Ages’ and a ‘gloomy early modern age,’ many people laughed, smiled, giggled, chuckled, entertained and ridiculed each other. This volume demonstrates how important laughter had been at times and how diverse the situations proved to be in which people laughed, and this from late antiquity to the eighteenth century. The contributions examine a wide gamut of significant cases of laughter in literary texts, historical documents, and art works where laughter determined the relationship among people. In fact, laughter emerges as a kaleidoscopic phenomenon reflecting divine joy, bitter hatred and contempt, satirical perspectives and parodic intentions. In some examples protagonists laughed out of sheer happiness and delight, in others because they felt anxiety and insecurity. It is much more difficult to detect premodern sculptures of laughing figures, but they also existed. Laughter reflected a variety of concerns, interests, and intentions, and the collective approach in this volume to laughter in the past opens many new windows to the history of mentality, social and religious conditions, gender relationships, and power structures.
Download or read book Laughter and Narrative in the Later Middle Ages written by Sebastian Coxon and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In contrast to the vernacular literary traditions of France, Italy and England, comic tales in verse flourished in late medieval Germany, providing bawdy entertainment for larger audiences of public recitals as well as for smaller numbers of individual readers. In a sustained close analysis Sebastian Coxon explores both the narrative design and fundamental thematic preoccupations of these short texts. A distinctively performative tradition of pre-modern narrative literature emerges which invited its recipients to think, learn and above all to laugh in a number of different ways.
Download or read book Laughter Down the Centuries Vol II written by Asko Timonen and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Laughter in Ancient Rome written by Mary Beard and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2024-03-05 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What made the Romans laugh? Was ancient Rome a carnival, filled with practical jokes and hearty chuckles? Or was it a carefully regulated culture in which the uncontrollable excess of laughter was a force to fear—a world of wit, irony, and knowing smiles? How did Romans make sense of laughter? What role did it play in the world of the law courts, the imperial palace, or the spectacles of the arena? Laughter in Ancient Rome explores one of the most intriguing, but also trickiest, of historical subjects. Drawing on a wide range of Roman writing—from essays on rhetoric to a surviving Roman joke book—Mary Beard tracks down the giggles, smirks, and guffaws of the ancient Romans themselves. From ancient “monkey business” to the role of a chuckle in a culture of tyranny, she explores Roman humor from the hilarious, to the momentous, to the surprising. But she also reflects on even bigger historical questions. What kind of history of laughter can we possibly tell? Can we ever really “get” the Romans’ jokes?
Download or read book Plato s Laughter written by Sonja Madeleine Tanner and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2017-11-14 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plato was described as a boor and it was said that he never laughed out loud. Yet his dialogues abound with puns, jokes, and humor. Sonja Madeleine Tanner argues that in Plato's dialogues Socrates plays a comical hero who draws heavily from the tradition of comedy in ancient Greece, but also reforms laughter to be applicable to all persons and truly shaming to none. Socrates introduces a form of self-reflective laughter that encourages, rather than stifles, philosophical inquiry. Laughter in the dialogues—both explicit and implied—suggests a view of human nature as incongruous with ourselves, simultaneously falling short of, and superseding, our own capacities. What emerges is a picture of human nature that bears a striking resemblance to Socrates' own, laughable depiction, one inspired by Dionysus, but one that remains ultimately intractable. The book analyzes specific instances of laughter and the comical from the Apology, Laches, Charmides, Cratylus, Euthydemus, and the Symposium to support this, and to further elucidate the philosophical consequences of recognizing Plato's laughter.
Download or read book Laughter Humor and Comedy in Ancient Philosophy written by Pierre Destrée and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-06 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ancient philosophers considered question about laughter, humor, and comedy to be both philosophically interesting and important. They theorized about laughter and its causes, moralized about the appropriate uses of humor and what it is appropriate to laugh at, and wrote treaties on comedic composition. They were often merciless in ridiculing their opponents' positions, borrowing comedic devices and techniques from comic poetry and drama to do so. This volume is organized around three sets of questions that illuminate the philosophical concerns and corresponding range of answers found in ancient philosophy. The first set investigates the psychology of laughter. What is going on in our minds when we laugh? What background conditions must be in place for laughter to occur? Is laughter necessarily hostile or derisive? The second set of questions concerns the ethical and social norms governing laughter and humor. When is it appropriate or inappropriate to laugh? Does laughter have a positive social function? Is there a virtue, or excellence, connected to laugher and humor? The third set of questions concerns the philosophical uses of humor and comedic technique. Do philosophers use humor exclusively in criticizing rivals, or can it play a positive educational role as well? If it can, how does philosophical humor communicate its philosophical content? This volume does not aim to settle these fascinating questions but more importantly to start a conversation about them, and serve as a reference point for discussions of laughter, humor, and comedy in ancient philosophy.
