Author: Lesley Milne
Publisher: Anthem Press
ISBN: 0857287427
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
The end of the Cold War brought new opportunities to explore the long tradition and myriad uses of humour through over two centuries of Russian literature and culture. 'Reflective Laughter' is the first book devoted to an overview of this subject. Bringing together contributions from a number of distinguished scholars from Russia, Europe and North America, this volume ranges from the classics of nineteenth-century literature through to the intellectual and popular comedic culture, both state-sponsored and official, of the twentieth-century, taking in journalism, propaganda, scholarly discourse, jokes, films and television. In doing so, it explores how our understanding remains distorted by the polarization of the East and West during the Cold War.

Author: Lilia Westmore
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1477152172
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 50

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Book Description
Reflection is how our thoughts examine the differences and similarities between our past and our present. We scrutinize our actions/reactions and try to understand how and why we choose one method from another, to resolve questions of priorities. We think back in time and focus upon issues that affect our decisions. We reflect to justify our choices, and to rationalize the steps we have taken to reach a solution to a puzzle. We reflect because we are human beings. According to the writer, Arnold Glasow, laughter is "A tranquiliser with no side effects". Another writer, Patricia Nelson, call laughter "A noisy smile". Still another writer, Steven Goldberg, says laughter is "A universal bond that draws all men closer". The saying, laughter is good for the soul, is a popular quote we hear in our everyday life. Laughter gives us a feeling of goodness that translates into actions of kindness, generosity, and philanthrophy. Laugher is our way of easing problems that beset us, and thereby see clearly the solution that escaped us. When we laugh, we give ourselves a chance to contemplate, understand, and take steps to solve difficulties. We laugh when we are embarrassed. We laugh at silly situations. We laugh at ourselves, proving that we are as human as anybody else. We meditate deeply into our thoughts, to contemplate, to ponder whether or not we have chosen the right action to resolve problems. We deliberate over dilemmas, choosing, we hope, is the right way out of a predicament. We learn to solve arithmetical problems. We dream, we fantasize and imagine greater things to happen. We aim for a future life, the dream our life, and we take much pleasure in aspiring for it and finally accomplishing the dream into reality. We build castles in the air that seem impossible to fulfill but if we push to become an architect, then we go on to build that castle of our dream. We desire to become a judge in a high court and our chance of one day being one is as attainable as going to college and graduating. Our meditations become our dreams, our reflections, and our laughter.

Author: Francis Hutcheson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Laughter
Languages : en
Pages : 102

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Book Description

Author: Karl-Josef Kuschel
Publisher: Burns & Oates
ISBN: 9780826406606
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 150

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Book Description
In this volume, theologian Kuschel traces a fascinating story of laughter: from Sarah in the Hebrew Bible through Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Mozart, Kafka, and Umberto Eco in The Name of the Rose. Kuschel discusses the foundations of Christian laughter in the New Testament and, in contrast, the Christian condemnation of laughter among the church fathers and in the monastic tradition.

Author: Sonja Madeleine Tanner
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438467389
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
Plato was described as a boor and it was said that he never laughed out loud. Yet his dialogues abound with puns, jokes, and humor. Sonja Madeleine Tanner argues that in Plato's dialogues Socrates plays a comical hero who draws heavily from the tradition of comedy in ancient Greece, but also reforms laughter to be applicable to all persons and truly shaming to none. Socrates introduces a form of self-reflective laughter that encourages, rather than stifles, philosophical inquiry. Laughter in the dialogues—both explicit and implied—suggests a view of human nature as incongruous with ourselves, simultaneously falling short of, and superseding, our own capacities. What emerges is a picture of human nature that bears a striking resemblance to Socrates' own, laughable depiction, one inspired by Dionysus, but one that remains ultimately intractable. The book analyzes specific instances of laughter and the comical from the Apology, Laches, Charmides, Cratylus, Euthydemus, and the Symposium to support this, and to further elucidate the philosophical consequences of recognizing Plato's laughter.

Author: Francis Hutcheson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 84

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Book Description

Author: Manfred Pfister
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9789042012882
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
Is there a 'history' of laughter? Or isn't laughter an anthropological constant rather and thus beyond history, a human feature that has defined humanity as homo ridens from cave man and cave woman to us? The contributors to this collection of essays believe that laughter does have a history and try to identify continuities and turning points of this history by studying a series of English texts, both canonical and non-canonical, from Anglosaxon to contemporary. As this is not another book on the history of the comic or of comedy it does not restrict itself to comic genres; some of the essays actually go out of their way to discover laughter at the margins of texts where one would not have expected it all - in Beowulf, or Paradise Lost or the Gothic Novel. Laughter at the margins of texts, which often coincides with laughter from the margins of society and its orthodoxies, is one of the special concerns of this book. This goes together with an interest in 'impure' forms of laughter - in laughter that is not the serene and intellectually or emotionally distanced response to a comic stimulus which is at the heart of many philosophical theories of the comic, but emotionally disturbed and troubled, aggressive and transgressive, satanic and sardonic laughter. We do not ask, then, what is comic, but: who laughs at and with whom where, when, why, and how?

Author: Freda Gonot-Schoupinsky
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
ISBN: 1837538360
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 187

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Book Description
Drawing on the authors’ diverse backgrounds and expertise, this is the first academic volume dedicated to the rarely discussed topic of laughter and humour in positive psychology.

Author: Carol P. Christ
Publisher: HarperOne
ISBN:
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
"The spiritual and intellectual journey of a feminst theologian from Christianity to the goddess."--Cover.

Author: James Sully
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Laughter
Languages : en
Pages : 468

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Book Description