Laughter Literature Violence 1840-1930

Laughter, Literature, Violence, 1840-1930nbsp;investigates The Strange, Complex, Even Paradoxical Relationship Between Laughter, On The One Hand, And Violence, War, Horror, Death, On The Other. It Does So In Relation To Philosophy, Politics, And Key Nineteenth- And Twentieth-century Literary Texts, By Edgar Allan Poe, Edmund Gosse, Wyndham Lewis And Katherine Mansfield - Texts Which Explore The Far Reaches Ofnbsp;schadenfreude, And So-called 'superiority Theories' Of Laughter, Pushing These Theories To Breaking Point. In These Literarynbsp;texts, The Violent Superiority Often Ascribed To Laughter Is Seen As Radically Unstable, Co-existing With Its Opposite: An Anarchic Sense Of Equality.