Donatus, Horace, and Aristotle on Humor: the Early Modern Theory of Comedy

Picture joined with graphics taken from (from left to right):
a page of Grammaire Latine by Aelius Donatus--http://www.digitalhit.com/posters/p/1588870; 

statue of Horace--http://www.the-romans.co.uk/lyric.htm; 

Aristotle's Poetics--http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Poetics_translated_by_Bywater. December 26, 2010.

※ The following is taken intact from Figueroa-Dorrego & Larkin-Galiñanes's book, A Source Book of Literary and Philosophical Writings about Humour and Laughter (Lewiston, Queenston, Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2009. 196-197), without any of my personal critique. This blog post is therefore subject to immediate removal upon notice. ※

The Concept of Humour in the Early Modern Theory of Comedy

In the early sixteenth century, the main authorities on drama were Horace (first century BC) and Donatus (fourth century AD),* but neither of them analysed humour in comedy. Donatus, for instance, declared comedy a mirror of everyday life, which used fictitious characters and actions and had a didactic purpose. This obviously gave some respectability to this genre, and became one of the main arguments of comic theory in the early modern period (see Herrick 1950: 36-37, and Stott 2005: 5-6).* However, it said nothing about the humorous element of comedy. A similar thing happened in the Middle Ages, when drama disappeared and the term "comedy" was sometimes used for texts in prose or verse, often lacking the risible component. An example of this is Dante's Divine Comedy (1308-21), a narrative poem that contains little humour but is qualified as a [end of Page 196] comedy by its author because it has a happy ending and a style not as elevated as that of tragedies.223

Comments about the use of humour in comedy began to appear in the mid-sixteenth century with the revival of Aristotle's Poetics, a treatise which had been largely neglected in late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Those comments were mainly written by Italian men of letters who managed to make Aristotle's Poetics a central text for literary theory in the early modern period. They did so by conflating it with Horace's Ars Poetica, which produced a partial loss of its original meaning. Aristotle's literary theory was considered a more comprehensive analysis of genres, and allowed the formulation of norms based on generic practice rather than on the individual practice of those ancient authors that humanists considered the models for each genre--e.g. Terence* for comedy (see Javitch 1999).* With this revival of the [sic] Poetics, the Aristotelian concept of the ridiculous became important in later explanations of comedy.

233 In his Epistle to Can Grande, Dante Alighieri argues that comedy "introduces a situation of adversity, but ends its matter in prosperity, as is evident in Terence's comedies," and "uses an unstudied an low style" (1984: 31).

-- Figueroa-Dorrego, Jorge and Cristina Larkin-Galiñanes. A Source Book of Literary and Philosophical Writings about Humour and Laughter: The Seventy-Five Essential Texts from Antiquity to Modern Times. Lewiston, Queenston, Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2009. 196-197.

* Aelius Donatus (fl. mid 4th century) was a Roman grammarian and teacher of rhetoric. The only fact known regarding his life is that he was the tutor of St. Jerome. (from Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aelius_Donatus. December 27, 2010.)

* Herrick, Marvin 1950. Comic Theory in the Sixteenth Century. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

  Stott, Andrew 2005. Comedy. New York: Routledge.

* Publius Terentius Afer (195/185–159 BC).

* Javitch, Daniel 1999. "The assimilation of Aristotle's Poetics in sixteenth-century Italy." The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism. Vol. 3. The Renaissance. Ed. Glyn P. Norton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 53-65.

Coursepack Articles for Shakespeare & Humor

This is only to remind me of the articles assigned for this course. I believe there will be overwhelmingly more for me to peruse. In the near future, all recommended articles and books will be posted here to keep track of what I read and to share with whoever shares my interest.

This is also part of my student portfolio for this course (p.20).


※The choice and the binding order of the articles are made by and belong to Professor Vivienne Westbrook. This list will be immediately removed from my blog post on her request.※

Coursepack Articles

(in its binding order)

McFadden, George. “Comic Ethos: The Classical View.” Discovering the Comic. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982. 49-79.

Jensen, Phebe. “Falstaff in Illyria: The second Henriad and Twelfth Night.” Religion and Revelry in Shakespeare’s Festive World. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 149-193.

Feinberg, Leonard. “Nonsense Humor: Aggression Against Logic and Order.” The Secret of Humor. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1978. 169-183.

Palfrey, Simon and Tiffany Stern. “From Crowds to Clowns.” Shakespeare in Parts. Oxford and New York: Oxford UP, 2007. 165-183.

Levin, Harry. “Introduction.” Veins of Humor. Ed. Harry Levin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972. 1-16.

Gorfain, Phyllis. “Towards a Theory of Play and the Carnivalesque in Hamlet.” Shakespeare and Carnival: After Bakhtin. Ed. Ronald Knowles. London:         Palgrave Macmillan, 1998. 152-176.

Billig, Michael. “Superiority Theories: Hobbes and Other Misogelasts.” Laughter and Ridicule: Towards a Social Critique of Humour. London: Sage, 2005. 37-56.

---. “Incongruity Theories and Gentlemanly Laughter.” Laughter and Ridicule: Towards a Social Critique of Humour. London: Sage, 2005. 57-85.

Morreall, John. “Humour and the Conduct of Politics.” Beyond a Joke: The Limits of Humour. Ed. Sharon Lockyer and Michael Pickering. New York: Palgrave     Macmillan, 2005. 63-78.

