Rationale of the Dirty Joke

Author: G. Legman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416595732
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 822

Book Description
Why do people tell dirty jokes? And what is it about a joke's dirtiness that makes it funny? G. Legman was perhaps the foremost scholar of the dirty joke, and as legions of humor writers and comedians know, his Rationale of the Dirty Joke remains the most exhaustive and authoritative study of the subject. More than two thousand jokes and folktales are presented, covering such topics as The Female Fool, The Fortunate Fart, Mutual Mismatching, and The Sex Machine. These folk texts are authentically transcribed in their innocent and sometimes violent entirety. Legman studies each for its historical and socioanalytic significance, revealing what these jokes mean to the people who tell them and to the people who listen and laugh. Here -- back in print -- is the definitive text for comedians and humor writers, Freudian scholars and late night television enthusiasts. Rationale of the Dirty Joke will amuse you, offend you, challenge you, and disgust you, all while demonstrating the intelligence and hilarity of the dirty joke.

Stop Me If You've Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes

Author: Jim Holt
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393069443
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 160

Book Description
“Finally I understand what it is I’ve been laughing at all these years.”—Jimmy Kimmel From the best-selling author of Why Does the World Exist? comes this outrageous, uproarious compendium of absurdity, filth, racy paradox, and gratuitous offensiveness—just the kind of mature philosophical reflection readers have come to expect from the ever-entertaining Jim Holt. Indeed, Stop Me If You’ve Heard This is the first book to trace the evolution of the joke all the way from the standup comics of ancient Athens to the comedy-club Seinfelds of today. After exploring humor’s history in Part One, Holt delves into philosophy in Part Two: Wall Street jokes; jokes about rednecks and atheists, bulimics and politicians; jokes you missed if you didn’t go to a Catholic girls’ school; jokes about logic and existence itself . . . all became fodder for the grand theories of Aristotle, Kant, Freud, and Wittgenstein in this heady mix of the high and low, of the ribald and profound, from America’s most beloved philosophical pundit.

The Limerick. 1700 examples, with notes, variants and index

Author: Gershon Legman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 517

Book Description

The Guilt of the Templars

Author: Gershon Legman
Publisher: Rudos and Rubes
ISBN: 9780977895229
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
From Ivanhoe onward, the Order of the Knights Templar has been a favorite subject of novelists. Though it makes for great reading, little of what has been written is factual. The truth, however, is equally compelling as the fiction. In this book, one of his most elusive titles, G. Legman turned his far-ranging scholarship and acute analysis to the history and trial of the Knights Templar. Charged with heresy, sacrilege, blasphemy, and sexual perversion, the Templars were arrested, tried, and burned at the stake, bringing about their official end in 1312. Whether the suppression of the Order was justified and whether the Templars were guilty or innocent are questions that continue to fascinate anyone interested in the development of Western civilization. Drawing from the actual depositions and confessions of the Templars, and probing far deeper than just the religious, financial, or political issues, Legman offers a searching analysis of the effects of suppressing normal sexuality.

A Good Girl's Guide to Murder

Author: Holly Jackson
Publisher: Delacorte Press
ISBN: 1984896385
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 402

Book Description
THE MUST-READ MULTIMILLION BESTSELLING MYSTERY SERIES—COMING SOON TO NETFLIX! • This is the story about an investigation turned obsession, full of twists and turns and with an ending you'll never expect. Everyone in Fairview knows the story. Pretty and popular high school senior Andie Bell was murdered by her boyfriend, Sal Singh, who then killed himself. It was all anyone could talk about. And five years later, Pip sees how the tragedy still haunts her town. But she can't shake the feeling that there was more to what happened that day. She knew Sal when she was a child, and he was always so kind to her. How could he possibly have been a killer? Now a senior herself, Pip decides to reexamine the closed case for her final project, at first just to cast doubt on the original investigation. But soon she discovers a trail of dark secrets that might actually prove Sal innocent . . . and the line between past and present begins to blur. Someone in Fairview doesn't want Pip digging around for answers, and now her own life might be in danger. And don't miss the sequel, Good Girl, Bad Blood! "The perfect nail-biting mystery." —Natasha Preston, #1 New York Times bestselling author

The Primer of Humor Research

Author: Victor Raskin
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110198495
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 679

