No Joke : Making Jewish Humor

Ruth R Wisse

ISBN 10: 0691165815 / ISBN 13: 9780691165813

Editore: Princeton University Press Mär 2015, 2015

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Neuware - 'Ruth Wisse's electrifying undressing of Jewish wit catapults us well past Freud's far more inhibited perceptions and into the naked precincts of tragic insight. Riffing through the laughter thrown up by the interpenetrations of language, history, and the political culture of variegated societies, Wisse uncovers subversion, paradox, fright, anger, grief, and the often defeated imagination of reversal. Tickle the funny bone long enough, she warns, and hilarity will expose dread. This stirringly original study of Jewish joking reveals the darker irony that underlies the comedic ironies of the Jewish mind at play.'--Cynthia Ozick.

Codice articolo 9780691165813

Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: No Joke : Making Jewish Humor
• Editore: Princeton University Press Mär 2015
• Data di pubblicazione: 2015
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0691165815
• ISBN 13: 9780691165813
• Rilegatura: Taschenbuch
• Condizione: Neu
• Dimensioni: 205 L x 128 A x 22 P (millimetri) 205 millimetri di larghezza per 128 millimetri di altezza per 22 millimetri di profondità
• Peso: 327 grammi

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

Why the genius of Jewish humor runs risks as well as rewards

Humor is the most celebrated of all Jewish responses to modernity. In this book, Ruth Wisse evokes and applauds the genius of spontaneous Jewish joking—as well as the brilliance of comic masterworks by writers like Heinrich Heine, Sholem Aleichem, Isaac Babel, S. Y. Agnon, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Philip Roth. At the same time, Wisse draws attention to the precarious conditions that call Jewish humor into being—and the price it may exact from its practitioners and audience.

Wisse broadly traces modern Jewish humor around the world, teasing out its implications as she explores memorable and telling examples from German, Yiddish, English, Russian, and Hebrew. Among other topics, the book looks at how Jewish humor channeled Jewish learning and wordsmanship into new avenues of creativity, brought relief to liberal non-Jews in repressive societies, and enriched popular culture in the United States.

Even as it invites readers to consider the pleasures and profits of Jewish humor, the book asks difficult but fascinating questions: Can the excess and extreme self-ridicule of Jewish humor go too far and backfire in the process? And is "leave 'em laughing" the wisest motto for a people that others have intended to sweep off the stage of history?

Informazioni sull?autore

Ruth R. Wisse is the Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature and professor of comparative literature at Harvard University. She is the author of The Modern Jewish Canon: A Journey through Language and Culture, which won a National Jewish Book Award. Her other books include Jews and Power (Schocken) and The Schlemiel as Modern Hero.