This book traces the development of religious comedy and leverages that history to justify today’s uses of religious humor in all of its manifestations, including irreverent jokes. It argues that ...regulating humor is futile and counterproductive, illustrating this point with a host of comedic examples. Humor is a powerful rhetorical tool for those who advocate and for those who satirize religious ideals.
The book presents a compelling argument about the centrality of humor to the story of Western Christianity’s cultural and artistic development since the Middle Ages, taking a multi-disciplinary approach that combines literary criticism, religious studies, philosophy, theology, and social science. After laying out the conceptual framework in Part 1, Part 2 analyzes key works of religious comedy across the ages from Dante to the present, and it samples the breadth of contemporary religious humor from Brad Stine to Robin Williams, and from Monty Python to South Park. Using critical, historical, and conceptual lenses, the book exposes and overturns past attempts by church authorities, scholars, and commentators to limit and control laughter based on religious, ideological, or moral criteria.
This is a unique look into the role of humor and comedy around religion. It will, therefore, be of great interest to scholars of Religious Studies, Humor Studies, and the Sociology of Religion.
Authoritarian Laughter
explores the political history of the satire and humor
magazine Broom published in Soviet Lithuania. Artists,
writers, and journalists were required to create state-sponsored
...Soviet humor and serve the Communist Party after Lithuania was
incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1940. Neringa Klumbytė
investigates official attempts to shape citizens into Soviet
subjects and engage them through a culture of popular humor.
Broom was multidirectional-it both facilitated
Communist Party agendas and expressed opposition toward the Soviet
regime. Official satire and humor in Soviet Lithuania increasingly
created dystopian visions of Soviet modernity and were a forum for
critical ideas and nationalist sentiments that were mobilized in
anti-Soviet revolutionary laughter in the late 1980s and early
1990s.
Authoritarian Laughter illustrates that Soviet Western
peripheries were unstable and their governance was limited. While
authoritarian states engage in a statecraft of the everyday and
seek to engineer intimate lives, authoritarianism is defied not
only in revolutions, but in the many stories people tell each other
about themselves in jokes, cartoons, and satires.
La muerte del otro Messon, Omar
Afro-Hispanic review,
03/2016, Letnik:
35, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Te han cerrado los ojos Raúl, me hubiera gustado volver a verlos con su gran carga de asombro cuando te desvanecías en mis brazos, querido hermano, como tú me decías, estabas tan perplejo, tan ...inofensivo, habías cambiado ese aire burlón que llevaste, hasta que te diste cuenta que la cosa no era broma.Aquí me tienes, viejito, no ya frente a ti sino encima de ti, viéndote desde mi estatura y desde tu definitiva horizontalidad, ya no puedes hablarme de tu elegancia, de tu porte, de tu donosura, ahora sólo das asco; todas se acercan pero ninguna de estas mujeres va a cometer la cochinada de besarte en la boca, ni siquiera de pasarte la mano por el rostro, ahora deberías advertir que ese, tu pene, a quien llamabas "el animal" es sólo una baba gelatinosa a quien muy pronto sólo chuparan los gusanos.En cuanto a Maruja, siempre buscabas un pretexto para estar en mi casa "la Maruja me trata como una cu ada" me repetías continuamente; tu siempre le subías el ánimo cuando estaba de mal humor; llegabas, le plantabas un beso en la mejilla, decías ridículamente ¡mi cuñada! y tu sola presencia bastaba para cambiarle el rostro a mi mujer; se tomaba vivaz, alegre, dicharachera, te hacía repetir tus groseros chistes, llegó hasta manifestar que le hubiese gustado que yo fuera como tú, tan simpático, tan alegre, siempre con una sonrisa en los labios.
Since its inception in the early 1830s, southern frontier humor (also known as the humor of the Old Southwest) has had enduring appeal. The onset of the new millennium precipitated an impressive ...rejuvenation of scholarly interest.Beyond Southern Frontier Humor: Prospects and Possibilitiesrepresents the next step in this revival, providing a series of essays with fresh perspectives and contexts.
First the book shows the importance of Henry Junius Nott, a writer virtually unknown and forgotten who mined many of the principal subjects, themes, tropes, and character types associated with southern frontier humor, followed by an essay addressing how this humor genre and its ideological impact helped to stimulate a national cultural revolution. Several essays focus on the genre's legacy to the post-Civil War era, exploring intersections between southern frontier humor and southern local color writers--Joel Chandler Harris, Charles W. Chesnutt, and Sherwood Bonner. Mark Twain's African American dialect piece "A True Story," though employing some of the conventions of southern frontier humor, is reexamined as a transitional text, showing his shift to broader concerns, particularly in race portraiture.Essays also examine the evolution of the trickster from the Jack Tales to Hooper's Simon Suggs to similar mountebanks in novels of John Kennedy Toole, Mark Childress, and Clyde Edgerton and transnational contexts, the latter exploring parallels between southern frontier humor and the Jamaican Anansi tales. Finally, the genre is situated contextually, using contemporary critical discourses, which are applied to G. W. Harris's Sut Lovingood and to various frontier hunting stories.
