What is comedy? Andrew Stott tackles this question through an investigation of comic forms, theories and techniques, tracing the historical definitions of comedy from Aristotle to Chris Morris's "Brass Eye" via Wilde and Hancock. Rather than attempting to produce a totalising definition of 'the comic', this volume focuses on the significance of comic 'events' through study of various theoretical methodologies, including deconstruction, psychoanalysis and gender theory, and provides case studies of a number of themes, ranging from the drag act to the simplicity of slipping on a banana skin.