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The Language of Humour and Its Transmutation in Indian Political Cartoons
by Vinod Balakrishnan Vishaka VenkatThis book develops a model to examine the language of humour, which is multimodal and accounts for the possibility of transmutation of humour as it is performed through editorial cartoons. By transmutation is meant the transition in the language of humour when it crosses its own boundaries to provoke unprecedented reactions resulting in offensiveness, disappointment or hurt sentiment. The transmutability about the language of humour points to its inherently diabolical nature which manifests in the performance of controversial cartoons. The model is built by borrowing theoretical cues from Roman Jakobson, Roland Barthes, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. The integrated model, then, is developed to examine the cartoons which were recommended for deletion by the Thorat Committee, following a cartoon controversy in India. Through the cartoon analysis, the model discerns the significance of context and temporality in determining the impact of humour. It also examines how the ethics of humour; the blurred lines of political correctness and incorrectness are dictated by the political atmosphere and the power dynamics.
UK and Irish Television Comedy: Representations of Region, Nation, and Identity (Palgrave Studies in Comedy)
by Mary Irwin Jill MarshallThis book looks at television comedy, drawn from across the UK and Ireland, and ranging chronologically from the 1980s to the 2020s. It explores depictions of distinctive geographical, historical and cultural communities presented from the insiders’ perspective, simultaneously interrogating the particularity of the lived experience of time, and place, embedded within the wide variety of depictions of contrasting lives, experiences and sensibilities, which the collected individual chapters offer. Comedies considered include Victoria Wood’s work on ‘the north’, Ireland’s Father Ted and Derry Girls, Michaela Coel’s east London set Chewing Gum, and Wales’ Gavin and Stacey. There are chapters on Scottish sketch and animation comedy, and on series set in the Midlands, the North East, the South West and London’s home counties. The book offers thoughtful reflection on funny and engaging representations of the diverse, fragmented complexity of UK and Irish identity explored through the intersections of class, ethnicity and gender.
Between Laughter and Satire: Aspects of the Historical Study of Humour
by Conal CondrenThis book explores closely related aspects of the historical study of humour. It challenges much that has been taken for granted in a field of study for which history has been marginal. It disputes the conventional genealogical view that humour theory dates from antiquity and outlines an alternative conceptual history. It critically examines the nostrum that humour is universal. It then explores the methodological difficulties in treating both verbal and non-verbal humour historically, dealing with contextualisation, intentionality, translation and reception. It explores the variable relationships between satire and definition and concludes with a detailed case study from recent history: the iconic Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister television comedies. These are commonly seen as realistic, but better understood as presenting popularised theories for satiric and propagandistic effect. Only in their treatment of language can we assess a putative political realism. The satires are often highly perceptive but largely dependent on misleading and inadequate theories of political discourse.Conal Condren is an Emeritus Scientia Professor at UNSW, a member of two Cambridge Colleges and a fellow both of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and The Social Sciences in Australia. He has published widely and principally in early modern intellectual history. Among his books are The Status and Appraisal of Classic Texts; Argument and Authority in Early Modern England; Political Vocabularies: Word Change and the Nature of Politics.
Alternative Comedy Now and Then: Critical Perspectives (Palgrave Studies in Comedy)
by Oliver Double Sharon LockyerAlternative Comedy Now and Then: Critical Perspectives is the first academic collection focusing on the history and legacy of the alternative comedy movement in Britain that began in 1979 and continues to influence contemporary stand-up comedy. The collection examines the contexts, performances and reception of alternative comedy in order to provide a holistic approach to examining the socio-political impact and significance of alternative comedy from its historical roots through to present day performances. As alternative comedy celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2019, critically reflecting on its impact and significance is a timely endeavour. The book adopts a distinctive interdisciplinary approach, synthesizing theory, concepts and methodologies from comedy studies, theatre and performance, communication and media studies, sociology, political sciences and anthropology. This approach is taken in order to fully understand and examine the dynamics and nuances of the alternative comedy movement which would not be possible with a single-discipline approach.
