Toward a Theoretical Framework for the Study of Humor in Literature

and the Other Arts

Farber, Jerry.

The Journal of Aesthetic Education, Volume 41, Number 4, Winter

2007, pp. 67-86 (Article)

Published by University of Illinois Press

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 Toward a Theoretical Framework for the Study
of Humor in Literature and the Other Arts

JERRY FARBER

With a clearer understanding of the way humor works, we might be better

able to give it the attention it deserves when we study and teach the arts.
But where do we turn to find a theoretical framework for the study of hu-
mor—one that will help to clarify the role that humor plays in the arts and
that will help us as well to understand differences in the way individual
perceivers respond to humor in art?
A superiority theory of humor emerged in classical times and more or
less held the stage through the seventeenth century; now, however, though
an occasional attempt to revive it is still made,1 superiority theory is usually
regarded as far too narrow in scope to be useful as a general account of hu-
mor. What are commonly referred to as “release” (or, occasionally, “relief”)
theories— and associated with Spencer and Freud—were for a time very in-
fluential, but are somewhat narrow too in their own way, and furthermore,
as Noël Carroll puts it, “have the liability of presupposing hydraulic views
of the mind that are highly dubious.”2 Incongruity theory, which has been
around in one form or another since at least the eighteenth century, domi-
nates contemporary humor theory but is still widely regarded as not quite
there yet. And so humor remains somewhat mysterious and elusive. Or
not even that. It may be that most people, even teachers in the arts, bypass
theory entirely and simply accept humor as a given: an unanalyzable fact
of human life. I’ve sometimes wondered if it may be that we don’t want to
understand humor, either because we’re afraid that this understanding will
spoil the game or, just possibly, because we sense that, as a consequence
of it, we may discover things about ourselves that we would prefer not to
know.
Is a well-founded, broadly inclusive theoretical framework for the study
and teaching of humor in the arts achievable? I want to propose that it is if

Jerry Farber is professor of English and comparative literature at San Diego State
University. His books include A Field Guide to the Aesthetic Experience (Foreworks,
1982). His essay “What Is Literature? What Is Art? Integrating Essence and History”
appeared in the Journal of Aesthetic Education in fall 2005; his essay “Teaching and
Presence” is forthcoming in Pedagogy.

Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 41, No. 4, Winter 2007

©2007 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

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 68   Farber

we take incongruity theory a few steps further, integrating an analysis of

the humorous situation (that is, what we perceive: the caricature, the witty
dialogue, the bit of stage business) with an analysis of what goes on in the
perceiver (the humor experience itself).

A General Theory of Humor

Incongruity theory, though clearly the front-runner these days, continues

to be problematic, making too much sense for us to discard it, but not quite
enough sense to get us where we need to go. Thus, Carroll concludes his
recent overview of this theoretical tradition: “Though promising, the Incon-
gruity Theory of Humor remains a project in need of further research.”3
Reading this we may find ourselves wondering, just as we might about
some writer or performer who’s been on the scene for a good long time,
how much longer this centuries-old theoretical approach gets to remain
“promising.”
What have been the major problems associated with incongruity theory?
For one thing, it doesn’t tell us much about the affective dimension of humor.4
Neither does it satisfactorily explain differences in the way individual perceiv-
ers respond. The major weakness of incongruity theory, however, has been a
failure to account adequately for all of those instances of incongruity that are
not funny: for example, brainteasers, logic problems, and puzzles. One way
of dealing with this problem has been to keep adding on exclusionary clauses
until the category has been pared down satisfactorily. In other words, humor
is based on incongruity, provided that we exclude situations that inspire fear,
or are disgusting, or are perceived instrumentally, or are regarded primarily
as a puzzle, and so on. But, of course, this is patchwork. What we need is a
humor theory where stipulations such as these don’t have to be added on,
because they follow logically from the ­theory itself.
It’s been proposed repeatedly that the incongruous elements in humor
are likely to be connected in some way, though some of the terms that have
been advanced to identify this connection are unnecessarily limiting if our
intention is to cover the widest range of humor in the arts. “Resolution,”5
for example, perhaps the best known of these terms, appears to claim too
much; it is one of those notions that may be more suited to jokes than to
humor in general. For present purposes, I would prefer to borrow Koestler’s
term “link,”6 to cover a broad range of modes of connection, ranging from
mere juxtaposition, which would be the minimum link, to the kind of per-
fect or near-perfect correspondence that we find in puns, and that a clever
plot can provide in theatrical comedy.
At this point, I would like to suggest that we can take an important
step toward solving some of the problems that have been associated with
­incongruity theory by looking within the humorous incongruity itself and

