Book by Bradley, Bill

Product Description: In recent decades, some of the most celebrated and culturally influential American oratorical performances have come not from political leaders or religious visionaries, but from stand-up comics. Even though comedy and satire have been addressed by rhetorical scholarship in recent decades, little attention has been paid to stand-up...read more

Product Description: In this examination of stand-up comedy, Rebecca Krefting establishes a new genre of comedic production, "charged humor," and charts its pathways from production to consumption. Some jokes are tears in the fabric of our beliefs―they challenge myths about how fair and democratic our society is and the behaviors and practices we enact to maintain those fictions...read more

Product Description: Slapstick comedy has been entertaining audiences for centuries. Within slapstick, comic pain and comic violence are performed to provoke laughter. This book explores just how and why the performance of pain and violence can make us laugh...read more

Product Description: (Applause Books). Funny: The Book is an entertaining look at the art of comedy, from its historical roots to the latest scientific findings, with diversions into the worlds of movies (Buster Keaton and the Marx Brothers), television ( The Office ), prose (Woody Allen, Robert Benchley), theater ( The Front Page ), jokes and stand-up comedy (Richard Pryor, Steve Martin), as well as personal reminiscences from the author's experiences on such TV programs as Mork and Mindy ...read more

Product Description: An introductory guide to comedy in English literature that systematically applies comic theory to a wide range of texts from Chaucer to Bridget Jones's Diary.

Product Description: This book follows the progress of the Greek parasite figure through his various interpretations by different poets as evidenced in the remaining fragments. On the Roman stage of Plautus, the parasite became a key comic figure in proceedings, later replaced by the wily slave...read more

Product Description: One of the few constants in Western critical though for over two millennia has been the inexhaustible fascination with comedy: what it is and how it works. Yet comedy has eluded every definition. Why have so many of the leading critics and philosophers of the West proposed theories and counter-theories of comedy while often admitting that it enthralls and baffles the mind in equal measure? "The Idea of Comedy: A Critique" assembles a rich corpus of materials from different languages and eras to construct a history of the commentaries and reflections, the theoretical postulates and conjectures, and the often acrimonious debates about comedy through the centuries from Plato and Aristotle to our contemporaries...read more

Product Description: When the National Socialist German Workers' party (Nazis) assumed power they vowed to cleanse the German theater of all things "un-German," which ostensibly included comedy. During the Third Reich nearly all German theaters, supported by enormous state funding, presented thousands of comedy productions...read more

Product Description: In a grand tour of comic theater over the centuries, Erich Segal traces the evolution of the classical form from its early origins in a misogynistic quip by the sixth-century B.C. Susarion, through countless weddings and happy endings, to the exasperated monosyllables of Samuel Beckett...read more

Product Description: Patrick Downey finds comedy at the heart of the Western philosophical and theological tradition. In Serious Comedy Downey tracks tragedy and comedy from the beginning of Western thought to the twentieth century, beginning with an in-depth examination of Aristotle and three Platonic dialogues: the Republic, the Phaedrus, and the Symposium...read more

Product Description: Traditional philosophy places a singular emphasis on tragedy, acting under the assumption that tragedy is more profound than comedy. Gelven argues that comedy deserves equal if not greater attention from philosophy. Through the interpretative readings and concrete analysis of three classical works, Gelven shows that comedy provides an access to truth unavailable by any other means...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

A collection of essays, reviews and interviews from the Village Voice explores the idea of what makes us laugh and think, discussing the work of Richard Pryor, Dennis Miller, Whoopi Goldberg, Eric Bogosian, Rosie O'Donnell, Tracy Ullman, and many other artists who have shaped American comedy. (view table of contents)

Product Description: Through candid personal interviews with Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett, and other visionary performers, Queens of Comedy explores how comediennes have redefined the roles of women in not only the entertainment business, but society as a whole...read more

Product Description: First published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Product Description: First published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Product Description: Book by Dentinger, Ron

Examines comedic forms--from political comedy to slapstick to farce--and the talents of great comics from Buster Keaton to the Monty Python troupe

Traces the history of slapstick, or visual comedy, from its beginnings in primitive rituals to the present-day forms on television and in films and includes biographies of many talented comics in the genre