October 2014
Beginner to intermediate
222 pages
7h 37m
English
The first part of this book has been an attempt to outline the anatomy of the comic with the help of different perspectives, such as those of philosophy, psychology, and the social sciences. It goes without saying that this attempt could only partially succeed. It is salutary to recall Bergson’s description of laughter as a foam that disappears as one tries to hold it (salutary, one may add, both for the nervous author and the skeptical reader). As stated at the outset of this arguably Quixotic enterprise, all one can try to do is to keep walking around the phenomenon in the hope of seeing it more clearly as a result. And that is all that this book can continue to do. For most of the rest of it the topic ...