New book "Rhetoric, Humor and the Public Sphere: From Socrates to Stephen Colbert"

Elizabeth Benacka, benacka@mx.lakeforest.edu

New book

"Rhetoric, Humor and the Public Sphere: From Socrates to Stephen Colbert"

Rhetoric, Humor and the Public Sphere: From Socrates to Stephen Colbert investigates classical and contemporary understandings of satire, parody, and irony, and how these genres function within a deliberative democracy. This book examines the rhetorical history, theorization, and practice of humor from ancient Greece and Rome to the contemporary United States, particularly the contemporary work of Stephen Colbert and his parody of a conservative media pundit. Colbert's humor often took place in front of an uninitiated audience and ridiculed a variety of problems and controversies threatening American democracy. Humor serves as a source of information in contemporary society, as well as a discourse capable of calling forth a group of engaged citizens.
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