Friday, February 01, 2008

I Laugh, Therefore I Am


I searched through BN.com looking for humorous books about philosophy. I found ten, and then I made up five titles to go with them. Can you guess which ten are actual books, and which five are EE's creations?

1. Why We Laugh: Essays through history, from Saint Augustine to Ludwig Wittgenstein

2. The Joke and It's Relation to the Unconsciousness

3. Mirth Making: The Rhetorical Discourse on Jesting in Early Modern England

4. The Wit of Martin Luther

5. Why It's Okay to Joke About Nazis but Not About Muslims

6. Humor and Irony in Kierkegaard's Thought

7. Laughter of the Oppressed: Ethical and Theological Resistance in Wiesel, Morrison, and Endo

8. The Female Trickster: The Mask That Reveals, Post-Jungian and Postmodern Psychological Perspectives on Women in Contemporary Culture

9. Wit and Whimsy: The Humour of Baruch Spinoza

10. More Than Misery: Comedy in the Dark Ages

11. The Philosophy of Gilligan's Island

12. Better a Shrew than a Sheep: Women, Drama, and the Culture of Jest in Early Modern England

13. Laughing at Nothing: Humor as a Response to Nihilism

14. Shakespeare's Practical Jokes

15. Professors Are from Mars, Students Are from Snickers






Answers below:



The real titles are



2. The Joke and It's Relation to the Unconsciousness

3. Mirth Making: The Rhetorical Discourse on Jesting in Early Modern England

4. The Wit of Martin Luther

6. Humor and Irony in Kierkegaard's Thought

7. Laughter of the Oppressed: Ethical and Theological Resistance in Wiesel, Morrison, and Endo

8. The Female Trickster: The Mask That Reveals, Post-Jungian and Postmodern Psychological Perspectives on Women in Contemporary Culture

12. Better a Shrew than a Sheep: Women, Drama, and the Culture of Jest in Early Modern England

13. Laughing at Nothing: Humor as a Response to Nihilism

14. Shakespeare's Practical Jokes

15. Professors Are from Mars, Students Are from Snickers

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I guessed #15 correctly.
Nice topic.

Kalynne Pudner said...

I sure hope #2 didn't really have an apostrophe in "it's" title!

You missed PLATO AND A PLATYPUS WALK INTO A BAR (Cathcart & Klein).

And of course, IS THERE A PHILOSOPHER IN THE (MAD)HOUSE? Oh, wait...that's the one I've got in progress. (Want to see the proposal? Huh? Huh?)

Chris Eldin said...

Which did you buy?

Evil Editor said...

You missed PLATO AND A PLATYPUS WALK INTO A BAR (Cathcart & Klein).

Actually, we already used that title in a previous quiz (http://evileditor.blogspot.com/2007/08/guess-title-2.html.), so I knew long-time minions would recognize it.

Evil Editor said...

I sure hope #2 didn't really have an apostrophe in "it's" title!

I cut and pasted the title from the Barnes & Nobel description (http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&EAN=9780142437445&itm=3), but a close look at the actual book cover reveals that the apostrophe isn't there.

Robin S. said...

Looks like I need to reread Kierkegaard to find the irony and humor I missed the first slog through.

Better a Shrew than a Sheep. Wow. Great choices. It's probably a good thing I'm not living my life out in Early Modern England. I'm thinking I might have been in trouble a lot. Or dead kinda quickly.

Anonymous said...

I'm buying the Snickers one. I love chocolate.