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 Framework for the Study of Humor   69

recognizing that each of the incongruous elements plays its own character-
istic role. One element—we can label it A—typically is the closer of the two
to a social norm or to something that has been socially valorized. The other,
more gratifying element—the B—tends in some way to counter or under-
mine or defy or circumvent the A. For a particularly vivid example of this
in the arts, we might turn to those 1830s caricatures by Daumier and others
portraying the French monarch Louis-Philippe (A) as a pear (B).7
Having characterized in this way the two incongruous elements in the
humorous situation, we can take a further step and recognize that their link-
ing may bring about a particular kind of event within the perceiver, which,
when it happens, is what enables us to say that something is funny. The
external A and B correspond to and evoke an internal [a] and [b], which can
be any one of a number of well-established pairs of psychological counter-
positions in the perceiver. In each case, as we’ll see, the B in the situation
corresponds to a strong need or inclination [b], while the A corresponds to
and is in compliance with an internalized constraint or obstacle [a] that op-
poses the [b]. The favoring of the B in the humorous situation (or what the
perceiver may choose to regard as the favoring of the B), causes a reward-
inducing shift—often sudden and usually short-lived—in the relative status
of the two counterpositions. (The major pairs of counterpositions in humor
will be examined in the taxonomy below.)
That a gratifying shift of some sort occurs in the perceiver has been recog-
nized since Hobbes, and even before; this is the payoff that humor provides.8
What we need in order to move humor theory forward is to understand
more clearly what it is that constitutes this shift. The linked, incongruous A
and B in the humorous situation achieve an immediate, if only temporary,
ascendance of [b]—something that we want to think, believe, feel, express,
something that is, to use Edward Fitzgerald’s words, “nearer to the heart’s
desire”—over [a], its psychological antagonist.
Finally, there is one other feature of the humor experience that helps to
account for its characteristic quality, for the way it feels. As a number of
theorists have emphasized, we experience humor as a form of play.9 Play,
of course, is a very broad category; the theory that I am proposing allows
us to see specifically just how it is that a play mode functions in humor.
It facilitates the shift in the relative status of the two psychological coun-
terpositions. After all, the justification that the humorous situation supplies
for such a shift may be flimsy to say the least when judged by the criteria
we ordinarily use to assess things. Viewed more soberly, the liberating B
might appear too preposterous, too unfair, or even too offensive, to provide
any gratification. The play mode, however, allows us—to some extent at
least—to suspend a more realistic assessment, thus allowing the internal [b]
its ascendance over the opposing [a], even if this ascendance is achieved by
means that might not, as we say, “hold up in court.”

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 70   Farber

Returning to the principal problem that has been presented by incongru-

ity theory, will the theory at hand enable us to understand why it is that
one instance of incongruity is humorous and another is not? Suppose, for
example, that we’re trying to solve some sort of puzzle or mystery or logic
problem; let’s say we’re dealing with a classic “locked room” mystery, which
presents us with an incongruity that is not in itself humorous. The incongru-
ous elements here are: (1) someone has been found murdered in a room; (2)
the room was locked from inside, so no one could have left the room after
committing the murder. But note that these two elements, though incon-
gruous, don’t provide the A and B, as characterized above, that will evoke
some well-established pair of counterpositions in the perceiver. Therefore,
their incongruous juxtaposition is unlikely to elicit the kind of psychological
event I’ve described. What is gratifying here is, first, the intriguing mystery
of the incongruity—not in itself likely to be funny—and, second, the trium-
phant resolution of this incongruity: that is, the solution to the mystery. But
this solution, a rational process that has the effect of dissolving incongruity, is
also not something we would expect to be funny; it provides quite ­another
sort of gratification than humor does.
But then, it might be asked, under the right circumstance, couldn’t some
such triumph meet the conditions we have laid out, but without generating
any humor at all? Couldn’t a sudden, unanticipated, perhaps even improb-
able, success in solving a mystery or in some game or sport or other compe-
tition provide us with a pair of incongruous elements that fits the A/B pat-
tern, but without generating humor? Suddenly, let’s say, in the last seconds
of play, a football player intercepts a pass and runs it back across the goal
line. The player, the team, and their fans as well have turned apparent de-
feat into victory. Will this give us an A and a B? But then, surely, though this
kind of experience may well be a joyful one, though those on the winning
side may find themselves smiling or laughing as people often do in joyful
moments, it’s not what one would normally expect to be a funny experience
(absent some notably comic element in the way the pass is intercepted). So
how is this to be understood in theoretical terms? After all, couldn’t we try
to match the incongruous elements here—apparent defeat and unexpected
victory—to one pair or another of opposed counterpositions in the mind of
the football player (or the fan watching the game)? Will we have to resort
finally to one of those awkward exclusionary clauses?
Actually, there are several reasons why this situation would not be likely
to be funny. Let us here look at a principal reason, the awareness of which
will move us toward a clearer understanding of humor, and especially of
humor in the arts. We need to recognize that the role of the A in humor is
essential, and that, in a humorous situation, what happens to the A is not
that it is eliminated, not that it is replaced by the B, but that it is in some way
successfully opposed by the B: undermined or circumvented or defied or

