Kategoria BISAC: Humor >> Form - Parodies

A spoof encyclopedia of contemporary accepted wisdom and commonplaces, the Dictionary of Received Ideas sees Flaubert at his witty and satirical best. Perhaps intended as a companion to his final, unfinished novel Bouvard and Pecuchet, this compilation was the result of a lifetime of collecting the absurd and the cliched with darkly humorous explanations.

A playful look at nineteenth-century values and talking points, this dictionary will provide enduring entertainment and prove relevant even today.

What is the nature, essence and definition of a fart? What are the consequences and disadvantages of suppressing one? Why is farting considered to be taboo? Swift's The Benefit of Farting argues eloquently, in a forceful a posteriori fashion, that most of the distempers thought to affect the fairer sex are due to flatulences not adequately vented.

To complete the excursus into this venerable and age-old human activity, Charles James Fox's Essay upon Wind provides a detailed analysis, classification and history of farting, peppered with wit and curious anecdotes about particularly...

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Saki was the pen-name of Hector Hugh Munro, an author and playwright best known for his subtle and witty short stories. He wrote these Wonderland-inspired vignettes for the "Westminster Gazette", and in 1902 these were collected and published together as "The Westminster Alice". Saki's stories use Lewis Carroll's Wonderland to criticize and parody early twentieth-century British politics-and do so with great ingenuity and cleverness. Francis Carruthers Gould's astute illustrations add to the enjoyment. A preface and footnotes by John Alfred Spender and afterword by Hugh Cahill...

Isn't That Clever provides a new account of the nature of humor - the cleverness account - according to which humor is intentional conspicuous acts of playful cleverness. By defining humor in this way, answers can be found to longstanding questions about humor ethics (Are there jokes that are wrong to tell? Are there jokes that can only be told by certain people?) and humor aesthetics (What makes for a good joke? Is humor subjective?). In addition to humor in general, Isn't That Clever Asks questions about comedy as an art form such as whether there limits to what can be...