1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910961139803321

Autore

Hokenson Jan

Titolo

The idea of comedy : a critique / / Jan Walsh Hokenson

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Madison [N.J.], : Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, c2006

ISBN

0-8386-4341-8

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (287 p.)

Disciplina

809/.917

Soggetti

Comic, The, in literature

Comedy - History and criticism

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. 267-277) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Aims and Terms -- From Classical to Modern: The Arc from Ethical to Social Conceptions -- The Dominant Modernist Conception of Comedy: Premises and Elisions -- The Late Modernist Conception of Comedy: Premises and Elisions -- Twin Modernist Elisions -- The Interlude of Postmodernist Conceptions -- Comedy in Contemporary Thought -- Epilogue: The Contemporary Idea of Comedy -- Reference List.

Sommario/riassunto

One of the few constants in Western critical though for over twomillennia has been the inexhaustible fascination with comedy: what itis and how it works. Yet comedy has eluded every definition. Why haveso many of the leading critics and philosophers of the West proposedtheories and counter-theories of comedy while often admitting that itenthralls and baffles the mind in equal measure? The Idea of Comedy: A Critique assembles a rich corpus of materials from differentlanguages and eras to construct a history of the commentaries andreflections, the theoretical postulates and conjectures, and the oftenacrimonious debates about comedy through the centuries from Platoand Aristotle to our contemporaries