About the Author:
David Ellis is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Kent at Canterbury.
Review:
'This reviewer was especially impressed with Ellis's wide-ranging discussion of what defines a practical joke, a discussion that brings in Candid Camera and Boccacio and also draws on Freud and contemporary humor theorists....All in all, this is an excellent study of a subject that deserves further exploration.' (A. Castaldo, Widener University CHOICE, May 2008)
David Ellis's <I<Shakespeare's Practical Jokes: An Introduction to the Comic in His Works sounds like a title you might pick up at an airport bookstore, but it is in fact a highly learned interrogation of 'what makes us laugh' in Shakespeare, framing the discussion around the surprising number of practical jokes in the plays. . . . no scholar serious about Shakespearean comedy should overlook this important book.... (Paul Whitfield White, Purdue University American Behavioral Scientist, Spring 2009)
'Studies of Renaissance comedy have long been constrained by applications of such domineering models as the anthropological-genre study of Northrop Frye, the festive-carnivalesque mode of C. L. Barber and Mikhail Bakhtin, the New Historicists' subversion-containment paradigm, the psychological theory of Freud, and the sociological approach of Bergson. Anyone who has worked extensively with comedy recognizes the limitations of these universalizing theories and the need for thoughtful new work challenging them. David Ellis has written such a book, one that begins to recover the richness, flexibility, and nuance of Renaissance comedy. . . . David Ellis's book, then, is a thoughtful, engaging work - essential reading for anyone researching or teaching comedy.' (Robert Hornback, Oglethorpe University Renaissance Quarterly)
David Ellis's sounds like a title you might pick up at an airport bookstore, but it is in fact a highly learned interrogation of 'what makes us laugh' in Shakespeare, framing the discussion around the surprising number of practical jokes in the plays. . . . no scholar serious about Shakespearean comedy should overlook this important book. (Paul Whitfield White, Purdue University American Behavioral Scientist, Spring 2009)
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