'Comedy: 'An Essay on Comedy' by George Meredith. 'Laughter' by Henri Bergson' - Poetry Connection

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Books : Comedy: 'An Essay on Comedy' by George Meredith. 'Laughter' by Henri Bergson

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from: The Johns Hopkins University Press See Larger Image List Price: $20.95 Amazon.com's Price: $18.85 You Save: $2.10 (10%) Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Binding: Paperback Dewey Decimal Number: 809.917 EAN: 9780801823275 ISBN: 0801823277 Label: The Johns Hopkins University Press Manufacturer: The Johns Hopkins University Press Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 288 Publication Date: March 01, 1980 Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press Sales Rank: 269573 Studio: The Johns Hopkins University Press Related Items: Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious On Humour (Thinking in Action) The Comic Mind: Comedy and the Movies The Philosophy of Laughter and Humor (SUNY Series in Philosophy) Comedy/Cinema/Theory see more Editorial Review: Product Description: Bergson's essay looks at comedy within a wider field of vision, focusing on laughter and on what makes us laugh. His study examines comic characters and comic acts, comedy in literature and in children's games, comedy as high art and base entertainment, to develop a psychological and philosophers theory of the mainsprings of comedy. Customer Reviews Average Rating: Rating: - Two major theories of ' comedy' This review is partial, and does not include the major essay of Wylie Sypher that serves as epilogue for the essays of Meredith and Bergson. Meredith, Bergson, and Freud are among the few who so far as I know have presented major theories of comedy and laughter. Meredith's discussion of comedy involves a distinction between the low comedy of laughing, slapstick and its varieties, and the high comedy of intellectual perception. This latter is his main interest and involves as he understands ... Read More Rating: - The best theoretical study of comedy available Bergson's _Laughter_ has been out of print for too long. It's the best theoretical study of comedy available. A meditation by the great philosopher of "elan vital" about our natural response to humans acting mechanically, _Laughter_ is also about the nuts and bolts of comedy. Moliere is the main model, but it works for Shakespeare, Chaplin and Preston Sturges just as well. Rating: - Euphoria Bergson offers a taxonomy of laughter. The description is concise, realistic, and rife with examples. He begins with a broad definition of anything that is laughable and further narrows the definition where appropriate. Never have I encountered an example not explainable by this. Rating: - Henri Bergson is brilliant. Henri Bergson describes why we laugh, and subdivides this description further into three characteristics. Each of these characteristics is then divided further occassionally. Example: >We laugh at mechanical rigidity. The three types are repetition, inversion, and reciprocal interference of series. An example of repetition is a frozen facial expression (repetition) and is comical only if it's imitatable.< Then he proceeds to give examples of word play, character, actions, etc which illustrate ... Read More

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