Download or read book The Anatomy of Laughter written by Toby Garfitt and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-12-02 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The nature of laughter has recently attracted the attention of a number of different disciplines. In two recent colloquia, TRIO (Translation Research in Oxford) brought together international authorities from fields as diverse as physiology, psychology, linguistics, translation and literary studies, and sociology, with scant regard for political correctness. This fascinating and often hilarious collection of essays is the result. With the contributions: Jane Taylor - Introduction Dominique Bertrand - Anatomie et etymologie: ordre et desordre du rire selon Laurent Joubert Silke Kipper, Dietmar Todt - The Sound of Laughter: Recent Concepts and Findings in Research into Laughter Vocalizations Sarah-Jayne Blakemore - Why Can't You Tickle Yourself? Michael Holland - Belly Laughs Walter Redfern - Upping the Ante/i: Exaggeration in Celine and Valles Giselinde Kuipers - Humour Styles and Class Cultures: Highbrow Humour and Lowbrow Humour in the Netherlands Christie Davies - Searching for Jokes: Language, Translation, and the Cross-Cultural Comparison of Humour Ted Cohen - And What If They Don't Laugh? Iain Galbraith - Without the Rape the Talk-Show Would Not Be Laughable Jean-Michel Deprats - Translating a Great Feast of Languages Paul J. Memmi - Traduire le rire Natacha Thiery - Rire et desir dans les comedies americaines de Lubitsch: l'exemple de Ninotchka (1939) Adam Phillips - What's So Funny? On Being Laughed at ...Sukanta Chaudhuri - Laughing and Talking Georges Roque - Le Rire comme accident en peinture Laurent Bazin - La Couleur du rire: peinture et traduction Gerard Toulouse - Views on the Physics and Metaphysics of Laughter"
Download or read book Looking at Laughter written by John R. Clarke and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2007-11-17 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this fresh, accessible, and beautifully illustrated book, his third to examine an aspect of Roman visual culture, John R. Clarke explores the question, "What made Romans laugh?" Looking at Laughter examines a heterogeneous corpus of visual material, from the crudely obscene to the exquisitely sophisticated and from the playful to the deadly serious—everything from street theater to erudite paintings parodying the emperor. Nine chapters, organized under the rubrics of Visual Humor, Social Humor, and Sexual Humor, analyze a wide range of visual art, including wall painting, sculpture, mosaics, and ceramics. Archaeological sites, as well as a range of ancient texts, inscriptions, and graffiti, provide the background for understanding the how and why of humorous imagery. This entertaining study offers fascinating insights into the mentality of Roman patrons and viewers who enjoyed laughing at the gods, the powers-that-be, and themselves.
Download or read book Modern Literary Theory and the Ancient Novel written by Marília Futre Pinheiro and published by Barkhuis. This book was released on 2023-05-04 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Greek world under the Roman Empire, the tradition of rhetorical learning reached its heyday in the second century A.D., with the cultural movement named as “Second Sophistic”. Despite the emphasis on rhetoric, literary culture lato senso was was also part of it, granting a special place to poetics and literary criticism. In the wake of this hermeneutical and interdisciplinary approach, the papers assembled in this volume explore signi cant issues, which are linked to the narrative structure of the ancient novel and to the tradition of rhetorical training, both envisaged as a web of well-constructed narrative devices.
Download or read book Handbook of Medieval Studies written by Albrecht Classen and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2010-11-29 with total page 2822 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This interdisciplinary handbook provides extensive information about research in medieval studies and its most important results over the last decades. The handbook is a reference work which enables the readers to quickly and purposely gain insight into the important research discussions and to inform themselves about the current status of research in the field. The handbook consists of four parts. The first, large section offers articles on all of the main disciplines and discussions of the field. The second section presents articles on the key concepts of modern medieval studies and the debates therein. The third section is a lexicon of the most important text genres of the Middle Ages. The fourth section provides an international bio-bibliographical lexicon of the most prominent medievalists in all disciplines. A comprehensive bibliography rounds off the compendium. The result is a reference work which exhaustively documents the current status of research in medieval studies and brings the disciplines and experts of the field together.
Download or read book An Introduction to Literature Criticism and Theory written by Andrew Bennett and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-02 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lively, original and highly readable, An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory is the essential guide to literary studies. Starting at ‘The Beginning’ and concluding with ‘The End’, chapters range from the familiar, such as ‘Character’, ‘Narrative’ and ‘The Author’, to the more unusual, such as ‘Secrets’, ‘Pleasure’ and ‘Ghosts’. Now in its fifth edition, Bennett and Royle’s classic textbook successfully illuminates complex ideas by engaging directly with literary works, so that a reading of Jane Eyre opens up ways of thinking about racial difference, for example, while Chaucer, Raymond Chandler and Monty Python are all invoked in a discussion of literature and laughter. The fifth edition has been revised throughout and includes four new chapters – ‘Feelings’, ‘Wounds’, ‘Body’ and ‘Love’ – to incorporate exciting recent developments in literary studies. In addition to further reading sections at the end of each chapter, the book contains a comprehensive bibliography and a glossary of key literary terms. A breath of fresh air in a field that can often seem dry and dauntingly theoretical, this book will open the reader’s eyes to the exhilarating possibilities of reading and studying literature.
