Title: Madness, masks, and laughter : an essay on comedy /
Authors: Glasgow, R. D. V. 1964-
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press ; Associated University Presses,
Year: 1995
Subjects: Comedy History and criticism; Comic, The, in literature
Abstract: Madness, Masks, and Laughter: An Essay on Comedy is an exploration of narrative and dramatic comedy as a laughter-inducing phenomenon. The theatrical metaphors of mask, appearance, and illusion are used as structural linchpins in an attempt to categorize the many and extremely varied manifestations of comedy and to find out what they may have in common with one another. As this reliance on metaphor suggests, the purpose is less to produce The Truth about comedy than to look at how it is related to our understanding of the world and to ways of understanding our understanding.