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Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
1983 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
For information, address State University of New York Press, State University Plaza, Albany, N.Y., 12246
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Morreall, John, 1947 Taking laughter seriously. 1. Laughter. I. Title. BF575.L3M65 1982 152.4 82-5858 ISBN 0-87395-642-7 AACR2 ISBN 0-87395-643-5 (pbk.) 10 9 8 7 6 5
Page v
For Lynne, who got me laughing again
Page vii
Contents
Preface
ix
Part One: Laughter
1 Can There Be a Theory of Laughter?
1
2 The Superiority Theory
4
3 The Incongruity Theory
15
4 The Relief Theory
20
5 A New Theory
38
Part Two: Humor
6 The Variety of Humor
60
7 Humor as Aesthetic Experience
85
8 Humor and Freedom
101
9 The Social Value of Humor
114
10 Humor and Life
121
Notes
130
Works Cited
137
Index
141
Page ix
Preface
It is a curious fact that although thousands of books and articles have appeared in our century dealing with human emotions and related phenomena, by far the greater number of these have been concerned with such things as fear and anger and anxiety. Relatively little has been said about more positive phenomena like laughter. If we consider the close connection between psychology and the treatment of mental problems, perhaps this imbalance should not surprise us. Nonetheless, we cannot hope to have anything like a complete picture of human life until we pay attention to such things as laughter.
But until a few years ago, the study of laughter was treated in academic circles as frivolous. Because laughter is not a serious activity, the unstated argument seemed to run, it is not possible to take a serious interest in it; and so anyone proclaiming an interest in studying laughter probably just wants to goof off. This argument is invalid, of course. The fact that laughter and humor involve a nonserious attitude does not imply that we cannot adopt a serious attitude toward examining them. Nor does the nonserious attitude in laughter and humor render them somehow unimportant as features of human life, and therefore unworthy of our attention. Indeed, as I will try to show, our capacity to laugh is anything but a peripheral
Page x
aspect of human life, and to understand our laughter is to go a long way toward understanding our humanity.
The last few years have seen, at least in psychology, a changed, more positive attitude toward the study of laughter. But for all the empirical research which has been done, there have been very few attempts to construct a comprehensive theory of laughter and humor. And the recent theories that have been formulated have in most cases suffered from the same lack of rigor which made traditional theories unacceptable. What is needed most urgently at this point in the investigation is not more piecemeal studies on various small aspects of laughter and humor, but a general account of laughter and humor and how they fit into human life. This account must be formulated in terms specific enough to give the theory some explanatory power; but must not, as past theories have done, simply take one kind of laughter and claim that all cases of laughter are really of that kind. What is needed, in short, is a philosophical examinationphilosophical in the narrower sense that it will be theoretical, and rigorously so, and philosophical in the wider sense that it will locate laughter in the human experience. It is such an examination that I hope to provide in this book.
I am grateful to the editor of the Journal of Aesthetic Education for permission to use parts of my article "Humor and Aesthetic Education," which appeared in Vol. 15, No. 1 (1981) of that journal; to the editor of
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