Humor, Its Origin and Development PDF Download

Author: Paul E. McGhee
Publisher: W.H. Freeman
ISBN: 9780716710967
Category : Humor in children
Languages : en
Pages : 251

View

Book Description

Author: Paul E. McGhee
Publisher: W.H. Freeman
ISBN: 9780716710950
Category : Humor in children
Languages : en
Pages : 251

View

Book Description

Author: Paul Zall
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813171865
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 198

View

Book Description
Although he called himself merely a “printer” in his will, Benjamin Franklin could have also called himself a diplomat, a doctor, an electrician, a frontier general, an inventor, a journalist, a legislator, a librarian, a magistrate, a postmaster, a promoter, a publisher—and a humorist. John Adams wrote of Franklin, “He had wit at will. He had humor that when he pleased was pleasant and delightful . . . [and] talents for irony, allegory, and fable, that he could adapt with great skill, to the promotion of moral and political truth.” In Benjamin Franklin’s Humor, author Paul M. Zall shows how one of America’s founding fathers used humor to further both personal and national interests. Early in his career, Franklin impersonated the feisty widow Silence Dogood in a series of comically moralistic essays that helped his brother James outpace competitors in Boston’s incipient newspaper market. In the mid-eighteenth century, he displayed his talent for comic impersonation in numerous editions of Poor Richard’s Almanac, a series of pocket-sized tomes filled with proverbs and witticisms that were later compiled in Franklin’s The Way to Wealth (1758), one of America’s all-time bestselling books. Benjamin Franklin was sure to be remembered for his early work as an author, printer, and inventor, but his accomplishments as a statesman later in life firmly secured his lofty stature in American history. Zall shows how Franklin employed humor to achieve desired ends during even the most difficult diplomatic situations: while helping draft the Declaration of Independence, while securing France’s support for the American Revolution, while brokering the treaty with England to end the War for Independence, and while mediating disputes at the Constitutional Convention. He supervised and facilitated the birth of a nation with customary wit and aplomb. Zall traces the development of an acute sense of humor throughout the life of a great American. Franklin valued humor not as an end in itself but as a means to gain a competitive edge, disseminate information, or promote a program. Early in life, he wrote about timely topics in an effort to reach a mass reading class, leaving an amusing record of early American culture. Later, Franklin directed his talents toward serving his country. Regardless of its origin, the best of Benjamin Franklin’s humor transcends its initial purpose and continues to evoke undying laughter at shared human experiences.

Author: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
Publisher: Dramatists Play Service, Inc.
ISBN: 082223226X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 62

View

Book Description
Judge Peyton is dead and his plantation Terrebonne is in financial ruins. Peyton’s handsome nephew George arrives as heir apparent and quickly falls in love with Zoe, a beautiful octoroon. But the evil overseer M’Closky has other plans—for both Terrebonne and Zoe. In 1859, a famous Irishman wrote this play about slavery in America. Now an American tries to write his own.

Author: Fran Ross
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 081122323X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 156

View

Book Description
A pioneering, dazzling satire about a biracial black girl from Philadelphia searching for her Jewish father in New York City Oreo is raised by her maternal grandparents in Philadelphia. Her black mother tours with a theatrical troupe, and her Jewish deadbeat dad disappeared when she was an infant, leaving behind a mysterious note that triggers her quest to find him. What ensues is a playful, modernized parody of the classical odyssey of Theseus with a feminist twist, immersed in seventies pop culture, and mixing standard English, black vernacular, and Yiddish with wisecracking aplomb. Oreo, our young hero, navigates the labyrinth of sound studios and brothels and subway tunnels in Manhattan, seeking to claim her birthright while unwittingly experiencing and triggering a mythic journey of self-discovery like no other.

Author: Paul McGhee
Publisher: Author House
ISBN: 145202183X
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 178

View

Book Description
The evidence is now in! Humor and laughter are good medicine. The companion to this book, Humor: The Lighter Path to Resilience and Health (2010, also published by AuthorHouse) discusses the exciting new research supporting the long-held claim that laughter is the best medicine. Humor as Survival Training for a Stressed-Out Worldshows how to get these benefits of humor into your own life. It contains the first-ever humor skills training program that has evidence from multiple countries documenting its effectiveness in boosting your sense of humor and learning to use humor to cope with the stress in your life. No other program for improving your sense of humor can make this claim. The basic idea is to build key foundation humor skills on your good dayswhen youre in a good mood. While strengthening one habit/skill at a time, you dont extend these skills to daily stressors until the habits are well developed (otherwise, your sense of humor abandons you when youre under stress). The 7 Humor Habit Program first builds the habit of becoming a more playful person in general (humor is a form of mental play), and then focuses onverbal humor skills, finding humor in everyday life, laughing at yourself and other key humor skills. Studies in the USA, Switzerland, Australia and Germany have confirmed the effectiveness of this program in boosting your sense of humor. Evidence also shows that it improves your daily mood, boosts optimism and improves your ability to cope with stress. There is even evidence that the 7 Humor Habits Program is an effective tool in reducing clinical depression and anxiety. It has been shown to be effective for all ages, from college students to seniors in their eighties. So its never too late to improve your own sense of humor.