Anti-Proverbs in Five Languages: Structural Features and Verbal Humor Devices
by Wolfgang Mieder Anna T. Litovkina Hrisztalina Hrisztova-Gotthardt Péter Barta Katalin VarghaThis book is the first comparative study of English, German, French, Russian and Hungarian anti-proverbs based on well-known proverbs. Proverbs are by no means fossilized texts but are adaptable to different times and changed values. While anti-proverbs can be considered as variants of older proverbs, they can also become new proverbs reflecting a more modern worldview. Anti-proverbs are therefore a lingo-cultural phenomenon that deserves the attention of cultural and literary historians, folklorists, linguists, and general readers interested in language and wordplay.
Video Games and Comedy (Palgrave Studies in Comedy)
by Krista Bonello Rutter Giappone Tomasz Z. Majkowski Jaroslav ŠvelchVideo Games and Comedy is the first edited volume to explore the intersections between comedy and video games. This pioneering book collects chapters from a diverse group of scholars, covering a wide range of approaches and examining the relationship between video games, humour, and comedy from many different angles. The first section of the book includes chapters that engage with theories of comedy and humour, adapting them to the specifics of the video game medium. The second section explores humour in the contexts, cultures, and communities that give rise to and spring up around video games, focusing on phenomena such as in-jokes, player self-reflexivity, and player/fan creativity. The third section offers case studies of individual games or game series, exploring the use of irony as well as sexual and racial humour in video games.
The Red Letter at the Music Hall: Reviews from 1902–1914 (Palgrave Studies in Comedy)
by David Huxley David JamesThis book reprints and analyses reviews of music hall acts from the family magazine The Red Letter, which was published by the Scottish based firm D C Thomson from 1899 to 1987. The articles under review range in date from 1902 to 1914, covering theatres all over Britain and acts from around the world. The reviews are uniquely detailed and shed light not only on the early acts of comics who would later go on to achieve wider fame, such as Will Hay and Robb Wilton, but also reveal the acts of long forgotten performers. These so-called ‘wines and spirits’ acts—acts that would never top the bill but who nevertheless toured the halls, sometimes for years on end, such as female impersonator Albert Letine, comedy magician Chris van Bern and female stand up Anna Dorothy amongst many others—deserve to be remembered every bit as much as the top of the bill acts. The articles are arranged in sections, covering race, gender, character comedy, physical comedy, male comedy and specialty or ‘spesh’ acts. The reviews reveal not only the contents of the acts but also the audience reactions to those acts and prevailing contemporary Edwardian attitudes. The articles are accompanied by their original illustrations, some of which are unique and, like the articles themselves, unseen for over a century.
The Comedy and Legacy of Music-Hall Women 1880-1920: Brazen Impudence and Boisterous Vulgarity (Palgrave Studies in Comedy)
by Sam BealeThis book explores the comedy and legacy of women working as performers on the music-hall stage from 1880–1920, and examines the significance of their previously overlooked contributions to British comic traditions. Focusing on the under-researched female ‘serio-comic’, the study includes six micro-histories detailing the acts of Ada Lundberg, Bessie Bellwood, Maidie Scott, Vesta Victoria, Marie Lloyd and Nellie Wallace. Uniquely for women in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, these pioneering performers had public voices. The extent to which their comedy challenged Victorian and Edwardian perceptions of women is revealed through explorations of how they connected with popular audiences while also avoiding censorship. Their use of techniques such as comic irony and stereotyping, self-deprecation, and comic innuendo are considered alongside the work of contemporary stand-up comedians and performance artists including Bridget Christie, Bryony Kimmings, Sara Pascoe, Shazia Mirza and Sarah Silverman.
The Dark Side of Stand-Up Comedy (Palgrave Studies in Comedy)
by Patrice A. Oppliger Eric ShouseThis book focuses on the “dark side” of stand-up comedy, initially inspired by speculations surrounding the death of comedian Robin Williams. Contributors, those who study humor as well as those who perform comedy, join together to contemplate the paradoxical relationship between tragedy and comedy and expose over-generalizations about comic performers’ troubled childhoods, addictions, and mental illnesses. The book is divided into two sections. First, scholars from a variety of disciplines explore comedians’ onstage performances, their offstage lives, and the relationship between the two. The second half of the book focuses on amateur and lesser-known professional comedians who reveal the struggles they face as they attempt to hone successful comedy acts and likable comic personae. The goal of this collection is to move beyond the hackneyed stereotype of the sad clown in order to reveal how stand-up comedy can transform both personal and collective tragedies by providing catharsis through humor.
