Comedy Incarnate: Buster Keaton, Physical Humor, and Bodily Coping [Paperback]

In Comedy Incarnate, Noël Carroll surveys the characteristics of Buster Keaton’s unique visual style, to reveal the distinctive experience of watching Keaton’s films.

• Bold and provocative thesis written by one of America’s foremost film theorists
• Takes a unique look at the philosophies behind Keaton’s style
• Weighs visual elements over narrative form in the analysis of the Keaton’s work
• Provides a fresh vantage point for analysis of film and comedy itself

Acknowledgments.

Introduction: The Phenomenological Background.

1. Themes in The General.

2. Style in The General.

3. Keaton, Chaplin, Lloyd, and Langdon.

Summary.

Appendix: Narration in Keaton's The General.

Index

“Buster Keaton was an engineer of the comic, a craftsman of gags, a mechanic of humor. While Carroll does not aspire to be as funny as Keaton, he can match (and follow) him in intricate and brilliant analysis, providing a logic of illogic. A book that will change how slapstick and film style are written about.”
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 l+