The Three Ages of Laughter

Abstract

This essay presents itself as theoretical introduction to the question of humour (in its basic articulation among parodic, satirical and anti-narrative forms). It offers a concise excursus among the various sections of the volume resulting from the Compalit Conference Who Laughs Last: Parody Satire Humour held in Naples (16-18 December 2015): from the plenary lectures of the first section to the papers developed in the other five sections focused on, respectively: the examination of the present heuristic effectiveness of Bakhtin’s theory; an investigation on parodies of the sacred in contemporary literature and fine arts; a genealogy of anti-narrative writing ascribable to the archetype of Sterne’s Tristram Shandy; a morphology of the literary works marked by “dianoetic laugh” and apocalyptic humour; the transmedia crossing of the “palimpsests” of the 20^th century, with a particular reference to theatre and cinema (but also to television, comics and the web).