The Comic ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

 Taking Comedy Seriously  The Earlier Meaning of Comedy—Ending Happily ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

Comedy Theory  Notoriously incomplete and lacking in definitive answers. May well be a “fourth tray”* phenomenon.  Plessner’s thesis in Laughing and Crying. * “A Civil Servant used to keep four trays on his desk to put his papers in. The first was marked Incoming, the second Outgoing, the third Pending, and the fourth Too difficult.”--Owen Barfield Helmuth Plessner, author of Laughing and Crying ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

Comedy Theory Three basic camps  Superiority--laughter reinforces social power.  Incongruity--humor the result of the “clash of incompatible discourses.”  Relief--the comic as a vent for repression. ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

Key Questions:  Do we laugh at or with?  Is comedy innately subversive?  Is comedy congenitally offensive/politically incorrect?  What is the connection between the body and the comic? ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

Arthur Koestler on Humor Humor results from a collision between two different frames of reference. ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

[T]o analyze humour is a task as delicate as analyzing the chemical composition of a perfume with its multiple ingredients— some of which are never consciously perceived, while others, sniffed in isolation, would make us wince.—Arthur Koestler in Janus. ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

If we could change our moods as quickly as we jump from one idea to another, we would be acrobats of emotion; but since we are not, our thoughts and emotions frequently become dissociated. It is emotion deserted by thought that is discharged in laughter.—Arthur Koestler, Janus ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

Henri Bergson ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic “elan vital”

Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel. —Horace Walpole, 18th Century ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing. —William James ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

Humor does not diminish the pain–it makes the space around it get bigger. —Allen Klein ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

Humor is by far the most significant activity of the human brain. —Edward de Bono ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

For your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon—laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution these can lift at a colossal humbug— push it a little— weaken it a little, century by century; but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand. —from Mark Twain’s The Mysterious Stranger ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven. --Mark Twain ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

Humor is reason gone mad. —Groucho Marx ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide. — Mohandas Gandhi ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is. —Francis Bacon ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

One doesn't have a sense of humor. It has you. —Larry Gelbart ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

Everything that makes us laugh is close at hand, all comical creativity works in a zone of maximal proximity. Laughter has the remarkable power of making an object come up close, of drawing it into a zone of crude contact where one can finger it familiarly on all sides, turn it upside down, inside out, peer at it from above and below, break open its external shell, look into its center, doubt it, take it apart, dismember it, lay it bare and expose it, examine it freely and experiment with it. Laughter demolishes fear and piety before an object, before a world, making of it an object of familiar contact and thus clearing the ground for an absolutely free investigation of it. Laughter is a vital factor in laying down that prerequisite for fearlessness without which it would be impossible to approach the world realistically. Mikhail Bakhtin, "Epic and Novel" ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

The One-Liner Rodney Dangerfield | Steven Wright | Mark Twain ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

“I don’t get no respect.” ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

I tell ya, my wife likes to talk during sex. Last night, she called me from a motel. ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

I tell ya, my family were always big drinkers. When I was a kid, I was missing. They put my picture on a bottle of Scotch. ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

My high school football team was so tough that after they sacked the quarterback they went after his family. ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic From the movie Back to School

My psychiatrist told me I was crazy. I told him I want a second opinion. He said okay you're ugly too. ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

What a childhood I had. My mother never breast-fed me. She said she liked me as a friend. ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

What a childhood I had. Once on my birthday my ol' man gave me a bat. The first day I played with it, it flew away. ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

When I was a kid I got no respect. When my parents got divorced there was a custody fight over me... and no one showed up. ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

I could tell my parents hated me. My bath toys were a toaster and a radio. ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

I come from a stupid family. During the Civil War my great uncle fought for the west. ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

When I played in the sandbox, the cat kept covering me up. ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

Steven Wright ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

I drive way too fast to worry about cholesterol. ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

I intend to live forever. So far, so good. ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

I put instant coffee in a microwave oven and almost went back in time. ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

I saw a sign in a restaurant that said breakfast anytime. I went in and ordered French toast during the Renaissance. ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

I stayed in a really old hotel last night. They sent me a wake-up letter. ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

Somebody asked me if I slept OK. No, I answered. I made a couple of mistakes. ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

I was a peripheral visionary. I could see the future, but only way off to the side. ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

I wrote a few children's books... not on purpose. ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

I'm writing an unauthorized autobiography. ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

If one synchronized swimmer drowns, do all the rest have to drown too? ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

If you shoot at mimes, should you use a silencer? ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

Is it weird in here, or is it just me? ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

My friend has a baby. I'm recording all the noises he makes so later I can ask him what he meant. ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

When I die, I'm leaving my body to science fiction. ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

When I was a little kid we had a sand box. It was a quicksand box. I was an only child... eventually. ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

Whenever I think of the past, it brings back so many memories. ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque Long Form Jokes Go to the Grotesque Blog The Comic

ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Sitcom/Sketch Comedy The Comic

ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Sitcom The Comic

ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Sitcom The Comic

ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Sitcom The Comic

ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Sitcom The Comic

ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Sitcom The Comic

ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque The Comic

Little Britain (BBC Three and One, ). Created by David Walliams (l) and Matt Lucas (r). ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque Videos The Comic

ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque Philip Thomson on the comic & the grotesque. Philip Thomson on the comic & the grotesque. The Comic