Sudden Glory: Laughter as Subversive History

by Barry Sanders

Overview

In this wonderful exploration of the meaning of laughter, Barry Sanders queries its uses from the ancient Hebrews to Lenny Bruce, turning up evidence of its age-old power to subvert authority and give voice to the voiceless.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807062050
Publisher:	Beacon Press
Publication date:	10/30/1996
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Barry Sanders is the author of A Is for Ox: Violence, Electronic Media, and the Silencing of the Written Word, among other books. He is Peter and Gloria Gold Professor of English at Pitzer College in Claremont, California.

Editorial Reviews

Few literary matters are more elusive of definition than the function of laughter. Many thinkers have taken up the burden of explaining its purpose, yet the more they explain, the more that best of gifts to plodding humankind hides its secret springs. If after reading Sanders's book we still seem no nearer to any real understanding of what laughter is, it is certainly not due to any skimping in his research. English professor Sanders (A Is for Ox, Pantheon, 1994) has gathered together a great deal of information on what have made and continue to make humans laugh-starting with the ancient world through the Middle Ages to the present-in relation to the social, intellectual, and doctrinal backgrounds of the times. But the feeling is inescapable that Sanders was at times bewildered by the magnitude of his undertaking and had never quite mastered exactly what he was examining. Not for your average collection.-A.J. Anderson, GSLIS, Simmons Coll., Boston

Library Journal