Williams, Robert I. “Groundings, Groundlings.” Comic Practice/Comic Response. London and Toronto: Associated UP, 1993. 11-34.

E-text Article

David, Jessica Milner. “Introduction to the Transaction Edition.” Farce. New    Brunswick, NJ.: Transaction, 2003. 1-69. Print. (David, Jessica Milner. “Introduction to Second Edition, 2003.” PDF.)


(The choice and the binding order of the articles are made by and belong to Professor Vivienne Westbrook. This list will be immediately removed from my blog post on her request.)

Juhasz, Miller, Smith: Comic Power in Emily Dickinson

While thumbing through books in front of the Emily Shelf (that's how I call the  PS1541 Z-- shelf at NTU, almost all books are devoted to Dickinson), I found one book I wouldn't want to miss for the whole world:

Juhasz, Suzanne, Cristanne Miller, and Martha Nell Smith. Comic Power in Emily Dickinson. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993.

This book is composed of five chapters:

Chapter 1: Comedy and Audience in Emily Dickinson's Poetry
Chapter 2: The Big Tease by Suzanne Juhasz
Chapter 3: The Poet as Cartoonist by Martha Nell Smith
Chapter 4: The Humor of Excess by Cristanne Miller
Chapter 5: Comic Power

Before I have enough time to play the role of a responsible reader and blogger, here are two reviews for your reference:

(screen capture: taken intact from: Project Muse. 

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/edj/summary/v003/3.2.grabher.html. December 16, 2010)

(screen capture: taken intact from: goodreads.

 http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23270.Comic_Power_in_Emily_Dickinson. December 16, 2010)

Thomas Wilson: Art of Rhetoric (1553)

While Renaissance courtiers like Baldesar Castiglione and Bernardo Dovizi believe in the merrymaking rhetoric of humor which enhances one’s charisma and sophistication, middle-class Protestants like Thomas Wilson believe that humor, as a rhetorical device, promotes one’s social mobility.




(portrait taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Wilson_(rhetorician). Entry: "Thomas Wilson (rhetorician)." December 10, 2010.)

Castiglione, Dovizi, and Wilson, all three share an anxiety to contain humor within limits and rules as to make sure it stays decent and pleasant without resorting to stupidity or scurrility (Figueroa-Dorrego & Larkin-Galiñanes 191-194). One should never "go beyond due bounds" (194):

Therefore, no such should be taunted, or jested withal that either are notable evil livers, and heinous offenders, or else are pitiful caitiffs, and wretched beggars. For everyone thinketh it a better and a meeter deed to punish naughty packs than to scoff at their evil demeanour. And as for wretched souls or poor bodies, none can bear to have them mocked, but think rather that they should be pitied, except they foolishly vaunt themselves. Again, none such should be made any laughing stocks that either are honest of behaviour, or else are generally well beloved. As for other, we may be bold to talk with them and make such game and pastime as their good wits shall give good cause. But yet this one thing, we had need ever to take with us, that in all our jesting we keep a mean, wherein not only it is meet to avoid all gross bourding, and alehouse jesting, but also to eschew all foolish talk and ruffin manners such as no honest ears can once abide, nor yet any witty man can like well or allow. (Arte of Rhetorique Book II)

This anxiety is indeed a Classical concern haunting humoristic discourse since Cicero or even earlier. It is also the fourth issue dealt with in Wilson's Art of Rhetoric on humor (i.e. Book II). Wilson in his book suggests humor be discussed in terms of five issues: the nature of humor, which he argues undefinable; the cause of humor, which he includes deformity, foolishness, and others' evil behavior; the appropriateness of humor as an oratory device, which he confirms; the fourth, as stated above, limits of humor, which he finds necessary to reiterate; the application of humor, which he examines through various methods that make people laugh.

The most particular and original viewpoint of Wilson is that, while his anxiety is "Classical," his stress on limits is courtly, his standpoint is that of the middle class. The highly hierarchized discourse of humor begins to utter a commoner's voice which was foreign to it.

St. Francis de Sales: Introduction to the Devout Life (1609)

Assuming a somewhat similar attitude to that of Barrow's, St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622), a Catholic theologian of the time, makes his remarks on the innocuous nature of humor. He draws a distinction between mockery (derision) and eutrapelia (gaiety; cf: "Aristotle on Comedy and Laughter" I & II, and also the Sima Qian article) and asserts that the former delivers malice while the latter derives gaiety:



(portrait taken from: http://www.passionists.com/Companions%2019.html. Passionist Companions: ANOTHER FORM OF PASSIONIST ASSOCIATION. December 4, 2010.)

Mockery is one of the worst of vices, one which God detests and one which he has often punished in strange ways in the past. Nothig is so opposed to charity, and even more to devotion, as contempt and scorn for those about us. Derision or mockery always involves contempt and so is gravely sinful, [...]. But with regard to what we say in fun and with innocent humour, this pertains to the virtue which the Greeks called eutrapelia, and which we may refer to as gaiety, by means of which arise from human imperfection; but we must be very careful lest this degenerate into mockery. Mockery provokes laughter out of scorn and contempt for our neighbour, but innocent humour and friendly laughter at some witty saying, arises from a lawful freedom and familiarity. (Part III, Chapter XXVII, Introduction to the Devout LIfe)*

With the distinction drawn and the caution suggested, St. Francis de Sales shows a positive yet still conservative attitude toward humor and laughter. However, in the anti-humor climate of early Modernity, such an attitude is exceptionally advanced and probably only next to Barrow's. What is most revolutionary in his viewpoint is that humor, as a virtue, branches from human imperfection.