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 Framework for the Study of Humor   71

contradicted. What makes humor work is the temporarily altered relative

status of the two counterpositions in the perceiver, and for this it is essential
that, in the humorous situation, the A must somehow remain in place so
that, in the perceiver, the restrictive or blocking counterposition continues to
be evoked.
To be told by the narrator of Pride and Prejudice that Mrs. Bennet has gone
from serenity to constant complaining (or vice-versa) would not in itself be
humorous. But when the narrator says, “Mrs. Bennet was restored to her usual
querulous serenity,” that is, for many readers, a humorous line.10 In the same
way, for a sexual double entendre to be funny, both meanings are required, not
merely the subversive one. What produces the humor in both cases is not that
one meaning replaces the other, but that one meaning plays off against the
other, with the result that, within the perceiver, a need temporarily succeeds,
not in eliminating, but in defying the restriction that ­governs it.
In Duck Soup, when Chico Marx kicks the lemonade vendor, played by
Edgar Kennedy, in the pants, what makes this especially funny is precisely
that the A is maintained so well. First, Chico kicks him merely as a “neces-
sary” part of telling a story about Harpo’s misbehavior. Chico says: “What
do you think he do? He make-a fight. He go like this.” And he kicks Ken-
nedy in the pants “innocently,” as it were, ostensibly impelled merely by the
need to illustrate his narrative. In other words, the A here—the ostensible
innocence—is in compliance with the social norm that restricts violence;
that norm is not replaced by the B, but evaded. When Chico does the whole
thing again, Kennedy gets angry and says menacingly, “I’ll teach you to kick
me!” Chico, of course, seeing his opening, responds, “You don’t have to
teach me—I know how,” and kicks him in the pants again. Once again, the
restriction on violence is maintained, but circumvented. Chico’s intentional
misinterpretation of “teach” provides the excuse that allows him to accom-
plish the B while leaving the A in place.11
In contrast, what is it that happens when we actually get our heart’s de-
sire, when we solve the mystery or win the football game? The “B” (if we at-
tempt to apply these terms here) has simply replaced the “A.” The contrast
between the two kinds of situation—one humorous and the other not—can
be seen clearly in Molière’s Tartuffe. What’s funny is the “pious” Tartuffe
making his entrance in act 3, ostentatiously calling out to his servant to hang
up his hairshirt and put away his scourge. We’ve already learned that the
man is a phony, a religious hypocrite. And now we see the two incongruous
elements in simultaneous operation. A: he proclaims his fervent religiosity.
B: the very fact of proclaiming it in this way—shouting it out, in fact—de-
nies it. Compare this incident to the moment when Tartuffe is actually van-
quished in act 5—suddenly, unexpectedly, perhaps even improbably. This is
a happy ending but not a comical one. The tension has been building as we
witness Tartuffe’s apparent victory over Orgon and his family, ­culminating

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 72   Farber

in their being dispossessed of their home. When Tartuffe is finally arrested,

the tension is dissipated, and though this is a happy development, it is not a
funny one, in part because the less gratifying element doesn’t remain along-
side the more gratifying one but has simply been replaced by it. What we
have throughout the play is Tartuffe satirized. What we have at the end is
Tartuffe foiled. Two very different things.
I am suggesting that when the linked, incongruous A/B in the humorous
situation suddenly and temporarily alters the relationship between a pair
of well-established counterpositions in the perceiver—on the one hand, a
need or inclination and, on the other, the internalized constraint or obstacle
that opposes it—and does so in a way that keeps both of these counterposi-
tions in play, something happens that can be compared (merely as a crude
analogy and without implying any “electrical model” of humor) to current
flowing across a spark gap. But this image is merely an impressionistic one;
what actually occurs in physical terms is something that remains for brain
research to elucidate.12
In order to test this formulation, as well as to clarify it, illustrate it, and
examine its implications, I will use it here as the basis for a taxonomy based
upon the kind of payoff that an instance of humor provides—not an exhaus-
tive taxonomy, but one that does, I think, account for the greater part by far
of humor in the arts and that, as much as possible, instead of establishing
entirely new categories, reconstitutes traditional ones with the aim of giving
them more coherence, clarity, and explanatory power.13
What this taxonomy will address is neither, on the one hand, merely what
is perceived—a passage in a text, or a cartoon, or an incident in a film—nor, on
the other hand, merely a psychological event in a perceiver. What is at issue
is the text as it is perceived and responded to by a reader, or the movie prat-
fall from the audience perspective. Can a group of people gathered around a
television set all be laughing at a particular gag or incident, and yet not all be
laughing for the same reason? If so, we will need the kind of taxonomy that
not only acknowledges this situation, but, if possible, helps us to interpret it.

