A Cultural History Of Laughter

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.

Download or read book Histories of Laughter and Laughter in History written by Rafał Borysławski and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Laughter is often no laughing matter, and, as such, it deserves continued scholarly attention as a social, cultural and historical phenomenon. This collection of essays is a meeting ground for scholars from several disciplines, including historians, philologists, and scholars of social sciences, to discuss places and roles of laughter in history, in historical narratives, and in cultural anthropology from prehistory to the present. The common foci of the papers gathered in this volume are to examine laughter and its meanings, to reflect on the place of laughter in Western history and literature, to disclose laughters manipulative potential in historical and literary narratives, to see it in the light of the concepts of carnivalesque and playfulness, to see it as a reflection of hysterical historicizing, to see its place in comedy, farce, grotesque and irony, and to see it against its broadly understood theoretical, philosophical and psychological aspects. The book will appeal chiefly to an academic readership, including students, historians, literary and cultural scholars, sociologists, and cultural anthropologists.

Download or read book The Age of Irreverence written by Christopher Rea and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2015-09-08 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Age of Irreverence tells the story of why China’s entry into the modern age was not just traumatic, but uproarious. As the Qing dynasty slumped toward extinction, prominent writers compiled jokes into collections they called "histories of laughter." In the first years of the Republic, novelists, essayists and illustrators alike used humorous allegories to make veiled critiques of the new government. But, again and again, political and cultural discussion erupted into invective, as critics gleefully jeered and derided rivals in public. Farceurs drew followings in the popular press, promoting a culture of practical joking and buffoonery. Eventually, these various expressions of hilarity proved so offensive to high-brow writers that they launched a concerted campaign to transform the tone of public discourse, hoping to displace the old forms of mirth with a new one they called youmo (humor). Christopher Rea argues that this period—from the 1890s to the 1930s—transformed how Chinese people thought and talked about what is funny. Focusing on five cultural expressions of laughter—jokes, play, mockery, farce, and humor—he reveals the textures of comedy that were a part of everyday life during modern China’s first "age of irreverence." This new history of laughter not only offers an unprecedented and up-close look at a neglected facet of Chinese cultural modernity, but also reveals its lasting legacy in the Chinese language of the comic today and its implications for our understanding of humor as a part of human culture.

Download or read book Rebellious Laughter written by Joseph Boskin and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 1997-11-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rebellious Laughter changes the way we think about the ordinary joke. Claiming that humor in America is a primary cultural weapon, Boskin surveys the multitude of joke cycles that have swept the country during the last fifty years. Dumb Blonde jokes. Elephant jokes. Jewish-American Princess jokes. Lightbulb jokes. Readers will enjoy humor from many diverse sources: whites, blacks, women, and Hispanics; conservatives and liberals; public workers and university students; the powerless and power brokers. Boskin argues that jokes provide a cultural barometer of concerns and anxieties, frequently appearing in our day-to-day language long before these issues become grist for stand-up comics.

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 Sudden Glory written by Barry Sanders and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 1996-10-30 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this wonderful exploration of the meaning of laughter, Barry Sanders queries its uses from the ancient Hebrews to Lenny Bruce, turning up evidence of its age-old power to subvert authority and give voice to the voiceless.

Download or read book Greek Laughter written by Stephen Halliwell and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-02 with total page 632 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book to offer an integrated reading of ancient Greek attitudes to laughter. Taking material from various genres and contexts, the book analyses both the theory and the practice of laughter as a revealing expression of Greek values and mentalities. Greek society developed distinctive institutions for the celebration of laughter as a capacity which could bridge the gap between humans and gods; but it also feared laughter for its power to expose individuals and groups to shame and even violence. Caught between ideas of pleasure and pain, friendship and enmity, laughter became a theme of recurrent interest in various contexts. Employing a sophisticated model of cultural history, Stephen Halliwell traces elaborations of the theme in a series of important texts: ranging far beyond modern accounts of 'humour', he shows how perceptions of laughter helped to shape Greek conceptions of the body, the mind and the meaning of life.