Inciting Joy


Book Description

From New York Times bestselling author Ross Gay comes a "brilliant" intimate and electrifying collection of essays about the joy that comes from connection (Ada Limón, U.S. poet laureate). In these gorgeously written and timely pieces, prizewinning poet and author Gay considers the joy we incite when we care for each other, especially during life’s inevitable hardships. Throughout Inciting Joy, he explores how we can practice recognizing that connection, and also, crucially, how we can expand it. Taking a clear-eyed look at injustice, political polarization, and the destruction of the natural world, Gay shows us how we might resist, how the study of joy might lead us to a wild, unpredictable, transgressive, and unboundaried solidarity. In fact, it just might help us survive. In an era when divisive voices take up so much airspace, Inciting Joy offers a vital alternative: What might be possible if we turn our attention to what brings us together, to what we love?




The Nature of Laughter


Book Description




Pieter Bruegel and the Art of Laughter


Book Description

In this delightfully engaging book, Walter S. Gibson takes a new look at Bruegel, arguing that the artist was no erudite philosopher, but a man very much in the world, and that a significant part of his art is best appreciated in the context of humour.




A Cultural History of Laughter


Book Description

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.




Looking at Laughter


Book Description

In this fresh, accessible, and beautifully illustrated book, his third to examine an aspect of Roman visual culture, John R. Clarke explores the question, "What made Romans laugh?" Looking at Laughter examines a heterogeneous corpus of visual material, from the crudely obscene to the exquisitely sophisticated and from the playful to the deadly serious—everything from street theater to erudite paintings parodying the emperor. Nine chapters, organized under the rubrics of Visual Humor, Social Humor, and Sexual Humor, analyze a wide range of visual art, including wall painting, sculpture, mosaics, and ceramics. Archaeological sites, as well as a range of ancient texts, inscriptions, and graffiti, provide the background for understanding the how and why of humorous imagery. This entertaining study offers fascinating insights into the mentality of Roman patrons and viewers who enjoyed laughing at the gods, the powers-that-be, and themselves.




Inciting Laughter


Book Description

Annotation Takes a cross-disciplinary approach to an examination of , a type of distinctively Jewish humor, written in German but deemed antithetical to the values of Mainstream German-language society of the 19th century. Focusing on the period from 1820 to 1850, Chase emphasizes a dual analysis of , both as stereotype and strategy, stressing throughout the importance of nonessentialism in the discussion of Jewish humor and 19th century German reactions to it. He discusses the humor itself and its role in identity issues, followed by detailed coverage of three Jewish humorists: Moritz Gottlieb Saphir, Ludwig B:orne, and Heinrich Heine. He then assesses the role of in literary history, discusses the "core myth" of German literary history, and evaluates the adaptation of the myth over time. A conclusion is followed by translations of the three humorists' writings. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).




Humor, Satire, and Identity


Book Description

This is the first book in English to survey the Eastern German literary trend of employing humor and satire to come to terms with experiences in the German Democratic Republic and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. As sophisticated attempts to make sense of socialism’s failure and a difficult unification process, these contemporary texts help define Germany today from a specific, Eastern German perspective. Grounded in politics and history, ten humorous and satirical novels are analyzed for their literary aesthetics and language, cultural critiques, and socio-political insights. The texts include popular novels such as Thomas Brussig’s Helden wie wir, Ingo Schulze’s Simple Storys, and Jens Sparschuh’s Der Zimmerspringbrunnen, as well as lesser-known but equally relevant works like Schlehweins Giraffe by Bernd Schirmer and Katerfrühstück by Erich Loest. A broad spectrum of humor and satire theories is applied to probe texts from various angles and suggest multi-layered answers to the question of how these literary modes function in postwall Germany to construct a specifically Eastern German identity. Interviews the author conducted with five of the satirists are appended as primary sources and contribute to the interpretation of the texts.




Jokes and Targets


Book Description

Jokes and Targets takes up an appealing and entertaining topic—the social and historical origins of jokes about familiar targets such as rustics, Jewish spouses, used car salesmen, and dumb blondes. Christie Davies explains why political jokes flourished in the Soviet Union, why Europeans tell jokes about American lawyers but not about their own lawyers, and why sex jokes often refer to France rather than to other countries. One of the world's leading experts on the study of humor, Davies provides a wide-ranging and detailed study of the jokes that make up an important part of everyday conversation.




Forever and Beyond


Book Description

Katie OMalley is a free-spirited, artsy, red-haired beauty who is about to graduate from Columbia University. But when her parents, John and Mary OMalley, die in a tragic plane crash, Katies life becomes very complicated. First, she learns the plane crash was no accident; her uncle paid someone to tamper with the fuel gauge. And, she certainly didnt expect to lose her heart to the handsome young priest, Andrew Jackson, who comforted her during her time of loss and grief. Nor did she expect to have her feelings returned by the good father. A file in her fathers desk reveals the biggest surprise of all. Its a surprise that rocks Katies world and takes her far from the bright lights of New York City to an unknown future on The Outer Banks of North Carolina. As she searches for answers, Katie wonders if her fathers hidden past will be the key to the future she has always longed for. Other uncertainties plague Katies future. Will Father Andrew Jackson leave the life of a priest and follow his heart back to her? Or will Katie find a new love in the sleepy little village of Buxton, North Carolina?




Comical Modernity


Book Description

Though long associated with a small group of coffeehouse elites around the turn of the twentieth century, Viennese “modernist” culture had roots that reached much further back and beyond the rarefied sphere of high culture. In Comical Modernity, Heidi Hakkarainen looks at Vienna in the second half of the nineteenth century, a period of dramatic urban renewal during which the city’s rapidly changing face was a mainstay of humorous magazines, books, and other publications aimed at middle-class audiences. As she shows, humor provided a widely accessible means of negotiating an era of radical change.




Recent Books