*Francis of Sales, St. Introduction to the Devout Life. Trans. Michael Day. New York: Image Books, 1989. 160-161.

Isaac Barrow: "Against Foolish Talking and Jesting" (continued)

While recognizing the application of wit in humor and the association between wit and sophism (in defending oneself unjustly), Barrow contends that wit may and should "serve under the banner of truth and virtue":

[s]ince men are so irreclaimably disposed to mirth and laughter, it may be well to set them in the right pin, to divert their humour into the proper channel, that they may please themselves in deriding things which deserve it, ceasing to laugh at that which requireth reverence or horror.

Like Cicero who insists on the distinction between the decent laughter and the indecent laughter, Barrow draws a line between what makes a proper laughing matter and what does not: "[t]he proper objects of common mirth and sportful divertissement are mean and petty matters" ("Against Foolish Talking and Jesting"). All matters by nature grave, divine, or virtuous should not fall prey to jesting, for that does not help Christians maintain "their habitual composedness, gravity, and modesty" (Figueroa-Dorrego & Larkin-Galiñanes 188).

*Of course Cicero is a predecessor to Barrow in that he treats humor as a rhetorical device. Barrow, however, assumes an unprecedented laudatory attitude toward humor and laughter. His observation of various rhetorical and social functions of humor bears striking similarities to that of Liu Xie's. This coincidence across cultures makes him stand apart from his predecessors.

Isaac Barrow: "Against Foolish Talking and Jesting"

Misleading though the title may be, this essay by Isaac Barrow (one of the Several Sermons on Evil-Speaking, 1678) advocates a different approach toward humor instead of dealing out a follow-up diatribe and censoring humor with a Puritan attitude.

Based on St. Paul's advice to the Ephesians: "Nor Foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient" (5:4), Barrow argues that "those words should not be understood as a condemnation of all kind of facetious speech, as was commonly done, but only of that which ws foolish and impertinent" (Figueroa-Dorrego & Larkin-Galiñanes 186).

The morose, austere, sombre Puritan approach to life, according to Barrow, may be a result from an erroneous assumption of humor, a denial of its social function, and unawareness of the decent joy due a decent Christian:

For Christianity is not so tetrical, so harsh, so envious, as to bar us continually from innocent, much less from wholesome an useful pleasure, such as human life doth need or require. And if jocular discourse may serve to good purposes of this kind; if it may be apt to raise our drooping spirits, to allay our irksome cares, to whet our blunted industry, to recreate our minds being tired and cloyed with graver occupations; if it may breed alacrity, or maintain good humour among us; if it may conduce to sweeten conversation and endear society; then it is not inconvenient, or unprofitable. ("Against Foolish Talking and Jesting")

Barrow distinguishes himself from his previous thinkers on humor, both classical and Christian, in these two aspects:

1. As a clergyman, he asserts that humor is acceptable or even recommendable in a Christian society (Figueroa-Dorrego 186).
2. His reasoning of the origin of humor is based on "a cognitive and rhetorical perspective rather than from an ethical standpoint" (ibid).*

Barrow believes in incongruity as the cause of humor effect and that different forms of incongruity  "produce surprise, admiration, and delight" (ibid). What follows is an excerpt that best reflects his observation and how incongruity functions positively in language (No doubt it will reminds us of what is said in The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons by Liu Xie; article-search key word (the search box on the right): The Literary Mind).

[...] sometimes it playeth in words and phrases, taking advantage from the ambiguity of their sense, or the affinity of their sound: sometimes it is wrapped in a dress of humorous expression; sometimes it lurketh under an odd similitude; sometimes it is lodged in a sly question, in a smart answer, in a quirkish reason, in a shrewd intimation, in cunningly diverting, or cleverly retoring an objection: sometims it is couched in a bold scheme of speech, in a tart irony, in a lusty hyperbole, in a startling metaphor, in a plausible reconciling of contradictions, or in acute nonsense: [...] sometimes it riseth from a lucky hitting upon what is strange, [...] It is in short, a manner of speaking out of the simple and plain way (such as reason teacheth and proveth things by), which by a pretty surprising uncouthness in conceit or expression doth affect and amuse the fancy, stirring in it some wonder, and breeding some delight thereto. It raiseth admiration, as signifying a nimble sagacity of apprehension, a special felicity of invention, a vivacity of spirit, and reach of wit more than vulgar [...] It also procureth delight, by gratifying curiosity with its rareness or semblance of difficulty (as monsters, not for their beauty, but their rarety; as juggling tricks, not for their use, but their abstruseness, are beheld with pleasure) by diverting the mind from its road of serious thoughts; by instilling gaiety and airiness of spirit; by provoking to such dispositions of spirit in way of emulation or complainsance; and by seasoing matters, otherwise distasteful or insipid, with an unusual, and thence grateful tang. ("Against Foolish Talking and Jesting")

  

(to be continued)

The Puritan Attack (III): William Prynne

According to Figueroa-Dorrego, William Prynne (1600-1669) had in the English Renaissance launched "the most explicit and extensive rejection of laughter and whatever actions or words may produce it in plays" (183). In his work Histrio-Mastix: The Players Scourge, or Actors Tragedie (1633), he claims that "[t]he last unlawful concomitant of stage-plays is profuse lascivious laughter, accompanied with an immoderate applause of those scurrilous plays and actors, which Christians should rather abominate than admire" (Figueroa-Dorrego & Larkin-Galiñanes 284).

