Comedy Incarnate: Buster Keaton, Physical Humor, and Bodily CopingISBN: 978-1-4051-5525-0
Hardcover
188 pages
January 2007, Wiley-Blackwell
Other Available Formats: Paperback
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Tom Gunning, University of Chicago
“Comedy Incarnate is a brilliant, inventive and
lucid examination of Buster Keaton’s The General.
Through close textual analysis, Carroll opens up a wide expanse of
historical and theoretical territory – positioning The
General in relation to the writings of Merleau-Ponty, Bergson,
and Poulet, as well as to the films of Chaplin, Lloyd, and Langdon.
Lucy Fischer, University of Pittsburgh
"Building on Keaton's directorial practice as a sort of civil engineer who engaged a mechanical universe, Carroll...investigates how Keaton's emphasis on gags and their intelligibility characterize the film in specific ways. In so doing he opens up an understanding of how Keaton's comedy of body intelligence works, especially in contrast to contemporaries like Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd, and he shows how intelligence--the artist's and the viewer's--informs laughter." CHOICE