In the Event of Laughter: Psychoanalysis, Literature and Comedy (Psychoanalytic Horizons)
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- Synopsis
- Using Lacanian psychoanalysis, as well as its pre-history and afterlives, In the Event of Laughter argues for a new framework for discussing laughter. Responding to a tradition of 'comedy studies' that has been interested only in the causes of laughter (in why we laugh), it proposes a different relationship between laughter and causality. Ultimately it argues that laughter is both cause and effect, troubling chronological time and asking for a more nuanced way of conceiving the relationship between subjects and their laughter than existing theories have accounted for. Making this visible via psychoanalytic ideas of retroactivity, Alfie Bown explores how laughter – far from being a mere response to a stimulus – changes the relationship between the present, the past and the future. Bown investigates this hypothesis in relation to a range of comic texts from the 'history of laughter,' discussing Chaucer, Shakespeare, Kafka and Chaplin, as well as lesser-known but vital figures from the comic genre.
- Copyright:
- 2018
Book Details
- Book Quality:
- Publisher Quality
- Book Size:
- 168 Pages
- ISBN-13:
- 9781501342639
- Related ISBNs:
- 9781501364136
- Publisher:
- Bloomsbury Publishing
- Date of Addition:
- 03/07/21
- Copyrighted By:
- Alfie Bown
- Adult content:
- No
- Language:
- English
- Has Image Descriptions:
- No
- Categories:
- History, Nonfiction, Literature and Fiction, Psychology, Language Arts, Humor, Philosophy
- Submitted By:
- Bookshare Staff
- Usage Restrictions:
- This is a copyrighted book.
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