Listen free for 30 days
Listen with offer
-
Humour
- Narrated by: Roger Clark
- Length: 5 hrs and 23 mins
Failed to add items
Add to basket failed.
Add to wishlist failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
99p for the first 3 months
Humour
Buy Now for £12.89
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
Summary
A compelling guide to the fundamental place of humor and comedy within Western culture - by one of its greatest exponents.
Written by an acknowledged master of comedy, this study reflects on the nature of humor and the functions it serves. Why do we laugh? What are we to make of the sheer variety of laughter, from braying and cackling to sniggering and chortling? Is humor subversive, or can it defuse dissent? Can we define wit?
Packed with illuminating ideas and a good many excellent jokes, the book critically examines various well-known theories of humor, including the idea that it springs from incongruity and the view that it reflects a mildly sadistic form of superiority to others. Drawing on a wide range of literary and philosophical sources, Terry Eagleton moves from Aristotle and Aquinas to Hobbes, Freud, and Bakhtin, looking in particular at the psychoanalytical mechanisms underlying humor and its social and political evolution over the centuries.