Shakespeare and Sexuality in the Comedy of Morecambe & Wise (Palgrave Studies in Comedy)
by Stephen HamrickContextualizing the duo’s work within British comedy, Shakespeare criticism, the history of sexuality, and their own historical moment, this book offers the first sustained analysis of the 20th Century’s most successful double-act. Over the course of a forty-four-year career (1940-1984), Eric Morecambe & Ernie Wise appropriated snippets of verse, scenes, and other elements from seventeen of Shakespeare’s plays more than one-hundred-and-fifty times. Fashioning a kinder, more inclusive world, they deployed a vast array of elements connected to Shakespeare, his life, and institutions. Rejecting claims that they offer only nostalgic escapism, Hamrick analyses their work within contemporary contexts, including their engagement with many forms and genres, including Variety, the heritage industry, journalism, and more. ‘The Boys’ deploy Shakespeare to work through issues of class, sexuality, and violence. Lesbianism, drag, gay marriage, and a queer aesthetics emerge, helping to normalize homosexuality and complicate masculinity in the ‘permissive’ 1960s.
The Comic Everywoman in Irish Popular Theatre: Political Melodrama, 1890-1925 (Palgrave Studies in Comedy)
by Susanne CollearyThis book is a comprehensive study of comic women in performance as Irish Political Melodrama from 1890 to 1925. It maps out the performance contexts of the period, such as Irish “poor” theatre both reflecting and complicating narratives of Irish Identity under British Rule. The study investigates the melodramatic aesthetic within these contexts and goes on to analyse a selection of the melodramas by the playwrights J.W. Whitbread and P.J. Bourke. In doing so, the analyses makes plain the comic structures and intent that work across both character and action, foregrounding comic women at the centre of the discussion. Finally, the book applies a “practice as research” dimension to the study. Working through a series of workshops, rehearsals and a final performance, Colleary investigates comic identity and female performance through a feminist revisionist lens. She ultimately argues that the formulation of the Comic Everywoman as staged “Comic” identity can connect beyond the theatre to her “Everyday” self. This book is intended for those interested in theatre histories, comic women and in popular performance.
The Politics of British Stand-up Comedy: The New Alternative (Palgrave Studies in Comedy)
by Sophie QuirkThis Palgrave Pivot questions how a new generation of alternative stand-up comedians and the political world continue to shape and influence each other. The Alternative Comedy Movement of the late 1970s and 1980s can be described as a time of unruly experimentation and left-wing radicalism. This book examines how alternative comedians continue to celebrate these characteristics in the twenty-first century, while also moving into a distinct phase of artistic development as the political context of the 1970s and 1980s loses its immediacy. Sophie Quirk draws on original interviews with comedians including Tom Allen, Josie Long, John-Luke Roberts and Tony Law to chart how alternative comedians are shaped by, and in turn respond to, contemporary political challenges from neoliberalism to Brexit, class controversy to commercialism. She argues that many of our assumptions about comedy’s politics must be challenged and updated. This book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the working methods and values of today’s alternative comedians.
What Might Have Been: The Story Of A Social War
by Ernest Bramah Jeremy HawthornThis new edition of Ernest Bramah’s What Might Have Been (1907) was reviewed enthusiastically in the Times Literary Supplement: ‘abounds in humour and wit, especially in the early chapters. Bramah's condemnation of the power of the press to corrupt and mislead is as pertinent today as it was in 1907’. This satirical speculative novel of political resistance is better known in its abridged form as The Secret of the League (1909). It mixes science fiction, social realism and office espionage, and accurately predicted the invention of the fax machine and the ascendancy of Labour politics. What Might Have Been is a political thriller, with a nail-biting Buchanesque car chase, a sea battle that C S Forester could have written, and dramatic rescue missions in the air. The flying machines are both delightful and dramatic. Now, for the first time since 1907, What Might Have Been is available at its original length, with 7000 words restored to recreate this lost landmark in British speculative fiction. The critical introduction by Jeremy Hawthorn sets out the novel’s history, and its connections with Bramah’s more famous literary works, The Wallet of Kai Lung, and Max Carrados. Has a Home Counties setting, with a thrilling car chase around Farnham and Guildford.
