Histories Of Laughter And Laughter In History

Author : Rafał Borysławski,Justyna Jajszczok,Jakub Wolff
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Page : 245 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2016-08-17
Category : History
ISBN : 9781443898546

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Histories of Laughter and Laughter in History by Rafał Borysławski,Justyna Jajszczok,Jakub Wolff Pdf

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 laughter’s 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.

Author : Joy Wiltenburg
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 200 pages
File Size : 41,9 Mb
Release : 2022-06-07
Category : History
ISBN : 9781000593617

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Laughing Histories by Joy Wiltenburg Pdf

Laughing Histories breaks new ground by exploring moments of laughter in early modern Europe, showing how laughter was inflected by gender and social power. "I dearly love a laugh," declared Jane Austen's heroine Elizabeth Bennet, and her wit won the heart of the aristocratic Mr. Darcy. Yet the widely read Earl of Chesterfield asserted that only "the mob" would laugh out loud; the gentleman should merely smile. This literary contrast raises important historical questions: how did social rules constrain laughter? Did the highest elites really laugh less than others? How did laughter play out in relations between the sexes? Through fascinating case studies of individuals such as the Renaissance artist Benvenuto Cellini, the French aristocrat Madame de Sévigné, and the rising civil servant and diarist Samuel Pepys, Laughing Histories reveals the multiple meanings of laughter, from the court to the tavern and street, in a complex history that paved the way for modern laughter. ​ With its study of laughter in relation to power, aggression, gender, sex, class, and social bonding, Laughing Histories is perfect for readers interested in the history of emotions, cultural history, gender history, and literature.

Author : Christopher Rea
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 356 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2015-09-08
Category : History
ISBN : 9780520959590

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The Age of Irreverence by Christopher Rea Pdf

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.

Author : Milan Kundera
Publisher : HarperCollins
Page : 324 pages
File Size : 42,9 Mb
Release : 2023-03-28
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9780063290693

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The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera Pdf

"An absolutely dazzling entertainment. . . . Arousing on every level—political, erotic, intellectual, and above all, humorous." —Newsweek "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting calls itself a novel, although it is part fairy tale, part literary criticism, part political tract, part musicology, and part autobiography. It can call itself whatever it wants to, because the whole is genius." —New York Times Rich in its stories, characters, and imaginative range, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is the novel that brought Milan Kundera his first big international success in the late 1970s. Like all his work, it is valuable for far more than its historical implications. In seven wonderfully integrated parts, different aspects of human existence are magnified and reduced, reordered and emphasized, newly examined, analyzed, and experienced.

Author : Christopher Rea
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 355 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 2015-09-08
Category : History
ISBN : 9780520283848

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The Age of Irreverence by Christopher Rea Pdf

The Age of Irreverence tells the story of why ChinaÕs 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 Òhistories of laughter.Ó 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 periodÑfrom the 1890s to the 1930sÑtransformed how Chinese people thought and talked about what is funny. Focusing on five cultural expressions of laughterÑjokes, play, mockery, farce, and humorÑhe reveals the textures of comedy that were a part of everyday life during modern ChinaÕs first Òage of irreverence.Ó 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.

Author : Anca Parvulescu
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 227 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2010-08-27
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780262514743

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Laughter by Anca Parvulescu Pdf

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.

Author : Elisabeth Cheauré,Regine Nohejl
Publisher : transcript Verlag
Page : 139 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 2014-10-31
Category : History
ISBN : 9783839428580

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Humour and Laughter in History by Elisabeth Cheauré,Regine Nohejl Pdf

Humour can be used as a »weapon« or as a means of coping with problematic historical events, especially in times of war and crisis. The book presents examples from different cultures (Russia, Europe, USA), from different historical epochs (from the Napoleonic era up to the current time) and from different medias (caricature, journalism, film). By looking at the individual cases it becomes possible to recognize some general structural patterns and to gain a deeper insight into the »functioning« of humour and laughter.

Author : Manfred Pfister
Publisher : Rodopi
Page : 220 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2002
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 9042012889

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A History of English Laughter by Manfred Pfister Pdf

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?

Author : Johan Verberckmoes
Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan
Page : 214 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 1999
Category : History
ISBN : 0312216092

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Laughter, Jestbooks, and Society in the Spanish Netherlands by Johan Verberckmoes Pdf

Prior to the modern age laughter raised passions and activated the body to sweat and shake. Derision was not distinguished from joy. Deceiving the senses by tricks or funny stories made people laugh loudly, high and low class alike. Johan Verberckmoes describes in this innovating book the hodgepodge of comic images and stories in "Flandes" under the rule of the Spanish Habsburgs, from 1500 to 1700. It challenges the Bakhtinian idea of a caesura in the history of laughter around 1600 and pleads to take the laughing body seriously as influencing culture and society in its own right.

Author : Mary Beard
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 336 pages
File Size : 52,5 Mb
Release : 2014-06-25
Category : History
ISBN : 9780520277168

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Laughter in Ancient Rome by Mary Beard Pdf

Draws on a wide range of period writings, from essays on rhetoric to a surviving joke book, to explore the culture of humor in ancient Rome, offering insight into what was considered funny at the time and how everyday Romans expressed their humor. By the author of The Fires of Vesuvius.

Author : Manfred Pfister
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 40,5 Mb
Release : 2002
Category : Laughter
ISBN : 9004484876

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A History of English Laughter by Manfred Pfister Pdf

Author : Robert R. Provine
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 324 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 2001-12-01
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9781101659250

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Laughter by Robert R. Provine Pdf

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.

Author : Victor Hugo
Publisher : The Floating Press
Page : 748 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 2011-05-01
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781775452782

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The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo Pdf

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.

Author : Barry Sanders
Publisher : Beacon Press
Page : 350 pages
File Size : 43,8 Mb
Release : 1996-10-30
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0807062057

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Sudden Glory by Barry Sanders Pdf

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.

Author : Ingvild Saelid Gilhus
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 199 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 2013-01-11
Category : History
ISBN : 9781134717675

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Laughing Gods, Weeping Virgins by Ingvild Saelid Gilhus Pdf

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.