(portrait taken from: http://www.pepysdiary.com/p/441.php. The Diary of Samuel Pepys: Daily entries from the 17th century London diary. November 18, 2010.)

The following 6 points are made with quotes from Histrio-Mastix by Figueroa-Dorrego in the hope of summing up Prynne's attitude toward and attack upon laughter and the comedy:

1. "in regard of the original efficient cause of it, which is commonly some obscene, lascivious sinful passage, gesture, speech, or jest (the common object of men's hellish mirth) which should rather provoke the actors [and] the spectators to penitent sobs than wanton smiles." Following classical and patristic sources, Prynne argues that laughter is produced by "filthy scurrilous objects" and therefore is evil, "discovering nothing but a graceless heart, delighting only in ribaldry, in uncleanness," which are improper for a Christian (end of 183).
2. As Gosson maintained, theatrical laughter must be sinful also "in regard of its excess, it being altogether boundless beyond the rules of modesty, temperance, Christianity, sobriety, by which it should be regulated."
3. Because its end is "only to satiate men's fleshly lusts with secular jollity and delights of sin, to pamper, to arm the rebellious flesh against the spirit," and therefore it is incompatible with Christian repentance, sorrow, and humility.
4. Profuse laughing, especially at the actions and words of a ribald play, is "altogether inconsistent with the gravity, modesty, and sobriety of a Christian," who should bewail his and other people's sins, following the example of Christ, the Apostles, and the Fathers of the Church, rather than laugh.
5. As Prynne has argued before, theatrical laughter also implies "a public approbation to all the ribaldry and profaneness that is either personated or perpetrated on the stage, and so makes these laughers deeply guilty of it."
6. It has sinful consequences such as impudence, effeminacy, incivility, looseness, and "indisposition to every holy duty."*

*Figueroa-Dorrego & Larkin-Galiñanes 183-184.

The Puritan Attack (II): Philip Stubbes

(screen capture: taken intact from: Harry Turtledove Wiki (search result entry).

 wikia®. http://turtledove.wikia.com/wiki/Philip_Stubbes. November 12, 2010)

Written in 1583, The Anatomie of Abuses speaks aloud on behalf of Puritans and launches yet another wave of attack on the theatre. Philip Stubbes, its author, condemns the act of making God a laughing stock and concludes that it leads to eternal damnation. In a section entitled "Of Stage-Playes, and Enterluds, with their wickedness," he says, "at no hand it is not lawfull to mix scurrilitie with divinitie, nor divinitie with scurrilitie" (Furnivall 141).*

While humanists may argue that the theatre may provide the audience with good examples to learn from, Stubbes again in his work refutes such an argument by asserting that if people do learn from characters in plays the only reason would be they desire to acquire skills to cheat, to laugh, to deceive, and seeking pleasure in bawdiness, rebellion, and blasphemy (ibid).

The damage done by Stubbes and his Anatomie to laughter and comedy is that--"Humour then proves to be incompatible with Christianity, because it is too (end of 182) irreverent and offensive to fit into the serious commitment of any follower of God's words. (Figueroa-Dorrego & Larkin-Galiñanes 182-183)

*Furnivall, Frederick J. ed. Philip Stubbes's Anatomy of the Abuses in England in Shakespeare's Youth. London: New Shakespeare Society-Trübner and Co, 1877-82.

The Puritan Attack (I): Stephen Gosson

(screen capture: taken intact from: infoplease®.
http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/people/A0821369.html. November 10, 2010 )

Yes. It is the very Stephen Gosson who dedicates his School of Abuse (1579) to Sir Philip Sidney and thus stimulates him to write in response the well-famed Defence of Poesie.

It was a time when Calvinistic Puritans mattered and detested all laughing matters. For them, laughter distracts people from proper function and hard work; laughter is by nature a distraction, a deviating act from the proper way. Laughing in excess corrupts the Protestant virtues of efficiency, diligence, order, and rationality; laughter is by ethics a degradation. Laughter is in itself a display of lack of control over the bodily function and therefore lack of civility; laughter is by courtesy a violation and indecency.*

The Puritan resentment toward laughter leads on to the Puritan attack on the theatre, especially the comedy. "Puritans believed that it [the theatre] perpetuated pagan customs, distorted truth, taught profanity, knavery and lechery, led youth into idleness, afforded meeting places for prostitutes and their customers" (Figueroa-Dorrego & Larkin-Galiñanes 181). The fact that the comedy often stages cheating, cuckolding, and deriding only contributes to hinge laughter to sin (ibid).

In the second action of his pamphlet entitled Plays Confuted in Five Actions, Stephen Gosson summaries for us the Puritan attitude toward laughter and the theatre (in its original unmodernized spelling):

The argument of Tragedies is wrath, crueltie, incest, iniurie, murther eyther violent by sworde, or voluntary by poyson. The persons, Gods, Goddesses, furies, fiendes, Kinges, Quenes, and mightie men. The ground worke of Commedies, is loue, cosenedge, flatterie, bawderie, slye conneighance of whordome. The persons, cookes, queanes, knaues, baudes, parasites, courtezannes, lecherouse olde men, amorous yong men.

