Histories of Laughter and Laughter in History

Histories of Laughter and Laughter in History
Author: Rafał Borysławski
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2016-08-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 1443898546

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.

Laughing Histories

Laughing Histories
Author: Joy Wiltenburg
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2022-06-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000593614

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.

Laughter in Ancient Rome

Laughter in Ancient Rome
Author: Mary Beard
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2024-03-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520401492

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?

In History's Grip

In History's Grip
Author: Michael Kimmage
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 213
Release: 2012-08-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0804783675

In History's Grip concentrates on the literature of Philip Roth, one of America's greatest writers, and in particular on American Pastoral, I Married a Communist, and The Human Stain. Each of these novels from the 1990s uses Newark, New Jersey, to explore American history and character. Each features a protagonist who grows up in and then leaves Newark, after which he is undone by a historically generated crisis. The city's twentieth-century decline from immigrant metropolis to postindustrial disaster completes the motif of history and its terrifying power over individual destiny. In History's Grip is the first critical study to foreground the city of Newark as the source of Roth's inspiration, and to scrutinize a subject Roth was accused of avoiding as a younger writer—history. In so doing, the book brings together the two halves of Roth's decades-long career: the first featuring characters who live outside of history's grip; the second, characters entrapped in historical patterns beyond their ken and control.

A History of English Laughter

A History of English Laughter
Author: Manfred Pfister
Publisher: Rodopi
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2002
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 9789042012882

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?

Featherless Chickens, Laughing Women, and Serious Stories

Featherless Chickens, Laughing Women, and Serious Stories
Author: Jeannie B. Thomas
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Total Pages: 246
Release: 1997
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780813917238

Interested in preserving her family folklore, Jeannie B. Thomas recorded detailed oral histories from her mother and two grandmothers. While analyzing the tapes of these sessions, she notices the inappropriate laughter often accompanied the retelling of painful stories. In this book, Thomas combines these personal narratives with original scholarship drawing on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin and Julia Kristeva to uncover meaning behind the startling presence of unconventional laughter in women's histories.

20 Years of Laughter

20 Years of Laughter
Author: Clowns of America International
Publisher: Turner Publishing Company
Total Pages: 156
Release: 2006
Genre: Clowns
ISBN: 1596520736

The Story Devotional

The Story Devotional
Author: Zondervan
Publisher: HarperChristian + ORM
Total Pages: 408
Release: 2014-09-29
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0310352169

Like The Story, The Story Devotional will guide readers through the overarching narrative of the Bible in 365 days. Combining Scripture with bite-sized reflections and a daily takeaway, readers will be able to work their way through God's epic Story and focus on His plan for their lives. Following the same chronological organization as The Story, readers will see their lives in a whole new light, with purpose as part of God's eternal story. Using the takeaway message at the end of each devotion, readers can apply the teachings of the Bible to their daily life. This book can be used in conjunction with The Story or as a stand alone devotional. This is the first devotional product in The Story line. Trim Size: 5 x 7

Retelling the Stories of Our Lives: Everyday Narrative Therapy to Draw Inspiration and Transform Experience

Retelling the Stories of Our Lives: Everyday Narrative Therapy to Draw Inspiration and Transform Experience
Author: David Denborough
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2014-01-06
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0393708152

Our lives and their pathways are not fixed in stone; instead they are shaped by story. If we tell stories that emphasize only desolation, then we become weaker. If we tell stories in ways that make us stronger, we can soothe our losses and erase sorrows. Learning how to re-envision the stories we tell about ourselves can make an enormous difference in the ways we live our lives. Drawing on wisdom form the field of narrative therapy, this book will help people rewrite and retell the stories of their lives, reclaiming and celebrating experiences in the face of specific challenges such as trauma, abuse, personal failure, grief, and aging. Readers are introduced to key ideas of narrative practice like externalizing problems--"the person is not the problem, the problem is the problem"--and the concept of "re-membering" one's life. Easy-to-understand examples and exercises help readers make these techniques their own, leading them on a path to reclaim their past and re-envision their future. -- Publisher's description.

New Meanings for Ancient Texts

New Meanings for Ancient Texts
Author: Steven L. McKenzie
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
Total Pages: 197
Release: 2013-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0664238165

"As . . . newer approaches [to biblical criticism] become more established and influential, it is essential that students and other serious readers of the Bible be exposed to them and become familiar with them. That is the main impetus behind the present volume, which is offered as a textbook for those who wish to go further than the approaches covered in To Each Its Own Meaning by exploring more recent or experimental ways of reading." „from the introduction This book is a supplement and sequel to To Each Its Own Meaning, edited by Steven L. McKenzie and Stephen R. Haynes, which introduced the reader to the most important methods of biblical criticism and remains a widely used classroom textbook. This new volume explores recent developments in, and approaches to, biblical criticism since 1999. Leading contributors define and describe their approach for non-specialist readers, using examples from the Old and New Testament to help illustrate their discussion. Topics include cultural criticism, disability studies, queer criticism, postmodernism, ecological criticism, new historicism, popular culture, postcolonial criticism, and psychological criticism. Each section includes a list of key terms and definitions and suggestions for further reading.