@misc{Pryor2022,
       author = "Pryor, Ashley",
       title =  {{Philosophy of Comedy}},
       howpublished = "\url{https://ir.hamilton.edu/do/5a7854a1-cff7-46ec-a363-fd8ade98532f}",
       institution = {Hamilton College},
       year = 2022,
       month = jul,
       school = {Philosophy},
}

Creator

Date

July 11th, 2022

Description

Ashley Pryor, Associate Professor of Humanities at the University of Toledo, reflects on her recently completed, two week course in which students explored four major philosophical theories of comedy: play, relief, superiority and incongruity. Not only did the class consider what Aristotle and Kierkegaard had to say about incongruity, or what Kant and Shaftesbury considered comedic relief to be, they took the opportunity to examine the work of their favorite comedians and create their own comedic work in the forms of joke writing, improv, satire and sketch to produce a comedy showcase. Finally, learned ways to transfer the skills of comedic writing (creating a strong point of view, editing and revising work for clarity and force of expression, doing quick but effective and ethically responsible research for a short satiric publication) to significantly improve the effectiveness of their writing for other contexts.

Type of Work

• Lecture

Institution

Hamilton College

Area of Study

• Philosophy

Sponsor

• Philosophy Department

Event

Hamilton College Summer Program in Philosophy

Location

Clinton, NY, USA

Part of Collection

Hamilton College Summer Program in Philosophy

Rights Statement

The copyright for this work is held by its creators and Hamilton College. More information