The best play you can picke out, is but a mixture of good and euill, how can it be then the schoolemistres of life? The beholding of troubles and miserable slaughters that are in Tragedies, driue vs to immoderate sorrow, heauines, womanish weeping and mourning, whereby we become louers of dumpes, and lamentation, both enemies of fortitude. Comedies so tickle our senses with a pleasanter vaine, that they make vs louers of laughter, and pleasure, without any meane, both foes to temperance, what schooling is this?

Playes are the inuentions of the deuil, the offrings of Idolatrie, the pompe of worldlinges, the blossomes of vanitie, the roote of Apostacy, the foode of iniquitie, ryot, and adulterie. detest them. Players are masters of vice, teachers of wantonnesse, spurres to impuritie, the Sonnes of idlenesse, so longe as they liue in this order, loath them. God is mercifull, his winges are spred to receyue you if you come betimes, God is iust, his bow is bent & his arrowe drawen, to send you a plague, if you stay too longe.**

Gosson also quotes the Bible, in particular, Luke 6:25, to support his point:

Christe giving us to understand the danger of these delights wherein wee laugh with the worlde, pronounceth a woe upon them, wo[e] bee to you that laugh nowe, for ye shall weepe and lament.

Gosson's remarks aim to disparage laughter along with the comedy, and he did "perpetuates the prejudice that laughter is foolish and consequently unacceptable" (Figueroa-Dorrego & Larkin-Galiñanes 182).

*For similar observation, please confer: Sanders, Barry. Sudden Glory: Laughter as Subversive History. Boston: Beacon Press, 1995. 225-227.

**Gosson, Stephen. Playes confuted in fiue actions prouing that they are not to be suffred in a Christian common weale, by the waye both the cauils of Thomas Lodge, and the play of playes, written in their defence, and other obiections of players frendes, are truely set downe and directlye aunsweared. London: 1582.

Anti-Humor: the Puritan Attack (Intro)

In the study of humor, it is indispensible to be aware and to remind your readership that the word “humor” has not yet gained its modern sense of “perception or expression of amusement” in lexicography before 1682* (namely early Modernity).

This explains why, when we deals with humor studies in Antiquity and early Modernity, we all too often rely on separate features or elements subsumed under the modern-sense humor: jape, jest, joke, laughter, comedy, and so on.

In early Modernity, the concept of humor, mostly through its expression of comedy, is constantly attacked and marginalized by Puritans. Therefore, the Puritan attack on comedy needs must claim our interest and study related to humor and the attention it receives at that time.

The survey of the Puritan attack on comedy (or “the devilish laughter”) will take us through various biases and diatribes asserted by Stephen Gosson, Philip Stubbes, William Prynne, Issac Barrow, etc. and also the distinction drawn by St. Francis of Sales between mockery (derision) and eutrapelia (gaiety).

*(Works Cited entry: “Humor.” The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. CD-ROM. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992.) The definitions and example sentence are taken intact from the 7th subentry under “humor” in O.E.D.:
7. a. That quality of action, speech, or writing, which excites amusement; oddity, jocularity, facetiousness, comicality, fun.
b. The faculty of perceiving what is ludicrous or amusing, or of expressing it in speech, writing, or other composition; jocose imagination or treatment of a subject.
Distinguished from wit as being less purely intellectual, and as having a sympathetic quality in virtue of which it often becomes allied to pathos.
1682 tr. Glanius’ Voy. Bengala 142 The Cup was so closed, that ’twas a difficult matter for us to open it, and therefore the General gave it us on purpose, to divert himself with the humour of it.

Difference and Repetition: Deleuze on the Comic

While I was plodding through "Repetition for Itself" feeling drowsy, I was suddenly wakened up by the passage "Note on the Three Repetitions." The reason was simple. The comic was involved:

According to Marx, repetition is comic when it falls short--that is, when instead of leading to metamorphosis and the production of something new, it forms a kind of involution, the opposite of an authentic creation. Comic (end of Page 91) travesty replaces tragic metamorphosis. However, it appears that for Marx this comic or grotesque repetition necessarily comes after the tragic, evolutive and creative repetition ('all great events and historical personages occur, as it were, twice...the first time as tragedy, the second as farce'). This temporal order does not, however, seem to be absolutely justified. Comic repetition works by means of some defect, in the mode of the past properly so called. The hero necessarily confronts this repetition so long as 'the act is too big for him': Polonius's murder by mistake is comic, as is Oedipus's enquiry. The moment of metamorphosis, tragic repetition, follows. It is true that these two moments are not independent, existing as they do only for the third moment beyond the comic and the tragic: the production of something new entails a dramatic repetition which excludes even the hero. However, once the first two elements acquire an abstract independence or become genres, then the comic succeeds the tragic as though the failure of metamorphosis, raised to the absolute, presupposed an earlier metamorphosis already completed.

--Difference and Repetition* (91-92)

*Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition (1968). Trans. Paul Patton. New York: Columbia UP, 1994.

