Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
427
result(s) for
"Civilization Humor."
Sort by:
Earth (the book) : a visitor's guide to the human race
Jon Stewart and the writers of The Daily Show embark on a mission to write a book that sums up the human race: what we looked like, what we accomplished, and our achievements in society, government, religion, science, and culture. Here is the definitive guide to our species--completely unburdened by objectivity, journalistic integrity, or even accuracy.
Book
Humour, History and Politics in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages
Although the topic of humour has been dealt with for other eras, early medieval humour remains largely neglected. These essays go some way towards filling the gap, examining how early medieval writers deliberately employed humour to make their cases. The essays range from the late Roman empire through to the tenth century, and from Byzantium to Anglo-Saxon England. The subject matter is diverse, but a number of themes link them together, notably the use of irony, ridicule and satire as political tools. Two chapters serve as an extended introduction to the topic, while the following six chapters offer varied treatments of humour and politics, looking at different times and places, but at the Carolingian world in particular. Together, they raise important and original issues about how humour was employed to articulate concepts of political power, perceptions of kingship, social relations and the role of particular texts.
eBook
Quite enough of Calvin Trillin : forty years of funny stuff
A collection of Trillin's writings, arranged roughly by category.
Book
Walls, borders, boundaries
How is it that walls, borders, boundaries-and their material and symbolic architectures of division and exclusion-engender their very opposite? This edited volume explores the crossings, permeations, and constructions of cultural and political borders between peoples and territories, examining how walls, borders, and boundaries signify both interdependence and contact within sites of conflict and separation. Topics addressed range from the geopolitics of Europe's historical and contemporary city walls to conceptual reflections on the intersection of human rights and separating walls, the memory politics generated in historically disputed border areas, theatrical explorations of border crossings, and the mapping of boundaries within migrant communities.
eBook
The early history of the Greek alphabet: new evidence from Eretria and Methone
Inscriptions on new archaeological finds in the Aegean, examined alongside
linguistic evidence relating to Greek and Phrygian vowels, are here used to
explore the origins and spread of the Greek alphabet. The ‘invention’ of
vowels happened just once, with all of the various Greek, Phrygian and
Italic alphabets ultimately deriving from this single moment. The idea
spread rapidly, from an absence of writing in the ninth century BC to casual
usage, including jokes, by 725 BC. The port of Methone in the northern
Aegean emerges as a probable candidate for the site of origin. A place where
Greeks and Phoenicians did business together, with international networks;
was this where Semitic, Greek and Phrygian letters first coalesced?
Journal Article
Unruly : the ridiculous history of England's kings and queens
In this hilarious book that takes history seriously, a British actor and comedian introduces England's earliest kings and queens, who were mostly as silly and weird in real life as they appear today in their portraits, revealing a story of narcissists, inadequate self-control, excessive beheadings, uncivil wars and more.
Book
Introduction: The Scales of Decadence
Recent scholars have been captivated by the indeterminate potentialities that decadence sets not in contradiction to, but in disarming misstep with, Victorian claims of individual, social, and global systems operating harmoniously toward a singular order. These systems also happened to privilege the aspirations of the middle class, the patriarchal machinery, white British colonial expansionism, and anthropocentric privilege. In a scene in The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), Oscar Wilde offers a particularly pithy encapsulation of this effective obliqueness and extensibility of decadence in relation to cultural norms. The character Algernon enters the room and, on seeing his endearing cousin Gwendolen, offers the complement, “Dear me, you are smart,” to which she replies, “I am always smart!” The retort's brash overconfidence is diluted by the sense that Gwendolen perhaps misunderstood what Algernon meant; he was complementing her looks, but she may have thought he was referring to her intellect. If so, then she is clearly not as sharp as she claims. But even if she did understand him and was, like him, referring to her appearance, the comment is destabilizing; it renders flat Algernon's attempt to complement her as particularly appealing at this particular moment. Either way, her response is somehow off. And when her suitor Jack follows up this bit of banter by declaring Gwendolen “quite perfect,” she again rebuffs the complement: “Oh! I hope I am not that. It would leave no room for developments, and I intend to develop in many directions.” The humor arises because of Gwendolen charmingly construing the conventional for the philosophical, her seeming inability quite to understand what others mean, her way of taking a simple compliment and scaling it up almost to the level of the epistemological or metaphysical.
Journal Article
Exploring Viewership Patterns and Engagement Levels of Malayalam Political Satire Shows' Audience: A Quantitative Survey & SPSS Analysis
The researchers used SPSS analysis to examine the relationships between various variables, including audience demographics, frequency of watching political satire shows, and engagement with the content. The results also indicated that the audience's demographic characteristics, including age, gender, and political affiliation, played a significant role in their engagement with political satire shows. [...]the study found that the audience's media consumption patterns, such as their use of social media platforms, significantly influenced their engagement with political satire shows. Brief History of Television Political Satire Shows in Kerala According to Kennedy (2010), political satire shows have been an integral part of the television landscape in Kerala for several decades. [...]Parthan (2022) opined that political satire shows in Kerala have become a forum for social commentary on issues that often go unaddressed in mainstream media.
Journal Article
Laughter in Occupied Palestine
“Though the current political situation in Palestine is more serious than ever, contemporary Palestinian art and film is becoming, paradoxically, increasingly funny.In Laughter in Occupied Palestine, Chrisoula Lionis analyses both the impetus behind this shift toward laughter and its consequences, arguing that laughter comes as a response to political uncertainty and the decline in nationalist hope. Revealing the crucial role of laughter in responding to the failure of the peace process and ongoing occupation, she unearths the potential of humour to facilitate understanding and empathy in a time of division. This is the first book to provide a combined overview of Palestinian art and film, showing the ways in which both art forms have developed in response to critical moments in Palestinian history over the last century. These key moments, Lionis argues, have radically transformed contemporary Palestinian collective identity and in turn Palestinian cultural output. Mapping these critical junctions - beginning with the Balfour Declaration of 1917 to the Oslo Accords in 1993 - she explores the historical trajectory of Palestinian art and film, and explains how to the failure of the peace process has led to the present proliferation of humour in Palestinian visual culture.”
eBook