The English Miscellany

Slavoj Žižek The anxious researcher is unsure about placing the entry on philosophical humour between phallic ritual and physical comedy . Encyclopaedic collisions and incongruities abound. Is this a breach of academic decorum? Would it be safer simply to abandon the alphabetical approach to comedy and humour in this book on Aspects of Comedy ? Another anxiety: is this entry concerned with the philosophy of humour, or humour in philosophy? How much space should be allocated to Slavoj Žižek? (A philosopher, a public intellectual, and a comedian). In parenthesis --- ("there is a case to be made that Slavoj Žižek is really the Ken Dodd of post-Lacanian Hegelianism." --- Lindesay Irvine, Guardian , 6 January 2012, here ) --- And how funny is Žižek's The Ticklish Subject: the absent centre of political ontology (Verso, 1999)? I have my doubts. I guess his work will always divide opinion. Take a look at his highly controversial review essay on Benig...

“Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.” --- Charlie Chaplin. "Dramatic comedy, from which fictional comedy is mainly descended, has been remarkably tenacious of its structural principles and character types." (Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism ) "The days of Comedy are gone, alas! When Congreve's fool could vie with Moliere's bete :   Society is smooth'd to that excess,  That manners hardly differ more than dress." --- Byron "Man is the merriest species of the creation, all above and below him are serious." --- Addison “This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.” --- Horace Walpole. “Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.” --- Peter Ustinov “The duty of comedy is to correct men by amusing them.” --- Moliere. "In the hands of a comic genius the pretence of stupidity is the triumph of irony." "In my mind, the...