1. Derisive Humor

Superiority theory, which has been with us since Plato and Aristotle, pro-
vides a revealing but narrow view—narrow not only in relation to humor
in general but even in relation to the area of humor where it might seem
most clearly applicable. To cover this ground we will need two categories:
derisive humor and empathic humor. These can arise from the same comic
stimulus and can even coexist (in fact, often do coexist) in a single individu-
al’s response to that stimulus; yet the two differ profoundly from each other
in the kind of payoff that they provide.
The A in derisive humor is an element in the humorous situation (or im-

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 Framework for the Study of Humor   73

plied by it) that corresponds to the internal [a]: in this case, a sense of the su-
periority of others in relation to social norms. This sense is something that we
carry with us out of childhood—a time when most of us are made acquainted
on a daily basis with our inadequacies relative to one norm or another—and
that is only reinforced as, throughout our lives, we are continually confront-
ed with the public image that others choose to present, “best foot forward,”
while, when it comes to our own failings, our own lapses from the social
norm, our own sources of shame, we, generally speaking, know these from
the inside and all too well. And, of course, even if we do manage to attain
a sense of our own superiority in one particular context or another, there is
always an abundance of contexts in which the superiority of others confronts
us. This [a] that we carry with us is actually doubly oppressive; that is to say it
operates in two sets of counterpositions. It counters our need for superiority,
but also, because this sense of others’ superiority has the effect of excluding
us, it counters our need to belong, to experience community. The first pair of
counterpositions supplies the basis for derisive humor.
The B in derisive humor offers an inferior, undermining alternative to
the A, and therefore plays to the internal [b]: our own need for superiority.
Revealing “turpitudine et deformitate” (to use Cicero’s terms14) in the other,
the B provides us with that Hobbesian moment of “sudden glory.”15 What
derisive humor appeals to is not simply some general need for self-esteem.
It is relative status that is at issue. The [b] isn’t merely a desire to feel good
about ourselves. We may well encounter something in art or in daily life
that makes us feel good about both ourselves and others, and this may be
heartwarming. But derisive humor, pitting our need for superiority against
our sense of the apparent superiority of others, requires that someone go
down. Heartwarming it is not.
How are the A and B embodied in derisive humor? One of the two is
always enacted for us, but the other may, in some instances, be introduced
more indirectly. For an example of derisive humor that puts both the A and
the B directly before us, we can turn again to Molière’s Tartuffe; here a com-
petent actor in the title role will present us simultaneously with Tartuffe’s
pious, even saintly façade (the A) and the contemptible scoundrel it con-
ceals (the B). However, in derisive irony—what people usually mean by
“sarcasm”—only the A need be stated directly (“Oh yeah, he’s a real ge-
nius”); the B is implied by one means or another, often only by context. And
there are a great many instances of derisive humor where it is the A that
is implied. Humorous caricature, as distinguished from merely expressive
caricature, can be seen as an inferior version (B) of an implied A.
And, in fact, precisely because he is also a caricature, even Tartuffe de-
pends, for maximum comic effect, on our having in our own real-life ex-
perience, encountered sanctimonious, exploitive figures who were by and
large able to get away with it, who were respected. The A, in other words,

