This unique anthology presents a selection of over seventy of the most important historical essays on comedy; ranging from antiquity to the present; divided into historical periods and arranged chronologically. Across its span it traces the development of comic theory; highlighting the relationships between comedy; politics; economics; philosophy; religion; and other arts and genres. Students of literature and theatre will find this collection an invaluable and accessible guide to writing from Plato and Aristotle through to the twenty-first century; in which special attention has been paid to writings since the start of the twentieth century.Reader in Comedy is arranged in five sections; each featuring an introduction providing concise and informed historical and theoretical frameworks for the texts from the period:* Antiquity and the Middle Ages* The Renaissance* Restoration to Romanticism* The Industrial Age* The Twentieth and Early Twenty-First CenturiesAmong the many authors included are: Plato; Aristotle; Horace; Donatus; Dante Alighieri; Erasmus; Trissino; Sir Thomas Elyot; Thomas Wilson; Sir Philip Sidney; Ben Jonson; Battista Guarini; Moliegrave;re; William Congreve; John Dryden; Henry Fielding; Samuel Johnson; Oliver Goldsmith; Jean Paul Richter; William Hazlitt; Charles Lamb; Soslash;ren Kierkegaard; Charles Baudelaire; Bernard Shaw; Mark Twain; Henri Bergson; Constance Rourke; Northrop Frye; Jacques Derrida; Mikhail Bakhtin; Georges Bataille; Simon Critchley and Michael North.As the selection demonstrates; from Plato and Aristotle to Henri Bergson and Sigmund Freud; comedy has attracted the attention of serious thinkers. Bringing together diverse theories of comedy from across the ages; the Reader reveals that; far from being peripheral; comedy speaks to the most pragmatic aspects of human life.
2016-08-30 2016-08-30File Name: B01L9AFMNO
Review
