An extensive investigation of the forms and functions of the comic, this lively and engaging English critical edition will be welcomed by those interested in laughter, comedy, folklore, Russian literature, and specific authors such as Gogol, Pushkin, Chekhov, Rabelais, Moli?re, and Shakespeare. The direct, humorous, and provocative style of this work, which tackles the subject of humour with a vast array of vivid examples encountered on every page, will certainly appeal to the contemporary reader.

Vladimir Propp takes various forms of laughter in literature and real life and addresses questions such as the comic of similarity, the comic of difference, parody, duping, incongruity, lying, ritual laughter, and carnival laughter. The author of the widely acclaimed Morphology of the Folktale has written an original, comprehensive, and exciting study on how humour works, and on everything you wanted to know about the genre, in a clear, approachable, and insightful manner.

Historically there has been a wide gulf between European and Anglo/American thought on the philosophy of language, in part because it is often difficult to find important European works in English translation. Meaning and Textuality represents key elements of the ground-breaking new theory on signs and discourse that has come out of Europe in the last few decades.

Meaning and Textuality is an investigation into methods useful to the analysis of language and literature. Rastier seeks ways to better understand signs, with emphasis on their relation to action and culture. He proposes a theoretical framework for the semantic description and typology of texts. Towards this end he establishes a critical debate among various streams of research before arriving at a synthesis of literary semiotics, thematics, and linguistic semantics. The author sees this synthesis as a means by which to reconcile the rigour of linguistic analysis with the complexity of literary interpretation. In the later portion of the book he tests his propositions in a series of detailed investigations of French literary texts by Zola, Maupassant, Mallarm?, Apollinaire, and Jodelle. Each study examines a new problem such as narrative ambiguity or referential impression.

This book will be welcomed by scholars in any discipline concerned with discourse analysis and the close reading of texts.