Author : J. L. Styan
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 324 pages
File Size : 24,18 MB
Release : 1968-07
Category : Drama
ISBN : 9780521095297
Anyone who takes an intelligent interest in theatre-going will find profit and stimulus in this book.
Author : Wes D. Gehring
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 251 pages
File Size : 17,73 MB
Release : 2016-03-09
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 1476622515
This examination of dark comedies of the 1970s focuses on films which concealed black humor behind a misleading genre label. All That Jazz (1979) is a musical...about death--hardly Fred and Ginger territory. This masking goes beyond misnomer to a breaking of formula that director Robert Altman called "anti-genre." Altman's MASH (1970) ridiculed the military establishment in general--the Vietnam War in particular--under the guise of a standard military service comedy. The picaresque Western Little Big Man (1970) turned the bluecoats vs. Indians formula upside-down--the audience roots for the Indians instead of the cavalry. The book covers 12 essential films, including Harold and Maude (1971), Slaughterhouse-Five (1972), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and Being There (1979), with notes on A Clockwork Orange (1971). These films reveal a compounding complexity that reinforces the absurdity at the heart of dark comedy.
Author : Harold Bloom
Publisher : Infobase Publishing
Page : 290 pages
File Size : 22,74 MB
Release : 2010
Category : Black humor
ISBN : 143813102X
Provides an examination of the use of dark humor in classic literary works.
Author : Pamela Faith Jackson
Publisher : Hal Leonard Corporation
Page : 516 pages
File Size : 39,78 MB
Release : 1997
Category : Drama
ISBN : 9781557832788
(Applause Books). This first-of-its kind collection includes a wide range of works, from an early examination and critique of American society after World War II to plays that reflect socio-political concerns that kept pace with historical events, like the sit-in demonstrations, the bus boycotts, black nationalism, and the women's liberation movement. A hybrid of comedic forms including satire, farce, comedy of manners, romantic comedy, dark comedy, and tragicomedy are presented through vernacular language, stand-up performance art, masks, broad humor, as well as the minstrel show. Essays, articles and interviews complement this critical edition.
Author : Patrice A. Oppliger
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 318 pages
File Size : 46,52 MB
Release : 2020-04-10
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 3030372146
This book focuses on the “dark side” of stand-up comedy, initially inspired by speculations surrounding the death of comedian Robin Williams. Contributors, those who study humor as well as those who perform comedy, join together to contemplate the paradoxical relationship between tragedy and comedy and expose over-generalizations about comic performers’ troubled childhoods, addictions, and mental illnesses. The book is divided into two sections. First, scholars from a variety of disciplines explore comedians’ onstage performances, their offstage lives, and the relationship between the two. The second half of the book focuses on amateur and lesser-known professional comedians who reveal the struggles they face as they attempt to hone successful comedy acts and likable comic personae. The goal of this collection is to move beyond the hackneyed stereotype of the sad clown in order to reveal how stand-up comedy can transform both personal and collective tragedies by providing catharsis through humor.
Author : Gene A. Plunka
Publisher : University of Delaware Press
Page : 308 pages
File Size : 41,90 MB
Release : 2002
Category : Drama
ISBN : 9780874137637
This book, the first full-length study of Guare's theater, will make his plays more accessible through an examination of the often unnerving type of black comedy that makes his plays work.".
Author : L. Colletta
Publisher : Springer
Page : 165 pages
File Size : 27,78 MB
Release : 2003-09-30
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 140398137X
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.
Author : Carmen Valero-Garcés
Publisher : Universitat de València
Page : 479 pages
File Size : 16,95 MB
Release : 2011-11-28
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 8437082900
This is the first edited volume dedicated specifically to exploring humor in the academic world. It is a rich collection of essays by an international array of scholars representing various theoretical perspectives and practical orientations in the disciplines of Linguistics, Literature, Cultural Studies, and Translation, but all concerned with the interactional aspects of humor. The two main reasons behind the publication of this volume are, first, to continue the journey along the path towards full recognition of humor as a discipline worthy of research and assessment, and, second, to offer a new and integrating perspective on hu¬mor to showcase the wide range of dimensions that it offers. This book is sure to become an important reference and source of inspiration for scholars in the various subfields of Humor Studies: Linguistics, Literature, Cultural Studies, and Translation.
Author : Wheeler Winston Dixon
Publisher : Springer
Page : 111 pages
File Size : 29,20 MB
Release : 2015-06-11
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 1137562501
Focusing on "dark" or black comedy films in the US and the UK, Wheeler Winston Dixon provides a comprehensive overview of a variety of films and filmmakers (Vanishing Point, Marcel Hanoun), whose work has largely been ignored, but whose influence and importance is clearly present.
Author : Andrew Horton
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 585 pages
File Size : 44,73 MB
Release : 2015-12-14
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 1119169550
A wide-ranging survey of the subject that celebrates the variety and complexity of film comedy from the ‘silent’ days to the present, this authoritative guide offers an international perspective on the popular genre that explores all facets of its formative social, cultural and political context A wide-ranging collection of 24 essays exploring film comedy from the silent era to the present International in scope, the collection embraces not just American cinema, including Native American and African American, but also comic films from Europe, the Middle East, and Korea Essays explore sub-genres, performers, and cultural perspectives such as gender, politics, and history in addition to individual works Engages with different strands of comedy including slapstick, romantic, satirical and ironic Features original entries from a diverse group of multidisciplinary international contributors
