Comic Democracies

It is common to say that democracy and comedy support each other, the kind of truism tossed off about the Daily Show or the Onion. Yet Comic Democracies brings millennia of history to support this view, with a breadth and clarity rarely seen in works on humor. In 158 erudite pages Angus Fletcher explains how everyone “from Aristophanes to Machiavelli, Jefferson to Douglass” used comedy as “a laboratory for refining democratic practices,” unleashing the mockery of the multitude while also taming its dangerous manifestations (pp. 136, 24). Fletcher operates with a broad definition of democracy. He is careful to note that the demokratia of Greece and Rome rarely meets our contemporary standards, and he does not shy away from the slavery, sexism, and xenophobia present in ancient humor. Instead, Fletcher asserts that our modern, rights-focused democracy ignores an older tradition designed to address immediate public needs, stressing pragmatism and pluralism. From Ancient Greece through Renaissance Italy, eighteenth-century America, and twentieth-century Egypt, Fletcher follows five recurring traits of democratic comedy: impetuousness, imitation, indolence, eccentric governance, and inclusive laughter

Aesthetics · Ancient Greece · Art · Comedy · Comics · Democracy · Epistemology · Literature · Multitude · Pluralism (philosophy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Classics · Comics and Graphic Narratives · History · Law · Philosophy