Book Description
The book is intended to provide a definitive view of the field of humor research for both beginning and established scholars in a variety of fields who are developing an interest in humor and need to familiarize themselves with the available body of knowledge. Each chapter of the book is devoted to an important aspect of humor research or to a disciplinary approach to the field, and each is written by the leading expert or emerging scholar in that area. There are two primary motivations for the book. The positive one is to collect and summarize the impressive body of knowledge accumulated in humor research in and around Humor: The International Journal of Humor Research. The negative motivation is to prevent the embarrassment to and from the "first-timers," often established experts in their own field, who venture into humor research without any notion that there already exists a body of knowledge they need to acquire before publishing anything on the subject-unless they are in the business of reinventing the wheel and have serious doubts about its being round! The organization of the book reflects the main groups of scholars participating in the increasingly popular and high-powered humor research movement throughout the world, an 800 to 1,000-strong contingent, and growing. The chapters are organized along the same lines: History, Research Issues, Main Directions, Current Situation, Possible Future, Bibliography-and use the authors' definitive credentials not to promote an individual view, but rather to give the reader a good comprehensive and condensed view of the area.

Legend and Belief

Author: Linda Dégh
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253339294
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 520

Book Description
Industrial advancement has not changed the basic fragility of human life, and the commercialization and consumer orientation of the mass media has actually helped legends travel faster and farther. Legends are communicated not only orally, face to face, but also in the press, on radio and television, on countless Web sites, and by e-mail, perpetuating new waves of the "culture of fear.""--BOOK JACKET.

The 48 Laws of Power

Author: Robert Greene
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0670881465
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 481

Book Description
Amoral, cunning, ruthless, and instructive, this multi-million-copy New York Times bestseller is the definitive manual for anyone interested in gaining, observing, or defending against ultimate control – from the author of The Laws of Human Nature. In the book that People magazine proclaimed “beguiling” and “fascinating,” Robert Greene and Joost Elffers have distilled three thousand years of the history of power into 48 essential laws by drawing from the philosophies of Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and Carl Von Clausewitz and also from the lives of figures ranging from Henry Kissinger to P.T. Barnum. Some laws teach the need for prudence (“Law 1: Never Outshine the Master”), others teach the value of confidence (“Law 28: Enter Action with Boldness”), and many recommend absolute self-preservation (“Law 15: Crush Your Enemy Totally”). Every law, though, has one thing in common: an interest in total domination. In a bold and arresting two-color package, The 48 Laws of Power is ideal whether your aim is conquest, self-defense, or simply to understand the rules of the game.

Bunk

Author: Kevin Young
Publisher: Graywolf Press
ISBN: 1555979823
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 575

Book Description
Longlisted for the National Book Award for Nonfiction “There Kevin Young goes again, giving us books we greatly need, cleverly disguised as books we merely want. Unexpectedly essential.”—Marlon James Award-winning poet and critic Kevin Young tours us through a rogue’s gallery of hoaxers, plagiarists, forgers, and fakers—from the humbug of P. T. Barnum and Edgar Allan Poe to the unrepentant bunk of JT LeRoy and Donald J. Trump. Bunk traces the history of the hoax as a peculiarly American phenomenon, examining what motivates hucksters and makes the rest of us so gullible. Disturbingly, Young finds that fakery is woven from stereotype and suspicion, race being the most insidious American hoax of all. He chronicles how Barnum came to fame by displaying figures like Joice Heth, a black woman whom he pretended was the 161-year-old nursemaid to George Washington, and What Is It?, an African American man Barnum professed was a newly discovered missing link in evolution. Bunk then turns to the hoaxing of history and the ways that forgers, plagiarists, and journalistic fakers invent backstories and falsehoods to sell us lies about themselves and about the world in our own time, from pretend Native Americans Grey Owl and Nasdijj to the deadly imposture of Clark Rockefeller, from the made-up memoirs of James Frey to the identity theft of Rachel Dolezal. In this brilliant and timely work, Young asks what it means to live in a post-factual world of “truthiness” where everything is up for interpretation and everyone is subject to a pervasive cynicism that damages our ideas of reality, fact, and art.

Gaslight

Author: Joachim Kalka
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1681371189
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Book Description
A one-of-a-kind exploration of the 19th century that ties the time period to our own through essays on a variety of topics in music, film, literature, and art. In Gaslight, Joachim Kalka delves into the mythos of the nineteenth century, exploring our fascination with its “auratic gaslight,” its mingling of romanticism and modernity, enlightenment and darkness. Here we find the roots of our contemporary preoccupations: gender roles and sexuality, terrorism and technology, mad scientists and serial killers, kitsch and commodification. Mustering a wealth of cultural references, Kalka draws illuminating connections between Balzac and Billy Wilder, Mickey Mouse and the arms race, the cake fights of Laurel and Hardy and Madame Bovary’s wedding cake. He brings the nineteenth century to life with all its contradictions, aspirations, and absurdities, inviting us to reexamine that era and our own, and the stories we tell ourselves about history.