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is not merely depicted for us here; we ourselves help to supply it out of our
own experience. And with many caricatures, the A is largely up to us. If a
political cartoon depicts some respected, dignified senator as no more than
a cheap thug, it is we who have to provide the A: the socially valorized ver-
sion of this senator. Similarly, the more we are able, across the intervening
centuries, to recognize the real-life types caricatured by visual artists such as
Daumier and Rowlandson—the more we are able to recognize the A ­behind
the B—the funnier their work is likely to be.
Though derisive humor is so often understood, as it is by Hobbes, in
terms of person-to-person comparison, we need to remember that its tar-
get may as easily be an institution or a doctrine as an individual. It may
be a system of thought that a satirist is attacking, but to the extent that we
identify this system with others and identify ourselves with the satirist’s
perspective, our own need for superiority will be supported.
Satirists understand that merely to criticize, to refute, to condemn will
not suffice to produce humor. A careful, methodical refutation that takes us
step-by-step from A to B has the effect of minimizing incongruity; in this re-
spect, it’s similar to what happens when someone kills a joke by explaining
it: “Don’t you get it? You see, he thought she meant . . .” But if we turn, for
example, to Voltaire’s satirical tale “Micromégas,” we see that what he does
not choose to do here is offer a discursive, methodical refutation of Sorbonne
theology (one of his principal targets). What he does is allow two enormous
space travelers, a giant Saturnian and a colossal Sirian, to make a brief stop
on the insignificant anthill of Earth, where they, by accident, become aware
of humans—so tiny in comparison to the space travelers that they are vis-
ible and audible only through improvised instruments. Among these mi-
croscopic specks is a Sorbonne theologian, who insists that the entire secret
is to be found in the Summa of St. Thomas, and that these space travelers
and their worlds, along with everything in the universe, are made solely
for man. At which point the two travelers fall on each other, convulsed with
laughter. In other words, Voltaire evokes the A in its full force (Sorbonne
theologians and their ilk in Voltaire’s and his readers’ world of experience),
while presenting us with a B (this insanely arrogant atom on an insignificant
mudball in a corner of the universe) that performs a drastic reduction of
that A, and, inviting readers to identify with the visitors, satisfies their need
to feel superior despite the apparent superiority of others (who in this case
are traditionally high-status authority figures). Needless to say, for a reader
who happened to be the kind of Sorbonne theologian he portrays, the B in
this situation would counter the need for superiority rather than gratify it
and therefore would not be funny at all.
Some derisive humor may not appear at first glance to depend on an in-
congruous A/B. If we laugh at some dimwitted comedian doing one stupid
thing after another, where is the A?

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Those jokes that target some regional or ethnic (or other) group tradition-
ally designated as a target for dumbness humor are particularly instructive
here. Is the stereotyped target figure in these jokes to be seen as a caricature,
based on a more respected, higher-status figure in real life? Perhaps, in some
cases (“blonde” jokes for example). But wouldn’t we say that often the ste-
reotyped figure begins at a deficit—is a conventional butt of derisive humor
right from the start? If so, then we may have to look elsewhere for the A.
Whether or not the ethnic or other target figure is to be seen as a carica-
ture, what reliably supplies the A in these jokes is our sense of an alternate,
“normal” scenario, or range of such scenarios, that is not stupid, and that is
invoked by the lead-in or body of the joke.16
“How do you get a one-armed [stereotyped figure of choice] out of a tree?”
The “normal” scenario here might involve, let’s say, persuasion or force or
a lure of some sort. If we’re being told the joke, it’s not necessary that we
actually imagine any particular one of these scenarios, but merely that we
form a general expectation—an involuntary, more or less automatic expec-
tation—of “that sort of thing.” Even though we know it’s a dumbness joke,
we don’t at this point know specifically where it’s going, so we have only
the “normal” scenarios to form our expectation on. The punch line, “Wave
at him,” supplies the incongruous B scenario—one too dumb, too extreme
for us to have anticipated (at least in the very brief interval that is allowed
to us). The link here, of course, is supplied by the lead-in, which is capable,
logically, of leading to either the A or the B scenario.
Reversing the joke will help to demonstrate how all of this works. Sup-
pose we present the joke this way: “Waving at a one-armed [stereotyped fig-
ure] is how you get him out of a tree.” Not likely to be funny. Why? Because
we have preempted any sense of some possible A scenario, even if it were to
emerge only for a split second, by beginning with the B scenario and there-
fore closing the door on other possibilities.
The A here, representing more or less normal behavior; corresponds to
the perceiver’s [a] sense of the superiority of others, not in this case because
that A embodies particularly astute or admirable behavior, but only because
it corresponds to some sort of everyday common sense norm. The B under-
mines the A and plays to the perceiver’s [b] desire for superiority. Someone
is pushed down so that we ourselves can achieve our sudden glory. What
is necessary is not that the A be remarkably high; it only needs to be higher
than the B, so that this incongruous reduction of it will play to the [b] in the
perceiver.
Looking analytically at jokes can, in this particular case, help us un-
derstand similar humor in the arts. Whether in film comedy, in commedia
dell’arte, or in a “simpleton” folktale, dumbness has to be played off against
something that will establish the presence of the A in order to generate a
payoff. The A—the alternate scenario—may be provided by a character’s

