Comedy: A Very Short Introduction
Matthew Bevis
Abstract
Comedy: A Very Short Introduction studies written forms of comedy such as prose fiction, poetry, caricatures, and cartoons. There are also performance forms of comedy such as comic drama, pantomime, comic opera, silent cinema, popular music, Broadway shows, music-hall, stand-up and circus acts, rom-coms, sketch shows, sit-coms. To consider comedy in its incarnations is to raise diverse questions: what is humour, and how may it be used (or abused)? When do we laugh, and why? What is it that writers and speakers enjoy — and risk — when they tell a joke, indulge in bathos, talk nonsense, or encourage irony? Comedy is both a literary genre and a forum for a range of non-literary phenomena, experiences, and events.
Keywords:
Henri Bergson,
character,
comedy,
Northrop Frye,
Horace,
irony,
Oxford English Dictionary,
pantomime,
parody,
Restoration Comedy,
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Bibliographic Information
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- Print Publication Date:
- Dec 2012
- Print ISBN-13:
- 9780199601714
- Published online:
- Sep 2013
- DOI:
- 10.1093/actrade/9780199601714.001.0001