Humor in The Logic of Sense by Deleuze

It is inevitable that some articles here appear not in chronological order (Stuart Tave, Lesley Stephen, and this one, Gilles Deleuze). It so happens that some modern thinkers covered in some of my courses likewise deal with humor directly or indirectly. I can't bear to let them slip by. Today, in our class of Literary Theory, we came across the “Second Series of Paradoxes—Of Surface Effects” in The Logic of Sense by Gilles Deleuze. With Lewis Carroll in mind, Deleuze likens humor to the Deleuzean Surface:

[I]t is the task of language both to establish limits and to go beyond them. Therefore language includes terms which do not cease to displace their extension and which make possible a reversal of the connection in a given series (thus too much and not enough, few and many). The event is coextensive with becoming, and becoming is itself coextensive with language; the paradox is thus essentially a “sorites,” that is a series of interrogative propositions which, following becoming, proceed through successive additions and retrenchments. Everything happens at the boundary between things and propositions. Chrysippus taught: “If you say something, it passes through your lips; so, if you say “chariot,” a chariot passes through your lips.” Here is a use of paradox the only equivalents of which are to be found in Zen Buddhism on one hand and in English or American nonsense on the other. In one case, that which is (end of Page 8) most profound is the immediate, in the other, the immediate is found in language. Paradox appears as a dismissal of depth, a display of events at the surface, and a deployment of language along this limit. Humor is the art of the surface, which is opposed to the old irony, the art of depths and heights. The Sophists and Cynics had already made humor a philosophical weapon against Socratic irony; but with the Stoics, humor found its dialectics, its dialectical principle or its natural place and its pure philosophical concept.
Lewis Carroll carries out this operation, inaugurated by the  Stoics,...

—The Logic of Sense*(8-9)

*Deleuze, Gilles. The Logic of Sense (1968). Trans. Mark Lester. Ed. Constantin V. Boundas. New York: Columbia UP, 1990.

Humour as a Virtue: Lesley Stephen & Others

The English people have always been proud of their sense of humor which constitutes a major part of English culture and characterizes the English identity as one renown for its sometimes sophistry and oftentimes sophistication.

In the first edition of OED (The Oxford English Dictionary, 1884-1928), “humour” starts to stand apart from “wit,” being defined as “distinguished from wit as being less purely intellectual, and as having a sympathetic quality in virtue of which it often becomes allied to pathos.” Either henceforth or around this time, humor (in its modern sense) claims its significant presence in the English society (Figueroa-Dorrego & Larkin-Galiñanes 313). What follows are a couple of examples of the burgeoning “sense” of humour at that time:

Sir Lesley Stephen:

A fashion has sprung up of late years regarding the sense of humour as one of the cardinal virtues. […] It is indeed rarer to meet man, woman, or child who will confess to any deficiency in humour than to a want of logic. Many people will confess that they are indolent, superstitious, unjust, fond of money, of good living, or of flattery: women will make a boast of cowardice and men of coarseness; but nobody ever admits that he or she can’t see a joke or take an argument. If people were to be taken at their own valuation, logical acumen and a keen perception of the humourous would be the two most universal qualities in the world.

—Humour (1876)

Samuel Taylor Coleridge:

The English humour is the most thoughtful, the Spanish the most ethereal—the most ideal—of modern literature. Amongst the classic ancients there was little or no humour. […] the wit of thoughts belongs eminently to the Italians, that of words to the French, and that of images to the English. […] [It] constitutes the larger and more peculiar part of the wit of Shakespeare.

—“Wit and Humour” (1818)*

*Coleridge’s attitude is obviously different from the typical English attitude towards “their national pride.” William Congreve’s, however, speaks for it: “[T]here is more of Humour in our English writers than in any of the other comic poets, ancient or modern” (“Concerning Humour in Comedy,” 1695). Following this logic, typical English taunts related to humor often target other nations for the (alleged) lack of it. The absence of humor goes to the German; the lack of wit is said to characterize the French; the Italian are too busy dulling their brains with debauchery. The list may go a lot longer than this, and from this point, nationality and regionality are closely related to English humor. (For a posh, snobbish English person, even neighbors may fall easy targets: Scousers always confuse talking with coughing; Geordies can’t tell their A’s from E’s; the Irish, when not drunk, still tink instead of think; the Welsh and the Scotts, after shxgging so many sheep, don’t even speak English anymore.)

Stuart Tave on Restoration Theory of Comedy

Frontispiece to The Wits or Sport upon Sport (London, 1662). Attributed to Francis Kirkman. Taken from Wikipedia entry "Droll" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droll; 2010/10/13)

Stuart M. Tave is the William Rainey Harper Professor Emeritus in the College and the Department of English Language & Literature at the University of Chicago. He is the author of The Amiable Humorist: A Study in the Comic Theory and Criticism of the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries (Chicago, 1960); New Essay by De Quincy (Princeton, 1966); Some Words of Jane Austen (Chicago, 1973); Robert Bage's "Hermsprong" (Pennsylvania State, 1982); and Lovers, Clowns, and Fairies: an Essay on Comedies (Chicago, 1993). On June 3, 2000, he received the 2000 Norman Maclean Faculty Award at an Alumni Assembly in Rockefeller Memorial Chapel.

Here is a passage by Stuart Tave on Restoration theory of comedy:

In Restoration theory of comedy, largely a derivative and a reduction of Renaissance theory, it was a commonplace that the function of comedy is to copy the foolish and knavish originals of the age and to expose, ridicule, satirize them. By the middle of the nineteenth century, it was a commonplace that the best comic works present amiable originals, often models of good nature, whose little peculiarities are not satirically instructive, but objects of delight and love.