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self-confidence or expectation of success, by the high expectations of onlook-

ers, or by the demands created by the situation the character is in. Someone
tripping over his own foot is one thing; someone tripping over his own foot
while demonstrating a ballet combination is another. Harlequin may appear
to us as a B, sitting on a donkey, wearing a broken sword, and with a cham-
ber pot on his head, but we know that he sees himself as an A: a knight errant
off to do battle in honor of his beloved.
Recognizing the importance of an A that’s emphasized within the comic
scene helps us to understand the role that’s played by Oliver Hardy’s ir-
repressible, if utterly unjustified, self-assuredness and superiority: his con-
fident, impatient “Let me handle this.” It helps to explain why I. B. Singer’s
wonderful fools, the Elders of Chelm, are similarly irrepressible. “Near me,”
the leading Elder tells his wife, “you too become clever.”17 With characters
like these, the A is in their nature and is not erased by their failures to live up
to it.
Needless to say, a figure in the comedy of dumbness may also be a carica-
ture. In this case, the A will be established by whoever or whatever it is that’s
being caricatured and also, perhaps, by some sort of alternate scenario that is
evoked within the comic situation. But what about derisive humor that seems
to offer not a doubly constituted A but no A at all, whether staged or implied?
Here I think we have the opportunity to observe humor as it either fades out
or sees its audience narrow down considerably. Do we laugh at someone who
is no caricature, who is dumb to begin with, who has no pretensions, and who
is just doing stupid things, with no A of any kind in sight?
Suppose we understand the sense of others’ superiority as a sort of
“background hum” that is louder in some people than in others, and louder
perhaps as well at certain stages in life. We can then imagine a somewhat
more embattled perceiver, someone who, burdened with an oppressive
sense of others’ superiority, may be particularly ready to see any stupid act
as an incongruous reduction of that superiority, and therefore more ready
to “read in the A” and welcome with laughter whatever occasion for a mo-
ment of personal superiority may come along, if it is in what is regarded as
a suitable context for humor—and in some cases, even if it is not.18

2. Empathic Humor

We would never be able to understand the comedy of film and television

figures like Charlie Chaplin, Lucille Ball, Jacques Tati, and Jennifer Saun-
ders, nor could we do justice to the full range of humor in literature and
theater, without recognizing a kind of humor that is related to and is of-
ten even joined with derisive humor, but in which the payoff comes from
sharing our foolishness, our failings, our ineptitude with a character who to
some ­degree is able to draw our empathy.

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 Framework for the Study of Humor   77

Derisive humor gets its satisfaction from the act of rising above, from
Hobbes’s “sudden glory”; empathic humor provides us with company in
our un-risen state. Both types of humor play off against the same sort of A:
something in the humorous situation, or implied by it, that corresponds to
our [a] sense of the superiority of others. In derisive humor, this [a] faces
off against our need for superiority. In empathic humor, it is the exclusion-
ary aspect of the [a] that is relevant and that is counterposed to a different
[b]: our deep need to belong, to be with, not to be excluded. Thus, the B in
empathic humor offers not merely an inferior alternative to the A but one
that we are to some extent willing to identify with. Sharing our failings with
others, we escape from the sense of exclusion that the [a] carries with it,
by participating in a community of all-too-human imperfection. In a broad
way, and from the perspective of psychological theory, one could character-
ize derisive humor as “Adlerian” and empathic humor as “Maslovian.” The
two forms of humor might also be seen as representing two ways of coping
with our own failings. With derisive humor we, in effect, deny inferiority
in ourselves and assign it to someone else; with empathic humor we expe-
rience the relief of discovering that our individual failings are shared and
therefore less shameful.
Albert Rapp, in his highly speculative evolutionary account of humor,
sees ridicule as an earlier form, with what he calls “genial humor” or simply
“humor” emerging as a later development. In his definition of “genial hu-
mor,” however, as “ridicule plus love,”19 “love” would appear to be claim-
ing too much—an oversentimentalized counterweight to the harsh reality
that “ridicule” implies. In fact, the objects of empathic humor are not neces-
sarily ridiculed, nor is it necessary in all cases to love them—only to sense,
consciously or not, some degree of kinship with them in their failings.
More to the point, perhaps, is the distinction, built into everyday lan-
guage, between “laughing at” and “laughing with.” “I’m not laughing at
you,” we reassure someone. “I’m laughing with you.” This distinction may
be somewhat misleading, though, in the present context, insofar as it implies
that the object of empathic laughter is also, at least on some level, finding
the situation funny—something that is most commonly far from the case.
If Lucy, failing spectacularly on the candy assembly line (in a well-known
I Love Lucy episode), were to start laughing at herself, the comedy would
be diminished. What we need to see here is someone at least as dismayed
and embarrassed as we might be, not someone who has distanced herself
enough from her plight to laugh it off.
If we experience community in derisive humor, it is community with
whoever shares our derisive perspective: the audience, or perhaps those
characters in a play who lead us in mocking the targets of this humor, or
perhaps the narrator in a satirical work of fiction. This community of deri-
sive humor, however, is based on an assumption of shared superiority; it

