Risible

Laughter without Reason and the Reproduction of Sound

Dados Bibliográficos

ID5777960
AutoresDelia Casadei (autor correspondente)
Ano2023
Data de publicação2023-09-07
Open AccessNão
TipoBOOK
PeriódicoRisible (SOURCE_BOOK)
EditoraUniversity of California Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1525/luminos.179
OpenAlexW4386522909
Open LibraryOL50621612M
ISBN9780520391338
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas2
Referências citadas15

Risible explores the forgotten history of laughter, from ancient Greece to the sitcom stages of Hollywood. Delia Casadei approaches laughter not as a phenomenon that can be accounted for by studies of humor and theories of comedy but rather as a technique of the human body, knowable by its repetitive, clipped, and proliferating sound and its enduring links to the capacity for language and reproduction. This buried genealogy of laughter re-emerges with explosive force thanks to the binding of laughter to sound reproduction technology in the late nineteenth century. Analyzing case studies ranging from the early global market for phonographic laughing songs to the McCarthy-era rise of prerecorded laugh tracks, Casadei convincingly demonstrates how laughter was central to the twentieth century's development of the very category of sound as not-quite-human, unintelligible, reproductive, reproducible, and contagious

Laughter · Music History and Culture · Poetry Analysis and Criticism · Psychology