Author: Matthew M. Hurley
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 026201582X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 374

View

Book Description
Some things are funny -- jokes, puns, sitcoms, Charlie Chaplin, The Far Side, Malvolio with his yellow garters crossed -- but why? Why does humor exist in the first place? Why do we spend so much of our time passing on amusing anecdotes, making wisecracks, watching The Simpsons? In Inside Jokes, Matthew Hurley, Daniel Dennett, and Reginald Adams offer an evolutionary and cognitive perspective. Humor, they propose, evolved out of a computational problem that arose when our long-ago ancestors were furnished with open-ended thinking. Mother Nature -- aka natural selection -- cannot just order the brain to find and fix all our time-pressured misleaps and near-misses. She has to bribe the brain with pleasure. So we find them funny. This wired-in source of pleasure has been tickled relentlessly by humorists over the centuries, and we have become addicted to the endogenous mind candy that is humor.

Author: Craig Jendza
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190090944
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 240

View

Book Description
Paracomedy: Appropriations of Comedy in Greek Drama is the first book that examines how ancient Greek tragedy engages with the genre of comedy. While scholars frequently study paratragedy (how Greek comedians satirize tragedy), this book investigates the previously overlooked practice of paracomedy: how Greek tragedians regularly appropriate elements from comedy such as costumes, scenes, language, characters, or plots. Drawing upon a wide variety of complete and fragmentary tragedies and comedies (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Rhinthon), this monograph demonstrates that paracomedy was a prominent feature of Greek tragedy. Blending a variety of interdisciplinary approaches including traditional philology, literary criticism, genre theory, and performance studies, this book offers innovative close readings and incisive interpretations of individual plays. Jendza presents paracomedy as a multivalent authorial strategy: some instances impart a sense of ugliness or discomfort; others provide a sense of light-heartedness or humor. While this work traces the development of paracomedy over several hundred years, it focuses on a handful of Euripidean tragedies at the end of the fifth century BCE. Jendza argues that Euripides was participating in a rivalry with the comedian Aristophanes and often used paracomedy to demonstrate the poetic supremacy of tragedy; indeed, some of Euripides' most complex uses of paracomedy attempt to re-appropriate Aristophanes' mockery of his theatrical techniques. Paracomedy: Appropriations of Comedy in Greek Tragedy theorizes a new, ground-breaking relationship between Greek tragedy and comedy that not only redefines our understanding of the genre of tragedy, but also reveals a dynamic theatrical world filled with mutual cross-generic influence.

Author: Salvatore Attardo
Publisher: SAGE Publications
ISBN: 148334617X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 985

View

Book Description
The Encyclopedia of Humor: A Social History explores the concept of humor in history and modern society in the United States and internationally. This work’s scope encompasses the humor of children, adults, and even nonhuman primates throughout the ages, from crude jokes and simple slapstick to sophisticated word play and ironic parody and satire. As an academic social history, it includes the perspectives of a wide range of disciplines, including sociology, child development, social psychology, life style history, communication, and entertainment media. Readers will develop an understanding of the importance of humor as it has developed globally throughout history and appreciate its effects on child and adult development, especially in the areas of health, creativity, social development, and imagination. This two-volume set is available in both print and electronic formats. Features & Benefits: The General Editor also serves as Editor-in-Chief of HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research for The International Society for Humor Studies. The book’s 335 articles are organized in A-to-Z fashion in two volumes (approximately 1,000 pages). This work is enhanced by an introduction by the General Editor, a Foreword, a list of the articles and contributors, and a Reader’s Guide that groups related entries thematically. A Chronology of Humor, a Resource Guide, and a detailed Index are included. Each entry concludes with References/Further Readings and cross references to related entries. The Index, Reader’s Guide themes, and cross references between and among related entries combine to provide robust search-and-browse features in the electronic version. This two-volume, A-to-Z set provides a general, non-technical resource for students and researchers in such diverse fields as communication and media studies, sociology and anthropology, social and cognitive psychology, history, literature and linguistics, and popular culture and folklore.

Author: Peter Ward
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1608199088
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 401

View

Book Description
The history of life on Earth is, in some form or another, known to us all--or so we think. A New History of Life offers a provocative new account, based on the latest scientific research, of how life on our planet evolved--the first major new synthesis for general readers in two decades. Charles Darwin's theories, first published more than 150 years ago, form the backbone of how we understand the history of the Earth. In reality, the currently accepted history of life on Earth is so flawed, so out of date, that it's past time we need a 'New History of Life.' In their latest book, Joe Kirschvink and Peter Ward will show that many of our most cherished beliefs about the evolution of life are wrong. Gathering and analyzing years of discoveries and research not yet widely known to the public, A New History of Life proposes a different origin of species than the one Darwin proposed, one which includes eight-foot-long centipedes, a frozen “snowball Earth”, and the seeds for life originating on Mars. Drawing on their years of experience in paleontology, biology, chemistry, and astrobiology, experts Ward and Kirschvink paint a picture of the origins life on Earth that are at once too fabulous to imagine and too familiar to dismiss--and looking forward, A New History of Life brilliantly assembles insights from some of the latest scientific research to understand how life on Earth can and might evolve far into the future.