Book Review. Quirk, Sophie (2015) Why Stand-Up Comedy Matters. How Comedians Manipulate and Influence

• Authors: Margherita Dore
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

As the title and introduction explain, Sophie Quirk’s monograph sets out to investigate the reasons and ways comedians manipulate and influence their audience. The term manipulation, however, should be considered apart from its often negative connotations and should be interpreted as the comedian’s attempt to skilfully communicate with their audience, elicit laughter and, most importantly in this case, influence their beliefs, attitude and behaviour (see p. 2). With these premises, Quirk explores instances of stand-up comedy including some interaction between mainly well-known British comedians (e.g. Eddy Izzard, Stewart Lee, Josie Long, etc.) and their audience. She also interviews some of these performers so as to gain a first-hand understanding of the comedians’ performing experience.

Keywords

EN

Humour; Stand-up Comedy; Manipulation

• Publisher: Cracow Tertium Society for the Promotion of Language Studies
• Journal: The European Journal of Humour Research
• Year: 2017
• Volume: 5
• Issue: 3

Dates

published

2017

online

2017-11-21

Contributors

author

Margherita Dore