Laughing Matters: Comic Tradition in India

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University of Chicago Press, 1987年12月9日 - 497 頁
"How can anyone laugh who knows of old age, disease, and death?"—Buddhacarita

This question, so solemnly posed by the young Buddha, first led Lee Siegel to examine the hitherto unexplored realm of Indian comedy. Laughing Matters is Siegel's account of two intersecting journeys: a search for comic traditions created and preserved in Sanskrit literature and a journey through modern India in quest of a laughter that persists across time and culture.

Hearing a boisterous and bawdy voice from India's past, Siegel has provided original and highly entertaining translations of Sanskrit literature that reveal a sparkling sensibility embedded in the texts. These translations are integrated with a detailed analysis of the types and structures of India's mirth. Siegel develops an original theory of comedy and laughter, applying it to reveal the humor in the ancient works. Defining sacred and profane comedy and the "taste" and "erotics" of laughter, he delineates two main Indian categories of comedy—laughter at others and laughter at oneself—which are roughly parallel to the Western traditions of satire and humor. He examines these categories in all of their forms and functions: satires of manners, social satire, and religious satire; and human and divine comedy. Siegel concludes by presenting his perceptions of humor in modern India as seen through cartoons, movies, books, and social gatherings.

Laughing Matters is both a serious and a hilarious study of the Indian comic sense of life—a vision formed in the convergence of the bitter insight of satire and the sweet outlook of humor. Past and present, the contextual and the universal, scholarship and the picaresque, are all interwoven in this original treatise on the aesthetics of comedy and the psychology of laughter.

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內容

Defining Comedy
7
The Dynamics of Wit
34
Misery and Mirth
46
The Laughter of the Sons of Bharata
57
The Laughter of Kāli
94
The Laughter of the Child
145
The Laughter of the Weaver
245
The Laughter of the Jackal
291
Humor and Play
349
Humor and Love
363
Humor and Liberation
371
The Laughter of Kumāra
409
Bibliographic Essay
465
Bibliography of Indian Texts Cited
471
Illustration Citations
481
Subject Index
489

The Laughter of Kṛṣṇa
339

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關於作者 (1987)

Lee Siegel is professor of religious studies at the University of Hawaii. He is the author of many books, including Love in a Dead Language, Who Wrote the Book of Love?, and Love and the Incredibly Old Man, all published by the University of Chicago Press.

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