The rise and fall of American humor.

[1st ed.]
  • 0 Ratings
  • 0 Want to read
  • 0 Currently reading
  • 0 Have read
The rise and fall of American humor.
Jesse Bier
Not in Library

My Reading Lists:

Create a new list

Check-In

×Close
Add an optional check-in date. Check-in dates are used to track yearly reading goals.
Today

  • 0 Ratings
  • 0 Want to read
  • 0 Currently reading
  • 0 Have read

Buy this book

Last edited by ImportBot
September 29, 2021 | History

The rise and fall of American humor.

[1st ed.]
  • 0 Ratings
  • 0 Want to read
  • 0 Currently reading
  • 0 Have read

BOOK JACKET: As comprehensive as it is incisive, this wide-ranging critical history of American humor shows that our humor is the consequence of pluralism, the reductionist voice of truth in a nation where conformity, hypocrisy, and minority dissent have been equally encouraged. American humor has always tried to combat the sentiment and shibboleths of the American experience, and the many elements of comedy involved - from cruelty, and complication through realism, anti-climax, nihilism, comic reversal, anti-proverbialism - are carefully analyzed. Here, too, is a penetrating look at the American comic preoccupation with misogyny, the confidence man, and social antagonism. From this position, Jesse Bier determines that the three high points In American humor were the Jacksonian period, the Civil War and post-bellum era, and the decade of the 1930’s when radio, film, and literary humor reached their apogee. But by establishing the importance of these periods he does not sell short the humor and the humorists who fell in between. Beginning with Franklin, ShiIIaber, Philip Freneau, he goes on to discuss everyone of importance, from household names like Mark Twain, Joel Chandler Harris, Robert Benchley, James Thurber, Chaplin, and the Marx Brothers, to A. B. Longstreet, Joseph Baldwin, Ambrose Bierce, Don Marquis, George Ade, Lenny Bruce, and many more. Finally, Professor Bier claims that modern American humor has lost its comic sense to outright despair and nihilism, that the negative elements of our comedy have been pushed over the line. He believes the resurgence of great comedy will be an international responsibility, and although he sounds a warning, he has told his story with all the flair and excitement of his subject.

Publish Date
Language
English
Pages
506

Buy this book

Edition Availability
Cover of: The rise and fall of American humor
The rise and fall of American humor
1981, Octagon Books
in English
Cover of: The rise and fall of American humor
The rise and fall of American humor
1968-01-01, Holt, Rinehart and Winston
Cover of: The rise and fall of American humor.
The rise and fall of American humor.
1968, Holt, Rinehart and Winston
Hardcover in English - [1st ed.]
Cover of: The rise and fall of American humor.
The rise and fall of American humor.
1968, Holt, Rinehart and Winston
in English - [1st ed.]

Add another edition?

Book Details


Published in

New York

Table of Contents

Early American humor
“Southwestern” humor
“Literary comedians”: The Civil War and reconstruction
Mark Twain
Intercentury humor
Interwar humor
Modern American humor
Humor in selected major American writers
American and foreign humor
Conclusion.

Edition Notes

Bibliography: p. [479]-490.

Classifications

Dewey Decimal Class
817/.009
Library of Congress
PS430 .B47

The Physical Object

Format
Hardcover
Pagination
xii, 506 p.
Number of pages
506
Dimensions
22 x x centimeters

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL5603115M
LCCN
68010071
OCLC/WorldCat
435846
Library Thing
2063167

Community Reviews (0)

Feedback?
No community reviews have been submitted for this work.

Lists

This work does not appear on any lists.

History

Download catalog record: RDF / JSON
September 29, 2021 Edited by ImportBot import existing book
July 30, 2012 Edited by Y-Not bot added description.
February 13, 2010 Edited by WorkBot add more information to works
December 10, 2009 Created by WorkBot add works page