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leaves us alone with our failings—leaves us, at the level of those failings,
still excluded. Empathic humor, on the other hand, reassures us that, even
at the level of our failings, we’re not alone. And often it accomplishes even
more than this because the figures we laugh at empathically are likely to
have something going for them as well, so that our failings are not merely
shared, but also to some extent redeemed. In Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro,
for example, whereas a character such as Basilio is the object of more or
less exclusively derisive humor, and has, in fact, little to recommend him,
Cherubino is a more endearing sort of fool. Cherubino may be self-absorbed,
somewhat inept, and caught up in giddy adolescent infatuation, but he’s
bright, fun to be around, and he has soul (and, of course, Mozart gives him
some extraordinarily beautiful arias). Objects of empathic humor in the arts
are not likely to be mere minus signs.
It makes sense, then, that the objects of empathic humor should tend to
be figures that we want to see come out well, or at least not badly. The tar-
gets of purely derisive humor, on the other hand, are likely to be figures that
we can see go down to defeat (as does Tartuffe) without any dissatisfac-
tion and quite possibly even with considerable pleasure. Thus, the comi-
cal “blocking figures”—from the senex in ancient and early modern comedy
to the high school principal in a farcical teenage film—are likely neither to
draw empathy nor to come out on top.
My own teaching experience suggests that a range of response ex-
ists among perceivers, from highly empathic to purely derisive, not only
toward borderline figures such as Molière’s misanthropic Alceste or the
“Larry David” character in the television series Curb Your Enthusiasm, but
even toward many less ambiguous characters as well. But also, we’re not
required to make a flat choice between the two modes: our laughter at cer-
tain characters may be fueled by two simultaneous, though not necessarily
conscious, recognitions: (1) “Oh my God, that’s me!” and (2) “At least I’m
not that bad!”
A useful analogy here might be the experience of participating in a self-
help group made up of people who share the same problem. One could
simultaneously be gratified to share the problem and gratified to see that
there are others who have it worse. Here, and in humor as well, the degree to
which we experience each type of response will depend on the ­individual.

3. Counter-Restriction Humor

In the subcategories that fall under this general heading, the A corresponds
to some internalized restriction on thought, feeling, or behavior. The juxta-
position of a B that corresponds to the restricted need or inclination itself
and that in some way counters or evades the restriction may provide the
entire payoff, or it may serve to support some other sort of payoff. Deri-

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 Framework for the Study of Humor   79

sive humor, for example, can get an extra, counter-restriction boost when its
­target is someone or something that it is not proper to be making fun of.
While recognizing the broad nature of this general category, I would like
to focus on three specific types of counter-restriction humor: aggressive hu-
mor, sexual humor, and nonsense humor (though there are others, too, such
as scatological humor, that play their role in the arts).
There does also appear to be a more generalized, transgressive humor in
which the need for autonomy aggressively defies restriction in general, re-
striction itself. Transgressive humor may show up more or less on its own
or may add its payoff to other types of humor. The various specific types of
counter-restriction humor in particular may often be tinged with a gratifica-
tion that comes from a more generalized sense of transgression, as is evident
in the documentary movie The Aristocrats (focused on retellings of a single
joke and promoted with the tagline “No nudity. No violence. Unspeakable
obscenity”). Here a transgressive payoff works to shore up and even to a con-
siderable extent replace less robust sexual, aggressive, and derisive ­payoffs.
Even without invoking a Bakhtinian “carnival” theory, we can hardly
help recognizing that comedy, historically, has shown a pronounced trans-
gressive tendency that suggests not merely an impulse to breach one par-
ticular social norm or another but an impulse that confronts, that challenges,
social convention itself. “Comedy,” Erich Segal concludes, after a backward
look over two and a half millennia, “always thrives upon outrage.”20

3.1. Aggressive Humor

The close relationship between aggressive humor and derisive humor can
make it easy to confuse them, as Freud tends to do. But, in fact, to experience
the “sudden glory” of superiority and to take gratification in aggression de-
spite the restrictions on it are by no means the same sort of payoff. It’s true
that, on the one hand, derision may well satisfy an aggressive impulse, and,
on the other, aggressive acts can easily have the effect of demeaning their
object. But though both may be present in varying proportions in many
instances of humor, there are, nonetheless, two separate kinds of reward
involved. It is one thing to feel the rush of superiority when a respected
figure’s imperfections are revealed; it is another to enjoy seeing someone hit
over the head with a vase.
As for aggression, what is it that makes the difference between comic ag-
gression and scenes of aggression that are not generally regarded as funny?
For one thing, to achieve a comic effect, something in the situation before
us will ordinarily need to present or in some way invoke an incongruous
and restrictive A. One notable example of comic violence in the film The Big
Brawl offers a remarkably clear view of the A/B structure at work. Jackie
Chan’s character has a father who doesn’t want him to fight, so when Jackie