—The Amiable Humorist*viii

*Tave, Stuart M. The Amiable Humorist: A Study in the Comic Theory and Criticism of the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960.

A Few Loose Ends: Antiquity and the Middle Ages

I have left out some influential figures and their works, and am planning to get back to them later:

Late Classical:

Pliny the Younger—Letters (ca. 100 A.D.);

Plutarch—Symposiacs/Quaestiones Conviviales (Table Talk);

Epictetus—Encheiridion (Handbook, 2^nd century A.D.);

Church Fathers:

Thomas Aquinas—Summa Theologica (page number: 1265-1272);

Clement of Alexandria—Paedagogus (Guide, 2^nd-3^rd century A.D.);

John Chrysostom—“Homilies on the Epistle to the Hebrews”;

Ambrose of Milan (4^th century A.D.)—Concerning Virgins;

The Middle Ages:

Benedict of Nursia—Holy Rule (ca. 530 A.D.)

Regula Magistri (6^th century A.D.)

St. Gregory—Regula Pastoralis (Pastoral Rule)

So end Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Charge forward to the Early Modern Period!

A Few More Books on Humor & Laughter

Never have I dragged my feet like this in updating this blog. My current schedule has drained my "humor" and muted my laughter. Yesterday, a message from the library came to tell me to pick up my reserved books on humor and laughter, and hence reminded me of my long neglected blog.

Here are a few more books to read:

1. Chapman, Antony J. and Hugh C. Foot ed. Humour and Laughter: Theory, Research and Applications. London: John Wiley & Sons, 1976.
2. Ghose, Indira. Shakespeare and Laughter: A Cultural History. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2008.
3. Gibson, Walter S. Pieter Bruegel and the Art of Laughter. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.
4. Joubert, Laurent. Treatise on Laughter (Traité du ris). Trans. Gregory David de Rocher. Alabama: Alabama UP, 1980.
5. Klein, Sheri. Art and Laughter. London: I. B. Tauris, 2007.
6. Partington, Alan. The Linguistics of Laughter: A Courpus-assisted Study of Laughter-Talk. London: Routledge, 2006.
7. Pfister, Manfred. A History of English Laughter: Laughter from Beowulf to Beckett   and Beyond. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002.

Quintilian on Humor (II)

According to Quintilian, humor can be applied to oratory in three manners:
1. retorting or deriding other people’s arguments;
2. saying things “which have a suggestion of absurdity” (Institutio Oratoria 23) or speaking ironically;
3. cheating the hearers’ expectations, making them take words “in a different sense from what was intended” (24).

Quintilian iterates the significance of urbanitas; to him, urbanity is an indispensible quality in a successful orator. He sometimes quotes Domitius Marsus (De Urbanitate) to further strengthen his point.

There are two noteworthy aspects of Quintilian’s discussion of humor:*

1.      Humor is to him more of a rhetorical weapon for defense or attack than of a talent to delight.

2.      Quintilian humor is heavily class-conscious in that it encourages demonstration of decency, education, and social status, and in that it emphasizes the distinction between the urbane wit of the orator and the vulgar gags of the buffoon.

*Figueroa-Dorrego & Larkin-Galiñanes have these two points explicitly made near the end of the section on Quintilian:

“...Quintilian has insisted on the notion of urbanitas and on the necessary difference between the educated orator and the uncultivated lower classes also in the use of humour. […] the orator’s wit is expected to be elegant, sensible, and tactful, as opposed to the obscene, boorish tomfoolery, and “those coarse jives so common on the lips of the rabble” than turn into abuse (47). Like previous authors, Quintilian admonishes that “scurrilous or brutal jest, although they may raise a laugh, are quite unworthy of a gentleman,” because they can make the audience angry (83). And also like his predecessors, Quintilian was not interested in studying humour per se, but rather subordinated to rhetorical effectiveness and his own class-conscious conceopt of urbanistas” (45).

Quintilian on Humor (I)

Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria (ca. 93 A.D.) is believed the second systematic work (following Cicero’s De Oratore, of course) which deals with humor. Chapter 1 in Book VI is dedicated to its related reasoning and analysis.

He speaks of the function of humor in court:

“[The talent of laughter-raising] dispels the graver emotions of the judge by exciting his laughter, frequently diverts his attention from the facts of the case, and sometimes even refreshes him and revives him when he has begun to be bored or wearied by the case”

--Insitutio Oratoria, VI, iii, 1

In his understanding, humor is an emotion, and yet the cause of humor (or, funny effect) is uncertain. There, however, are several possible sources, “such as words or actions that are witty, or which reveal folly, anger, or fear” (Figueroa-Dorrego & Larkin-Galiñanes 40-41).

Quintilian asserts that humor “depends mainly on nature and opportunity” (Institutio Oratoria, VI, iii, 11). By “nature,” he refers to a born sense of humor; by “opportunity,” an amusing situation. Some people are born with a quicker mind or keener sense to raise laughter. Some situations are more inclined to offer chances of repartees. In everyday life, as noticed, a combination of the two usually promises a convivial gathering or social success.

