Sex and Symbol in Andalusian Comic Poetry

Este artículo presenta unas coplas de chirigota compuestas por desempeño público durante el carnaval en una villa agraria de la provincia de Sevilla. Las coplas están compuestas entre los años 40 y 90. Representando un género folklórico burlesco social específicamente andaluz, las coplas son una prerrogativa solamente masculina, escritas por los «maestros de murga» e interpretadas por cantores masculinos («murguistas»). Basadas en imágenes eróticas, metáforas genitales y alegorías obscenas, las letras comunican una ideología masculina sobre la sexualidad, las relaciones entre el hombre y la mujer y la domesticidad. Concluye el artículo con una breve interpretación de las letras de chirigota, basándose el análisis en el concepto de «realismo grotesco» propuesto por el crítico ruso Bakhtin.

Laughter, Humor, and Comedy in Ancient Philosophy

Ancient philosophers were very interested in the themes of laughter, humor, and comedy. They theorized about laughter and its causes, moralized about the appropriate uses of humor and what it is appropriate to laugh at, and wrote treatises on comedic composition. Further, they were often merciless in ridiculing their opponents’ positions, often borrowing comedic devices and techniques from comic poetry and drama to do so. The volume is organized around three themes or sets of questions. The first set concerns the psychology of laughter. What is going on in our minds when we laugh? What background conditions must be in place for laughter to occur? Is laughter necessarily hostile or derisive? The second set of questions concerns the ethical and social norms governing laughter and humor. When is it appropriate or inappropriate to laugh? Does laughter have a positive social function? Is there a virtue, or excellence, connected to laugher and humor? The third set of questions concerns the philosophical uses of humor and comedic technique. Do philosophers use humor exclusively in criticizing other rivals, or can it play a positive educational role as well? If it can, how does philosophical humor communicate its philosophical content? This volume aims not to settle these fascinating questions but more modestly to start a conversation about them, in the hope that the volume will be both a reference point for discussions of laughter, humor, and comedy in ancient philosophy and an engine for future research about them.

Introduction

This introduction motivates the volume’s main themes by arguing that the seriousness with which ancient philosophers treated laughter, humor, and comedy is not, but ought to be, reflected in scholarly attention to these issues. In addition, ancient philosophers often wrote in ways that borrowed comedic devices and techniques from comic poetry and drama, and contemporary scholarship needs to be sensitive to these devices in order to understand their use by these figures. The volume is organized around three themes or set of questions. The first part of the book contains four chapters on the psychology of laughter. The second part contains three chapters on the ethical and social norms governing laughter and humor. The third part contains six chapters on the philosophical uses of humor and comedic technique.

Humour, Satire, and the Rise of the Bad Poet

This chapter considers the use of satire in newspaper poetry columns and correspondence columns, and editorial interventions in relation to poetic critique. It shows how newspapers became a site for the exploration of poetic norms and standards, and how the rise of a culture of deliberately ‘bad’ comic poetry both reinforced and questioned these standards. The first subsection examines correspondence columns and their commentary on poetic standards. The second shows how poets responded to these columns by producing fake bad poems, and how these became a popular genre across the press. It focuses particularly on the work of Alexander Burgess under the pseudonym ‘Poute’. The final section of this chapter demonstrates that William McGonagall was part of this culture of bad verse and drew on it in his own self-representations.

Jeff Morgan. American Comic Poetry, History, Techniques and Modern Masters. McFarland & Company, 2015

Estudio de la historia de la poesía irónica estadounidense

The Individual and Democracy: The Place of the “Great Man”

This chapter examines Pericles' impact on Athenian democracy, and more specifically whether the stratēgos was an all-powerful figure or an evanescent one, and how his actions interacted with the will of the people. It begins with a discussion of what was perceived by his opponents as Pericles' link to the tyrants of Athens. It then explores Pericles' role in the great building projects that included monuments, along with the ways that comic poetry fulfilled a function of social control over the members of the Athenian elite. It suggests that the notion of a Periclean monarchy is just a myth. Far from ruling Athens as a monarch, Pericles, the “great man,” lived constantly under tension in a context in which the power of the dēmos was relentlessly increasing.