Rhetoric, Comedy, and the Violence of Language in Aristophanes' Clouds
This is an intelligent and unusually thought-provoking reading of Aristophanes' Clouds. O'Regan focuses on logos, or the power of argument, and its effects, and on the self-awareness of the second Clouds as a comedy of logos directed toward an audience made resistant by devotion to the body. Within and without the play, logos meets defeat when confronted with human nature and desire. The argument conveys much insight into fifth-century thought and the play's workings, the more so because it balances rhetoric with comedy, and reminds the reader that this is a comic logos--explored in the comic mode, and connected with the intentions and vicissitudes of the first and second Clouds.
Added by: badaboom | Karma: 5364.29 | Fiction literature | 11 March 2011
2
Man Bites Dog
When Satan, a territorial Doberman pinscher, winds up dead, Steven, a young mailman, turns amateur detective in order to clear his name in this comic mystery novel. Coping with 20-something, post-college angst, he fumbles his way through his first love and his first career with the help of his Murder She Wrote–addicted best friend, Gina. The book also features original comic strip art by the author interspersed throughout the text.
Skipper Matthews is a comic book collector who enjoys reading his favorite comic book, the Masked Mutant. The Masked Mutant is an evil supervillain who can change his molecular form into any solid material. He is constantly opposed by a league of superheroes lead by the Galloping Gazelle, the world's fastest man. Skipper finds the Masked Mutant's headquarters and becomes a comic book character. He must rescue the Galloping Gazelle and save the world by defeating the Masked Mutant.
'It is 1968. Paddy Clarke is ten years old, breathless with discovery: He reads with a child's voraciousness, collecting facts the way adults collect grey hairs and parking tickets. Doyle captures the speech pattern of childhood brilliantly, the weird logic of incessant questions, the non-sequiturs and wonderments ... Like all the great comic writers Roddy Doyle has become an explorer of the heart.' Joseph O'Connor, Irish Times
Stan Lee, the Mighty Man from Marvel, and John Buscema, active and adventuresome artist behind the Silver Surfer, Conan the Barbarian, the Mighty Thor and Spider-Man, have collaborated on this comics compendium: an encyclopedia of information for creating your own superhero comic strips. Using artwork from Marvel comics as primary examples, Buscema graphically illustrates the hitherto mysterious methods of comic art. Stan Lee's pithy prose gives able assistance and advice to the apprentice artist.