In his discussion that humor is to be conformed to gravitas (following Cicero’s footsteps), Quintilian defines six terms related to wit:

1.      Urbanitas: “language with a smack of the city in its words, accent and idioms, and further suggests a certain tincture of learning derived from associating with well-educated men; in a word, it represents the opposite of rusticity” (17).

2.      Venustus: “that which is said with grace and charm” (18).

3.      Salsus: “wit about which there is nothing insipid, wit, that is to say, which serves as a simple seasoning of language, […], with the result that it stimulates our taste and saves a speech from becoming tedious” (19; he warns that salty wit like salty food should not be served too much.).

4.      Facetus: “a certain grace and polished elegance” (20).

5.      Iocus: “usually taken to mean the opposite of seriousness. This view is, however, somewhat too narrow. For to feign, to terrify, or to promise, are all at times forms of jesting” (21).

6.      Dicacitas: “especially applied to the language of banter, which is a humorous form of attack” (21).

Vulgarity Appeals

(The comic graphic is taken intact from :
http://www.explosm.net/comics/1769/
and shall be removed from this blog post upon request.)

In humor theory, scholars gravitate to the intriguing phenomenon that vulgarity, as a laughter-raising device, appeals to some of us but repels the rest of us. Why these two extremes? There are arguably some explanations.

Here's an example of vulgar verbal humor in Chinese. Posting jokes (no matter what kind) is never my intention nor the purpose of this blog. However, it wouldn't hurt to have a little fun out of my research, a funny business, here and there.

時間，就像乳溝一樣，擠一擠就有了！
機會，就像老二一樣，緊握就會變大！
生活就像是被強姦，反抗不了就學著享受！
學習就像嫖妓，出錢又出力！
工作就像輪姦，如果你不行，就換另一個人來做！
社會就像手淫，全部的事情都要靠自己的雙手去解決！
發薪水就像是月經，一個月不來那麼一次總覺得不能安心！
兄弟就像保險套，插多大的洞都幫你罩著！
承諾，就像一句幹你娘，人人都會說，卻沒人做得到！

NOTE:

1. The joke has been spread around for some time and can no longer be traced  to its original author and website.
2. The vulgar nature and the word play of this joke deny my academic conscience and decent personality any attempt to translate it into English. Those who don't read Chinese are blessed for not having your morals contaminated.

Laughter & Neuroscience (Neuroimaging of the Optimistic Brains)

This is a video clip posted on YOUTUBE. It is made known to and shared with me by my friend Shun-liang. Under the viewing box I include what is posted with it on YOUTUBE. For a better version with higher pixels and an English subtitle, please go to the origianl post (the link is given below).

wellcometrust | November 17, 2009

Is your glass half full? Chances are that it is, along with those of 80 per cent of the general population - we're an overwhelmingly positive species.

At the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, Dr Tali Sharot is one of the leading scientists teasing apart the neurological correlates of what we call optimism. In this film, find out how a happier disposition not only helps us get through the day, but may even be key to our evolutionary success.

Category:

Science & Technology

the original post: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ebb_2StFk3E

A Memo: plays to go through for the comedy course

These are 13 plays chosen by Professor Vivienne Westbrook for in-class discussion. Some of them are chosen as expected, while some, to my amazement, always seem to slip by me without a slight suggestion of humor. I'm really curious about her take and looking forward to her lectures on these plays that are seemingly tragic (I believe there's more to say than a mere focus on the comic relief).

1. The Taming of the Shrew
2. The Comedy of Errors
3. The Merry Wives of Windsor
4. Much Ado About Nothing
5. Twelfth Night
6. Measure for Measure
7. Richard III
8. Henry IV, Part 1
9. Henry IV, Part 2
10. Hamlet
11. Othello
12. King Lear
13. The Winter’s Tale

Cicero on Humor (IV): De Officiis (On Duties)

Caesar insists that laughter is –and should only be—provoked by the presentation of deformity, either physical or ethical flaws, as long as those defects have nothing to do with outstanding wickedness or wretchedness, because in those cases we would—or should—rather be moved to repulsion or compassion. Excluding bad taste is the basic rule for an orator who wants to use humour, because he must avoid the danger of behaving as a scurra (buffoon) or a mimum (mime, mummer).

—Figueroa-Dorrego & Larkin-Galiñanes 37



[W]hat excites laughter is disappointing expectations and ridiculing other people’s characters and imitating a baser person and dissembling and saying things that are rather silly and criticizing points that are foolish.

--De Oratore, lxxi, 289.

“Nature has not brought us into the world to act as if we were created for play or jest, but rather for earnestness and for some more serious and important pursuits.”

“We may, of course, indulge in sport and jest, but in the same way as we enjoy sleep or other relaxations, and only when we have satisfied the claims of our earnest, serious tasks.”

“[Jesting] ought not to be extravagant or immoderate, but refined and witty.” (The way humor is exercised shows the personality, education, and social class of the person who exercises it.)

(Two types of jests:) “the one, coarse, rude, vicious, indecent; the other, refined, polite, clever, witty.”

“[T]he distinction between the elegant and the vulgar jest is an easy matter: the one kind, if well timed (for instance, in hours of mental relaxation), is becoming to the most dignified person; the other is unfit for any gentleman, if the subject is indecent and the words obscene.”

--De Officiis Book I

Some words Cicero used in related discussion: urbanus (polite), elegans (elegant), illiberale (coarse).