Rod A. Martin & Thomas E. Ford: The Psychology of Humor: An Integrative Approach SECOND EDITION (2018)

(Picture taken from "The Psychology of Humor 2nd Edition An Integrative Approach." Elsevier. (https://www.elsevier.com/books/the-psychology-of-humor/martin/978-0-12-812143-6. May 8, 2021.)

The Psychology of Humor: An Integrated Approach is a joint effort of Rod A. Martin and Thomas E. Ford. This book is composed of the following 11 chapters:

• Chapter 1. Introduction to the Psychology of Humor
• Chapter 2. Classic Theories of Humor
• Chapter 3. Contemporary Theories of Humor
• Chapter 4. The Personality Psychology of Humor
• Chapter 5. The Cognitive Psychology of Humor
• Chapter 6. The Physiological Psychology of Humor and Laughter
• Chapter 7. The Developmental Psychology of Humor
• Chapter 8. The Social Psychology of Humor
• Chapter 9. The Clinical Psychology of Humor: Humor and Mental Health 
• Chapter 10. The Health Psychology of Humor: Humor and Physical Health 
• Chapter 11. Applications of Humor in Education and in the Workplace

As the chapter titles reveal, this is not another humoristic publication that seeks to painstakingly offer one more new theory of humor that tries painfully to explain all cases of humor. It is a comprehensive survey of humor theories and studies with a focus on psychology but without negligence of other concerning fields.

Gil Greengross, in his review of the book "Survival of the Funniest," pinpoints the following aspects of the book:

• "Martin correctly points out, expecting humor research to be funny is analogous to assuming that writings about human sexuality should be sexually arousing (p.30)" (90-91).
• "[H]umor is a product of natural selection and why evolutionary explanations should be considered" (91).
• "Both are enjoyable, do not have any obvious or immediately serious function, and are performed in safe environments with familiar people (p.234)" (93).
• "[T]he absence of a research methods chapter" (94).

Although some may read this book with little excitement for it is not a tome of theoretical breakthrough, it is more than a general survey of the already-known textbook list of thoughts on humor. In many fields of studies, psychological or otherwise, The Psychology of Humor helps retrieve and revive some of the lost or forgotten researches from the past, as in the Gelastic Laughter section from "Chapter 6: The Physiological Psychology of Humor and Laughter":

• Gelastic Laughter
• The neurological condition gelastic epilepsy, first documented in 1873 (Holmes & Goldman, 2012), causes  patients  to  experience  seizures  in  the  form  of  uncontrolled  bouts  of  laughter.  Motor convulsions, eye movement abnormalities, and autonomic disturbances often accompany laughter during seizures. Furthermore, patients typically lose consciousness and report unawareness of these “laughter attacks” (151).

It is not inappropriate to come to the conclusion that The Psychology of Humor is not meant to be an introductory book for a beginner, but with its thorough survey and archaeological efforts, it is no doubt a worthy work even for an informed humorist.

MLA8

• Greengross, Gil. “Book Review: Survival of the Funniest.” Evolutionary Psychology, vol. 6, no. 1, 2008, p. 147470490800600., doi:10.1177/147470490800600111. 
• Holmes, Christina M., and Mitchell J. Goldman. “Seizures Presenting as Incessant Laughter: A Case of Gelastic Epilepsy.” The Journal of Emergency Medicine, vol. 43, no. 6, 2012, doi:10.1016/j.jemermed.2012.02.068. 
• Martin, Rod. A, and Thomas E. Ford. The Psychology of Humor: An Integrative Approach. 2nd ed., Elsevier, 2018.

Thomas Shadwell (1642-1692): "Towards a More Benevolent Humour"

Picture taken from "Thomas Shadwell ." Find a Grave. (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/15849678/thomas-shadwell. June 28, 2019.)

※ 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. 204-205), without any of my personal critique. This blog post is therefore subject to immediate removal upon notice. ※

p.204:
Notwithstanding, Ben Jonson became a model for later comedy writers in the seventeenth century, particularly in the Restoration period. Most comedies of the 1660s, 70s and 80s have an allegedly didactic, satirical intent which is meant to afford them some moral value.

p. 205: Restoration comedy is largely based on Jonsonian humours and satire, but enlivened by Fletcherian wit to suit a more educated and courtly audience. In the preface to his comedy meaningfully entitled The Humourists (1671), Thomas Shadwell endorses Jonson's views and argues that the proper and useful way of writing comedy is to reprehend the vices and follies of the age. The poet should render them so ugly and detestable that people may hate them both in others and themselves (cf. 1997a: 86). And in his dedication of The Virtusos (1676) to the Duke of Newcastle, Shadwell claims that, in this play, he has endeavoured to combine "humour, wit, and satire, which are the three things [which] are the life of a comedy" (1997b: 1-2). He obviously understands humour in the Jonsonian sense, with an emphasis on affectation and "artificial folly," because he believes that "natural imperfections are not fit subjects for comedy, since they are not to be laugh'd at, but pitied. But the artificial folly of those, who are not coxcombs by nature, but with great art and industry make themselves so, is a proper subject of comedy" (2). This means that, for Shadwell, comedy and laughter are intrinsically interrelated, that natural defects should not be derided, and that only affected foolishness is fit for ridicule. Regulating the butts of humoristic practice is nothing new, but in this case it becomes one of the first steps towards a more "benevolent" humour in the eighteenth century.

Shadwell, Thomas. 1997a. "Preface" to The Humorists (1671). Augustan Critical Writing. Ed David Womersley. Harmondsworth: Penguin. 85-93.
---. 1997b. The Virtuoso. Ed. J. A. Prieto-Pablos, M. J. Mora, M. J. Gómerz-Lara, and R. Portillo. Sevilla: Universidad de Sevilla.

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. 198-200. ISBN-13: 978-0-7734-4730-1; ISBN-10: 0-7734-4730-X.

Enlightenment Satire by Werner von Koppenfels

※ The following is taken intact from Werner von Koppenfels' "'Nothing is ridiculous but what is deformed': Laughter as a Test of Truth in Enlightenment Satire" as anthologized in A History of English Laughter, without any of my personal critique. This blog post is therefore subject to immediate removal upon notice. ※

4. The bitter laugh: The mock-heroic mode as a grimace of moral disgust.

Satire as a genre--we have only to think of its founding father Aristophanes--is not afraid of using the filthy and obscene in order to humiliate man's pride, to literally cast dirt on his aspiration to be a rational animal. Now neoclassical taste, though by no means prudish, put a ban on any detailed or drastic representation of man's more animal aspects like the sexual or the excremental functions. Readers of Gulliver's Travels, however, will remember that the disgusting aspects of man's animal nature play a conspicuous part in the satiric narrative, especially in Book IV, which presents a shockingly unflattering picture of mankind.

Pope dedicated his second mock-epic The Dunciad to his friend Swift, and something of Swift's taboo-breaking 'excremental vision' seems to have found its way into the elegant heroic couplets of Pope's masterpiece, which caused a public outcry when it first came out in 1728. In tone and subject matter it could not be more different from the [sic.] Rape of the Lock. Following the lead of Dryden's Mac Flecknoe, Pope outdoes his model, and uses Virgil's Aeneid as a heroic foil to stage the coronation of a king of dunces and the coming into power of a mindless mass culture of dulness in Britain.

MLA7:
Werner, von Koppenfels. "'Nothing Is Ridiculous But What Is Deformed': Laughter as a Test of Truth in Enlightenment Satire" A History of English Laughter: Laughter from "Beowulf" to Bekett and Beyond. Ed. Manfred Pfister. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002. 57-67. Print. (The entire excerpt is taken from Page 64.)