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Palgrave Macmillan

Comedy Matters

From Shakespeare to Stoppard

  • Book
  • © 2008

Overview

Authors:
  1. William W. Demastes
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Table of contents (9 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-vii
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  2. Introduction

    • William W. Demastes
    Pages 1-9

  3. The Organics of Comedy

    • William W. Demastes
    Pages 11-28

  4. On the Razor’s Edge: Between Comedy and Tragedy

    • William W. Demastes
    Pages 29-52

  5. Connecting Mind to Body

    • William W. Demastes
    Pages 53-84

  6. More than Matter Matters

    • William W. Demastes
    Pages 85-102

  7. The Orderly Disorder of Comic Vitality and Its Liberating Potential

    • William W. Demastes
    Pages 103-125

  8. Comedy as Gift

    • William W. Demastes
    Pages 127-152

  9. Comedy Confronts Commodity via the Adaptive Unconscious

    • William W. Demastes
    Pages 153-178

  10. Conclusion

    • William W. Demastes
    Pages 179-184

  11. Back Matter

    Pages 185-203
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Keywords

About this book

Comedy Matters traces the long tradition of the expansive comic embrace of cultural difference and diversity that manages to survive even in some of mankind s darkest moments. Demastes argues that comedy has a hard-nosed, pragmatic dimension that can be mobilized against belligerent cultural forces. Drawing from the works of Shakespeare, Stoppard, and a number of other comic masters, Comedy Matters demonstrates how comedy continues to work against cultural regimentation by striving to re-calibrate our decision-making processes and challenging the stultifying rigidity of human economy in the broadest sense of the term.

Reviews

"Demastes' study is a thoughtful, cogent, and, ultimately, very useful consideration of comedy, an oft overlooked and certainly under theorized genre of dramatic literature . . ..that it is simultaneously theoretically perceptive and lucid. The study could well be viewed as an example of contemporary theatre scholarship at its best." - Jonathan Chambers, Bowling Green State University

About the author

WILLIAM B. DEMASTES is Professor of English at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, USA.

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