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Book Cover
E-book
Author McGinnis, Reginald, 1959- author.

Title Mock ritual in the modern era / Reginals McGinnis and John Vignaux Smyth
Published New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2022]
©2022

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Description 1 online resource
Series Oxford ritual studies
Oxford ritual studies.
Contents Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Ridicule -- 2. Mock Ritual in Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopedia -- 3. Mocking Priests in Tristram Shandy and Jacques le fataliste -- 4. Mock Ritual and the Emergence of Objectivity in Madame Bovary -- 5. Mock Ritual and Medicine in Flaubert's Dictionary of Received Ideas -- 6. The Duel as Privatized Mock Ritual -- 7. Charlie Hebdo: The Ambivalence of Mockery -- Summation -- Concluding Unscientific Postscript: Mock Ritual Now -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index
Summary Beginning with the French eighteenth century and concluding in the present, this book explores complex interrelations between ritual and mockery, which is not infrequently the unofficial face of claims to rationality. The book is particularly concerned with how the mocking and parodying of ritual often associated with modern rationalism may itself become ritualized, and other ways in which supposedly sham ritual may survive its "outing." Just as the very concept of ritual is seen by anthropologists and others as intimately related to modernity (at once the site of its invention and the reflection of an antiritualism associated with secular societies), so this book traces the evolution of what the authors call mock ritual, in various forms, throughout the modern era, relying on literary, historical, and anthropological texts as well as encyclopedias, newspapers, and films. It places famous eighteenth- and nineteenth-century authors in dialogue with contemporary popular culture, from Diderot, Sterne, and Flaubert to the TV shows Survivor and Judge Judy, and from Voltaire to the Charlie Hebdo tragedy of 2015. The authors' use of literary texts in addressing anthropological questions has precedents in the work of Georges Bataille, among others, who viewed literature as "the principal heir" and a continuation of "the game of religions." Ritualistic and mock ritualistic aspects of comedy and ridicule are considered along with those, notably, of sexuality, medicine, art, education, and justice. In addition to a chapter on dueling, the book contains a postscript that considers various aspects of these subjects in the contemporary world
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Description based on online resource; title from home page (Oxford Academic, viewed July 20, 2023)
Subject Wit and humor -- History and criticism -- 21st century
Invective -- Humor -- History
Wit and humor
Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc.
History
Form Electronic book
Author Smyth, John Vignaux, author.
ISBN 9780197637449
0197637442
9780197637463
0197637469