Hold the Line: One woman’s observations of lockdown, love, letting go and going viral
by Kim StephensNavigating motherhood from the age of 18, Kim Stephens shelved her inner journo and embraced a life of media sales and sports marketing, working with some of the biggest sports brands globally, and locally, whilst pursuing her own ultra-running ambitions.Arguing vehemently against the possibility that she was running from her own truth, Covid-19 wiped out Kim’s possibilities for continued escape.After three children, two divorces and a gradual sexual awakening, Kim found herself at 40-something virtually unemployed, with all the time in the world to write, sip gin and study a general response to one of the world’s most draconian lockdowns.Her humorous observations of middle-class South African behaviour through the various levels of lockdown earned her a certain notoriety and a degree of viral success, and with that the courage to put it all into a book.Hold the Line tells the story of teenage pregnancy, the situational blindness of white South Africa, the disappointment of divorce and the deep joy found through true awakening.Stitched together with the lockdown writing that Kim penned for a growing base of followers, she shares a more in-depth life story with her usual candid self-deprecation.Written to rattle a few truths from within its readers, Hold the Line ends ironically as the world begins to follow a potential third World War via TikTok.
Three Men in a Boat, to say nothing of the dog
by Jerome K. JeromeAgreeing that they suffer from the serious illness of "overwork," J., George, and Harris embark on a boating holiday along the River Thames. Travelling from Kingston to Oxford, the three men prove themselves wholly unprepared for the journey, and document their misadventures with comedic brilliance.
The Comedy of Errors
by William ShakespeareIdentical twins separated at birth provides the foundation for humour in one of Shakespeare's earlier plays. The young twin sons of Egeon, alongside another set of young twin boys, purchased as slaves, are lost to one another during a tempest at sea. As each searches for the other, the stage is set for a romp that revolves around mistaken identity, physical mishaps, and the comedy of errors referenced in the title.
Empire Falls (Emecé Lingua Franca Ser. #Vol. 2104)
by Richard RussoWINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTIONMiles Roby has been slinging burgers at the Empire Grill for 20 years, a job that cost him his college education and much of his self-respect. What keeps him there? It could be his bright, sensitive daughter Tick, who needs all his help surviving the local high school. Or maybe it's Janine, Miles' soon-to-be ex-wife, who's taken up with a noxiously vain health-club proprietor. Or perhaps it's the imperious Francine Whiting, who owns everything in town - and seems to believe that 'everything' includes Miles himself.In Empire Falls Richard Russo delves deep into the blue-collar heart of America in a work that overflows with hilarity, heartache, and grace.
Straight Man (Vintage Contemporaries Ser.)
by Richard RussoHank Devereaux is the reluctant chairman of the English department of a badly underfunded college in the Pennsylvania rust belt. Devereaux's reluctance is partly rooted in his character - he is a born anarchist - and partly in the fact that his department is savagely divided. In the course of a single week, Devereaux will have his nose mangled by an angry colleague, imagine his wife is having an affair with his dean, wonder if a curvaceous adjunct is trying to seduce him with peach pits and threaten to execute a goose on local television. All this while coming to terms with his philandering father, the dereliction of his youthful promise and the ominous failure of certain vital body functions. In short, Straight Man is classic Russo - side-splitting, poignant, compassionate and unforgettable.
Risk Pool (Vintage Contemporaries Ser. #Vol. 296)
by Richard RussoIn Mohawk, New York, Ned Hall is doing his best to grow up, even though neither of his estranged parents can properly be called adult.His father, Sam, cultivates bad habits so assiduously that he is stuck at the bottom of his car insurance risk pool. His mother, Jenny, is slowly going crazy from resentment at a husband who refuses either to stay or to stay away. As Ned veers between allegiances to these grossly inadequate role models, Richard Russo gives us a book that overflows with outsized characters and outlandish predicaments and whose vision of family is at once irreverent and unexpectedly moving.
