Humour in the arts : new perspectives / edited by Vivienne Westbrook and Shun-liang Chao ; foreword by Jessica Milner Davis and conclusion by John Morreall.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Foreword: the intersection of humour studies and cultural history / Jessica Milner Davis -- Introduction: reading humorously: towards new perspectives / Shun-liang Chao and Vivienne Westbrook -- Literary humour in English: a short cultural history / Robert S. White -- Unbidden to the banquet: humour in the classical period / R. Drew Griffith -- Understatement and incongruity: humour in the literature of Anglo-Saxon England / Jonathan Wilcox -- Laughter and humour in Middle English texts / Anne M. Scott -- Shakespeare's reformation humour / Vivienne Westbrook -- "To make fools laugh, and women blush, and wise men ashamed": humour in the English Restoration / Lyndsey Bakewell and Sara Read -- Beyond slapstick: humour, physicality, and empathic performance in G.E. Lessing's comedies / Pascale LaFountain -- Emerson's sad clown: American transcendentalism and the dilemma of the humourist / John Michael Corrigan -- The congruity of incongruity: Victorian intermedial humour / Mou-Lan Wong -- "A tomato is also a child's balloon": surrealist humour as a moral attitude / Shun-liang Chao.

"This collection demonstrates the usefulness of approaching texts--verbal, visual and aural--through a framework of humour. Contributors offer in-depth discussions of humour in the West within a wider cultural historical context to achieve a coherent, chronological sense of how humour proceeds from antiquity to modernity. Reading humorously reveals the complexity of certain aspects of texts that other reading approaches have so far failed to reveal. Humour in the Arts explores humour as a source of cultural formation that engages with ethical, political, and religious controversies whilst acquainting readers with a wide range of humorous structures and strategies used across Western cultures"-- Provided by publisher.