Historians and critics often view R. F. Outcault’s comic strip Buster Brown (1902–1921) as a subversive series, as it is headlined by a naughty boy who constantly challenges adults and whose pranks ...appear to undermine family stability. The strip, however, also has a conservative function. While Buster Brown depicts the home as a site of conflict, it also celebrates the middle-class family as a resilient institution. The series specifically suggests that humor is effective in dealing with domestic conflict, suggesting that laughter and playfulness alleviate tensions and allow family members to sympathize with one another. In Buster Brown , the mischief-making child is made delightful rather than threatening. At a time when many Progressive Era Americans worried that the institution of the family was in a state of crisis, Buster Brown assured its readers that poking fun at family matters fortified the home.
Los profesionales de los medios están llamados a manejar la información de una manera competente y esa es la intención de este libro: ofrecer recursos que iluminen y sirvan de referente a las ...personas que trabajan en interacción con los demás, para que puedan situarse con claridad en el actual escenario de su profesión y así poder aportar, crear y optimizar la comunicación. La parte segunda versa sobre la comunicadón eficaz incluyendo varios capítulos que analizan y reflexionan sobre los aspectos verbales y no verbales de la comunicación, la importancia de la pregunta y la escucha, los diferentes estilos comunicativos (entre los que destaca el estilo asertivo), las habilidades de comunicación y la necesidad de evitar los prejuicios y los rumores en los medios. La parte tercera se ocupa de la comunicación como influencia social profundizando en procesos como el poder y la persuasión y en el uso del humor en la comunicación.
This timely study sheds new light on debates about humour and identity in France, and is the first book about humour and identity in France to be published in either English or French that analyses ...both debates aboutCharlie Hebdo and standup comedy. It examines humour, freedom of expression, and social cohesion in France during a crucial time in France's recent history punctuated by theCharlie Hebdo attacks of January 2015. It evaluates the state of French society and attitudes to humour in France in the aftermath of the events of January 2015. This book argues that debates surroundingCharlie Hebdo, although significant, only provide part of the picture when it comes to understanding humour and multiculturalism in France. This monograph fills significant gaps in French and international media coverage and academic writing, which has generally failed to adequately examine the broader picture that emerges when one examines career trajectories of notable contemporary French comedians. By addressing this failing, this book provides a more complete picture of humour, identity, and Republican values in France. By focusing primarily on contemporary comedians in France, this book explores competing uses of French Republican discourse in debates about humour, offensiveness, and freedom of expression. Ultimately, it argues that studying humour and identity in France often reveals a sense of national unease within the Republic at a time of considerable turmoil.
This introduction to the “Festschrift for Willibald Ruch” outlines his impressive achievements in humor research, especially in the areas of measurement, individual differences as well as models and ...theories. Though mostly focusing on the psychology of humor and the sense of humor, Willibald also pioneered interdisciplinary and cross-cultural humor studies. This Festschrift comprises seven invited commentaries and eight articles, which expand areas of research that Willibald significantly shaped and advanced, including humor appreciation, comprehension and production, cheerfulness, dispositions towards laughter and being laughed at, as well as comic styles and humor dimensions.
The aim of the present study is to locate eight comic styles in basic and broad concepts of humor, namely the temperamental basis of the sense of humor, humor appreciation, and humor creation. The ...comic styles represent individual differences in how people display humor, differentiating between fun, (benevolent) humor, nonsense, wit, irony, satire, sarcasm, and cynicism. Two samples of 234 and 223 German-speaking adults completed the Comic Style Markers, the standard self-report measure to assess the eight comic styles, as well as self-reports of cheerfulness, seriousness, and bad mood (Sample 1) or behavior tests of humor appreciation (funniness and aversiveness of incongruity-resolution, nonsense, and sexual humor) and humor creation quantity and quality (Sample 2). The results showed that the comic styles could be uniquely and meaningfully located in these basic and broad humor concepts. Specifically, the comic styles spanned the affective component of the temperamental basis of the sense of humor, from cheerfulness to bad mood. Furthermore, the findings supported the convergent validity of the nonsense and wit scales of the Comic Style Markers, as they related to behavior tests of the appreciation of nonsense humor and the quantity and quality of humor creation, respectively. This study thus contributes to the growing field of the psychology of humor by extending the nomological network of the comic styles to the general tendency to enjoy and engage in humor and by providing a behavioral validation of the Comic Style Markers.
The recently-developed Dual Self-Directed Humor Scale (DSDHS) is the first instrument for measuring individual differences between two dimensions of self-directed humor (SDH): negative (deleterious ...SDH) and positive (benign SDH). Thus far, the DSDHS has shown high validity and reliability. However, further validation of the underlying causal relationship between SDH and well-being is required. This study estimated the causal relationship between SDH and several well-being indicators via a two-wave, three-month interval, longitudinal dataset of college students (N = 453). A cross-lagged panel analysis showed that deleterious SDH predicted increased depression over time, while benign SDH predicted decreased depression and anxiety. There was also a two-way causal relationship, with anxiety decreasing benign SDH. These results enhance our understanding of the relationship between SDH and well-being.
•This study collected longitudinal data on self-directed humor (SDH) and well-being.•The analysis was performed via cross-lagged panel model.•Deleterious self-directed humor predicted an increase in depression over time.•Benign self-directed humor led to a decrease in depression and anxiety over time.
