Les comédiens de stand-up et la preuve par le rire : le récit comme acte cognitif dans Star Wars Canteen 1 & 2 d’Eddie Izzard*

• Main Author: Guillemette Bolens
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire Récits Cultures Et Sociétés 2015-07-01
• Series: Cahiers de Narratologie
• Subjects: cognitive acts; transmedial storytelling; narrative in conversation; stand-up comedy; jokes; gestures and kinesis in storytelling
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/narratologie/7187

A stand-up comedian is a person whose action consists in standing on stage to trigger laughter by telling stories. Stand-up comedy can be defined as a performed conversation between a comedian and her audience. The measure of its success is a cognitive impact that manifests itself in the audience’s smiles, reiterated laughter, even hilarity. In this article I analyse two comedy acts by the famous British actor Eddie Izzard. Both acts are posted on YouTube and prove relevant to theoretical issues of interest to narratology today, i.e., transmedial storytelling, and the cognitive acts of narratives in conversation. A performed narrative in a stand-up comedy posted on YouTube gives access via its mediatisation to the temporality of reciprocal cognitive acts between comedian and audience, showing the cognitive relevance of kinesis in the production and reception of narrative, matching in importance the linguistic dimension of storytelling.