Taking humour seriously
Jerry Palmer, Jerry Palmer, Palmer, Jerry. · 2003
Where to buy
Amazon’s price changes daily, so the most accurate place to see it is there, at the moment you buy.
View on AmazonThis is an affiliate link: if you buy through it, the site earns a small commission at no extra cost to you, which helps us bring quality content and maintain the site. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
About the book
Listen to any everyday conversation: it is full of the constant interruptions and detours of humour. Look at the TV schedules for any evening - how many of the programmes are comedies, or contain a degree of humour? Humour and comedy invite our pleasure at every step we take. In Taking Humour Seriously, Jerry Palmer argues that we must take humour seriously (as well as humorously) or fail to understand a fundamental element of culture. Taking Humour Seriously unravels humour's multi-dimensional nature. It is part of our personality and our cognitive and emotional processes and subject to the social rules which govern our behaviour on different occasions. It is integral to literary and visual narrative; it is subject to moral and aesthetic judgement and it is a rhetorical instrument. Palmer argues that only by investigating these separate dimensions that we can begin to understand the phenomenon of humour. Taking Humour Seriously examines the role humour and comedy play in many different types of society. It looks at the many different approaches to its study - from Freud to anthropology, from literary criticism to biology. Finally it considers its limits - the things that prevent humour and comedy from delivering their usual pleasures - and explores the aesthetic value of those pleasures.
Book details
- Year
- 2003
- Language
- English
- Publisher
- Taylor & Francis Group
- Editions
- 7
- Pages
- 216
- ISBN
- 9781134851331
Data source: Wikidata
More by Jerry Palmer
