The Ironic Temper and the Comic Imagination
The Ironic Temper and the Comic Imagination

Author: Morton Gurewitch

Publisher: Wayne State University Press

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 9780814325131

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The Ironic Temper and the Comic Imagination examines and illuminates the role which the ironic temper plays in the creation of complex literary comedy. The book focuses on ironic comedy, though not of the kind that is characterized by the surprises and shocks, the incongruities and reversals, of circumstantial irony. Circumstantial—or situational—irony cannot stand alone; it serves, for example, the aggressive functions of satire, or the irrational impulses of farce, or the benevolent, whimsical, or pain-defeating energies of humor.

The Primer of Humor Research
The Primer of Humor Research

Author: Victor Raskin

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2008-11-06

Total Pages: 679

ISBN-13: 3110198495

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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.

William Orpen, an Outsider in France
William Orpen, an Outsider in France

Author: Caroline Gallois

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2019-01-15

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 1527525848

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William Orpen (1878-1931) was in 1917 appointed as an official war artist in France. He not only saw the Great War as a call to paint serious subject-matter—enabling him to break away from the constraints of society portraiture in London—but also as an opportunity to write. Orpen was commissioned, along with artists such as Paul Nash, Stanley Spencer and Wyndham Lewis, to paint for the Department of Information. He was the only war artist to keep a written record of his wartime experience, published in 1921 as An Onlooker in France. In his Preface, Orpen rather too modestly states: “This book must not be considered as a serious work on life in France behind the lines, it is merely an attempt to record some certain little incidents that occurred in my own life there.” This art-historical study is a companion to this “attempt”. It examines, within the context of the global crisis that WWI was, and from various theoretical, philosophical and literary angles, his singular and at times provocative work. Orpen set out to provide a textual and visual record of life on the Western Front, as well as behind the lines—of what was supposed to be the “War to End all Wars”. For want of being a “fighting man”, the non-combatant artist-writer determined to fight with his own arms, his pens and brushes.

Beyond Decadence
Beyond Decadence

Author: Peter Butler

Publisher: Charles University in Prague, Karolinum Press

Published: 2015-09-01

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 8024625717

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Jan Opolsky has long been considered to be little more than an epigon of the Czech Decadence. By detailed analysis of his prose, this book aims to show that Opolsky is a master of sustained narrative irony and an accomplished writer in his own right. Introduction brings an overview of Czech Decadent/Symbolist literature and art in an European perspective. The first monograph evaluates archival sources, private correspondence with other literary figures and includes classified bibliography of Opolsky.

The Language of Humor
The Language of Humor

Author: Alleen Pace Nilsen

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-11

Total Pages: 403

ISBN-13: 1108416543

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Explores how humor can be explained across the various sub-disciplines of linguistics, in order to aid communication.

Dark Humour and Social Satire in the Modern British Novel
Dark Humour and Social Satire in the Modern British Novel

Author: L. Colletta

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2003-09-30

Total Pages: 165

ISBN-13: 140398137X

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Colletta uses psychoanalytic theories of joke-work and gallows humour to argue that dark humour is an important, defining characteristic of Modernism. She brings together the usual suspects alongside more often overlooked writers from the period, and asks probing questions about the relationship between a dark humour that 'revels in the non-rational, the unstable, and the fragmented, and resists easy definition and political usefulness' and the historical and social circumstances of the period. Colletta makes a compelling argument that probing deeply into the nature of humour or satire that define these 'social comedies' brings to light a more complex, and more accurate, understanding of the social changes and historical circumstances that define the modern era.

The Idea of Comedy
The Idea of Comedy

Author: Jan Hokenson

Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 9780838640968

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"Disengaging unstated premises to show how the theoretical discourse about comedy often enacts the intellectual disputes of its time, The idea of comedy tracks the history of comic theories along two principal axes. The first is historical, showing how the Hellenistic ethical conception devolves into social superiority and then into populist assertions, enidng on the question of whether contemporary comic theory is still populist today." "The second axis is conceptual, sorting theories by types of agreement and dispute. Whether comedy improves the citizens or threatens political instability, whether it insults or enacts moral standards, whether it serves God and the integrated superego or the devil and the anarchic id, are some of the questions addressed by theroists such as Cicero, Maggi, Dryden, Kant, Schopenhauer, Baudelaire, Nietzsche, Freud, Lacan, and Genette." -book jacket.

Writing Humor
Writing Humor

Author: Mary Ann Rishel

Publisher: Wayne State University Press

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 9780814329603

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Providing both theory and praxis, this insightful and creative textbook explains how to write humor, comedy, satire, parody, nonsense, and both the literary and the joke monologue. Through its close analyses of short stories, sketches, essays, and scripts, it is a must-read for serious and not-so-serious writers of every genre. Guiding aspiring writers through the many techniques for creating humor, it illustrates and analyzes what works and what doesn't, suggests ways to energize passages that fall flat, and offers insights into brainstorming, team writing, and revision. This book includes the history and cultural background of each major genre, followed by a rich array of writing exercises. Readers will find an inventive selection of examples to learn from, including a script from M*A*S*H and pieces by such humorists as Woody Allen, Ogden Nash, and Art Buchwald-and by students as well.

Probing the Frontiers of Biblical Studies
Probing the Frontiers of Biblical Studies

Author: Jay Harold Ellens

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2009-02-16

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 1498275494

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Probing the Frontiers of Biblical Studies is a seventeen-chapter anthology on biblical studies. It has been crafted as an extended and respectful thank you note to one of the most insightful scholars of biblical studies, David J. A. Clines of Sheffield University in England. He is credited with providing guidance to, and shaping the thought of, two generations of scholars who focus on essential approaches to understanding the Bible, with particular attention given to the Old Testament and allied literature. The anthology is directed toward those readers with pastoral, analytical, ancient intercultural, as well as contemporary cultural perspectives. Essays address a wide range of topics: the so-called Documentary Hypothesis, prophecy, divination, and magic, the wisdom themes in the Book of Job, the Egyptian influence on New Testament, the issue of non-sexual love between two men during combat conditions, character development in a biblical novella, rhetorical questions and their role in the Psalter, and the ways of God in the world. By combining these various topics, Probing the Frontier of Biblical Studies has addressed many of the outstanding issues in Old Testament study and ancillary disciplines.

Humor and the Good Life in Modern Philosophy
Humor and the Good Life in Modern Philosophy

Author: Lydia B. Amir

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 2014-02-01

Total Pages: 406

ISBN-13: 1438449372

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An exploration of philosophical and religious ideas about humor in modern philosophy and their secular implications. By exploring the works of both Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, and Søren Kierkegaard, Lydia B. Amir finds a rich tapestry of ideas about the comic, the tragic, humor, and related concepts such as irony, ridicule, and wit. Amir focuses chiefly on these two thinkers, but she also includes Johann Georg Hamann, an influence of Kierkegaard’s who was himself influenced by Shaftesbury. All three thinkers were devout Christians but were intensely critical of the organized Christianity of their milieux, and humor played an important role in their responses. The author examines the epistemological, ethical, and religious roles of humor in their philosophies and proposes a secular philosophy of humor in which humor helps attain the philosophic ideals of self-knowledge, truth, rationality, virtue, and wisdom, as well as the more ambitious goals of liberation, joy, and wisdom.