Download or read book Sudden Glory written by Barry Sanders and published by Beacon Press (MA). This book was released on 1995 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sudden Glory presents the history of one of the most evanescent but powerful forms of human expression - laughter. Here is the first book to look not at humor or comedy, but it laughter itself - and specifically at the way laughter evolved into an effective weapon for political subversion. Barry Sanders asks What did people laugh at? And why? What was the Church's attitude? The Rabbis'? Who could do it, when, and at whom? When did the joke first appear? Sudden Glory records the changes in attitudes toward laughter from the ancient world down to the present, with specific emphasis on cultural shifts from the late Middle Ages, when the Church's reach into the realm of the body was felt throughout society, through the end of the eighteenth century, when only deviants and derelicts laughed freely. Along the way, Sanders imagines the voices of women and peasants, whose laughter often went unrecorded, but surely not unheard. Sanders concludes with a brilliant chapter on contemporary laughter, beginning with "sick" comic Lenny Bruce (with whom he was personally acquainted), and ending with women stand-up comics, who seem to be finding their voices while male comics are mired in adolescent shtick. Sudden Glory, which contains an extensive bibliography on the subject of laughter, is an important study from one of our most penetrating and playful public intellectuals.
Download or read book A History of English Laughter written by Manfred Pfister and published by Rodopi. This book was released on 2002 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is there a 'history' of laughter? Or isn't laughter an anthropological constant rather and thus beyond history, a human feature that has defined humanity as homo ridens from cave man and cave woman to us? The contributors to this collection of essays believe that laughter does have a history and try to identify continuities and turning points of this history by studying a series of English texts, both canonical and non-canonical, from Anglosaxon to contemporary. As this is not another book on the history of the comic or of comedy it does not restrict itself to comic genres; some of the essays actually go out of their way to discover laughter at the margins of texts where one would not have expected it all - in Beowulf, or Paradise Lost or the Gothic Novel. Laughter at the margins of texts, which often coincides with laughter from the margins of society and its orthodoxies, is one of the special concerns of this book. This goes together with an interest in 'impure' forms of laughter - in laughter that is not the serene and intellectually or emotionally distanced response to a comic stimulus which is at the heart of many philosophical theories of the comic, but emotionally disturbed and troubled, aggressive and transgressive, satanic and sardonic laughter. We do not ask, then, what is comic, but: who laughs at and with whom where, when, why, and how?
Download or read book Laughter and Power in the Twelfth Century written by Peter J. A. Jones and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019-10-24 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Towards the end of the twelfth century, powerful images of laughing kings and saints began to appear in texts circulating at the English royal court. At the same time, contemporaries began celebrating the wit, humour, and laughter of King Henry II (r.1154-89) and his martyred Archbishop of Canterbury, Saint Thomas Becket (d.1170). Taking a broad genealogical approach, Laughter and Power in the Twelfth Century traces the emergence of this powerful laughter through an immersive study of medieval intellectual, literary, social, religious, and political debates. Focusing on a cultural renaissance in England, the study situates laughter at the heart of the defining transformations of the second half of the 1100s. With an expansive survey of theological and literary texts, bringing a range of unedited manuscript material to light in the process, Peter J. A. Jones exposes how twelfth-century writers came to connect laughter with spiritual transcendence and justice, and how this connection gave humour a unique political and spiritual power in both text and action. Ultimately, Jones argues that England's popular images of laughing kings and saints effectively reinstated a sublime charismatic authority, something truly rebellious at a moment in history when bureaucracy and codification were first coming to dominate European political life.
Download or read book A Cultural History of Laughter written by Abílio Almeida and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-08-07 with total page 123 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is laughter a sin? Or is it man’s best medicine? Is laughter now trivialised, mechanised or even weaponised by contemporary media? This book explores the social history of laughter in the West, from classical antiquity to the present day. Engaging with a range of thought from Plato to Nietzsche, it moves from classical to modern thought, considering the changing emotional climate of societies – including the postmodern "dictatorship of happiness" – and the role played by the technological changes of the last century in shaping our interpretation of laughter. A broad, historical study of the physical and emotional aspects of laughter, as well as its social role, A Cultural History of Laughter will appeal to scholars of sociology, history and cultural studies, among other fields of knowledge.