Mohawk (Los Antipodas Ser.)
by Richard RussoMohawk, New York, is one of those small towns that lie almost entirely on the wrong side of the tracks. Its citizens, too, have fallen on hard times. Dallas Younger, a star athlete in high school, now drifts from tavern to poker game, losing money, and, inevitably, another set of false teeth. His ex-wife, Anne, is stuck in a losing battle with her mother over the care of her sick father. And their son, Randall, is deliberately neglecting his school work - because in a place like Mohawk it doesn't pay to be too smart.In Mohawk, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Russo explores these lives with profound compassion and flint-hard wit. Out of derailed ambitions and old loves, secret hatreds and communal myths, he has created a richly plotted, densely populated, and wonderfully written novel that captures every nuance of America's backyard.
Hester and Harriet: Love, Lies and Linguine (Hester and Harriet #0)
by Hilary SpiersHester and Harriet are back and ready for more adventures!The gentle humour and relaxed pace make this an enjoyable read. - Daily MailHester and Harriet lead comfortable lives in a pretty cottage in an English village. Having opened their minds, home and hearts to Daria, a mysterious migrant, and her baby son Milo, the widowed sisters decide to further expand their own horizons by venturing forth to Italy for their annual holiday.Back in England, Daria and Milo are celebrating - they've received official refugee status with papers to confirm they can make England their home. Meanwhile, nephew Ben, who knows only too well how much he owes his aunts, is hurtling towards a different sort of celebration - one he's trying to backpedal out of as fast as he possibly can.With a huge secret hanging between the sisters, an unlikely new love on the landscape for Hester and new beginnings also beckoning for Harriet, Italy provides more opportunities for adventure than either of them could ever have imagined. But which ones will Hester and Harriet choose?As Hester and Harriet throw all their cards on the table in Italy, and potential catastrophe threatens Ben in England, it's anyone's guess how chaos will be kept at bay.
Our Tiny, Useless Hearts
by Toni Jordan'Witty, observant, laugh-out-loud funny. It's rare to find a novel that keeps you laughing as this one does; the characters are sharply drawn and frighteningly familiar and the story never stops throwing up surprises. I loved it.' - Graeme Simsion, author of The Rosie ProjectHenry has ended his marriage to Caroline and run off with his daughter's teacher, Martha. Caroline, having shredded a wardrobe-full of Henry's suits, has gone after them.Craig and Lesley have dropped over from next door to catch up on the fallout from Henry and Caroline's all-night row.And Janice, Caroline's sister, is staying for the weekend to look after the children because Janice is the sensible one. Then Craig enters through the bedroom window expecting a tryst with Caroline and finds Janice instead, Lesley storms in full of threats, Henry, Caroline and Martha arrive back from the airport in separate taxis - and let's not even get started on Brendan the pizza guy.Janice can cope with all that. But when her ex-husband Alec knocks on the door things suddenly get complicated...'A new Toni Jordan is always a special pleasure and her latest is a wonderful, witty treat of a novel: cutting and clever, and yet so very romantic, as though P.G. Wodehouse had satirised life in the suburbs.' - Liane Moriarty, author of The Husband's Secret
The Humid Condition: (More) Overheated Observations
by Dominic PettmanThe Humid Condition: (More) Overheated Observations continues on the clicking heels of Dominic Pettman’s Humid, All Too Humid (2016), providing a companion volume of pithy and witty observations for our overheated age. Covering topics from pop culture to academia to romance to politics to human mortality to everything in between, this collection of pointed musings aims to amuse, edify, instruct, provoke, tease, caution, and inspire. As with the first installment, the spirit of this book represents a fusion of Montaigne and Wilde; a mashup of Adorno and Yogi Berra; a parallel channeling of Marx and Marx (both Karl and Groucho). No doubt, Hannah Arendt would be appalled at the irreverence on display within these pages. Then again, “Heidegger has left the bildung.” And as the author himself notes: “I have nothing new to say. And I’m saying it!”
The Royal Secret (His Majesty's Paladins Ser. #1)
by Christopher KeenePicking up where the Super Dungeon Series left off, The Royal Secret takes readers into the heart of Crystalia as Otto tries to protect his father's legacy and uncover an evil plot. This action-packed middle grade novel includes beloved characters from the board game Super Dungeon Explore.
The Dungeons of Arcadia
by Dan AllenBased on the board game Super Dungeon Explore, this hilarious children's series follows the adventures of questing heroes as they take down evil and rescue the missing princesses of Crystalia.