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 80   Farber

takes on a gang of thugs not only outside his father’s restaurant but with his
father actually looking on, he has to beat them up (B) while appearing not
to be fighting at all (A). The A/B incongruity is achieved by other means
in Molière’s Les Fourberies de Scapin. When Scapin wants to take revenge
on Géronte, he persuades the old man to hide in a sack that he is carrying
and then pretends to be trying to protect him from assailants (A) while it is
Scapin himself that is administering the blows (B).
The incongruous A is sometimes center stage, as it is in these examples,
and sometimes incorporated in subtler fashion. What presents or evokes the
A in aggressive comedy may be no more than a look of studied indifference
or innocence on the aggressor’s part, or the utter inappropriateness of the
aggressor (as with the battle of old people in Lysistrata, or Monty Python’s
gang of thuggish old ladies who descend on innocent citizens and beat them
with purses), or a situational irony, as when, in the Pink Panther movies,
Clouseau’s servant Cato attacks him (B) but only in dutiful obedience (A) to
Clouseau’s standing order.
But also, for aggression to work as humor, the B must support the ag-
gressive [b] in the perceiver rather than the restrictive [a]—and this is by no
means a given when aggression is portrayed. Style and context can play a
decisive role here. If someone flips off a gang of violent crooks in a harum-
scarum comedy-adventure movie, that’s one thing. If someone does the
same thing in a tense, realistic dramatic film where we have reasonable ex-
pectations of seeing him beaten to death in front of us, that’s quite another.
This latter situation could have the effect of reinforcing the restriction on
aggression rather than defying it. Part of what makes violent slapstick work
as comedy, whether in an animated cartoon or in silent movies or in comme-
dia dell’arte, is that style and context make it possible for the aggressive B to
support our need for aggression rather than our internalized restriction of
it because they exclude the kind of consequences that might spoil the game,
that might play to the restriction rather than the need. Cartoon animals feel
only enough pain to make the aggression register as such, and then, even if
they’ve been steamrollered paper-thin or have been shattered like crockery,
they get themselves back together and get on with it.
Finally, a comic effect is furthered to the extent that the incongruous A
and B are neatly linked in some way, as in the Clouseau movies already
alluded to where a situational link makes the respectful servant and the vi-
cious attacker precisely congruent. Molière was a master of this. Alongside
the “sack” scene mentioned above, we can place a scene from Le Médecin
malgré lui where Lucas and Valère, searching for a doctor and having been
informed by Sganarelle’s vengeful wife that he is a renowned doctor but will
only admit this if he is beaten, are forced, regretfully and with the ­greatest
courtesy and respect, to begin beating him with sticks.

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 Framework for the Study of Humor   81

3.2. Sexual Humor

The category of sexual humor is more elusive than it might at first appear to
be. When we laugh at this kind of humor, we know, or think we know, what
we’re laughing at. And yet . . .
To identify sexual humor in terms of its subject matter is fairly easy. To
identify it in terms of the payoff is another story. If the payoff is to be con-
sidered a sexual one, this means that the B must be not merely gratifying
but, specifically, sexually gratifying. It must allow sexual desire [b] a tem-
porary ascendancy over the internalized [a] of sexual restriction. The most
obvious form of this might appear to be those “obscene jokes” that Freud
sees as the equivalent in higher social strata of the “bawdry” of the common
people, the lewd talk that he says “is like an act of unclothing the person of
different sex at whom it is directed.”21 An obscene joke, then, in Freudian
terms, might be the “inappropriate” office joke that we’ve come to recognize
as sexual harassment of the person it’s directed to. The B in such situations
can be seen as breaking through a more socially conventional A to provide
some of the gratification of an actual sexual contact. But don’t we have to
recognize that even this payoff may not be a purely sexual one? To what ex-
tent, in some situations of this type, could the sexual gratification be joined
with, possibly even exceeded by, an aggressive or a derisive satisfaction? In
fact, there is no reason why we should expect sexual psychology to be less
complicated in humor than it is elsewhere.
In other words, sexual subject matter in humor is not necessarily sexual,
or entirely sexual, in its payoff. Machiavelli’s La Mandragola, Schnitzler’s
Reigen, and Mamet’s Sexual Perversity in Chicago are three comedies that
are “all about” sex. But though there may be—particularly in Schnitzler’s
play—moments that could be regarded as both humorous and erotic, the
humor in all three is overwhelmingly derisive or empathic or both. If we
look for humor in the arts that is not only about sex but that is primarily
sexual in its payoff, the field narrows considerably.
In Some Like It Hot, Jack Lemmon’s character, Jerry, hiding out in drag
as “Daphne,” finds himself in an upper berth with Sugar Kane, played by
Marilyn Monroe. As Sugar gets increasingly warm and friendly in an in-
nocent “girl to girl” way, the tightly linked incongruity between “Daphne”
and “Jerry” is given a sexual inflection by (A) the demands of sexual propri-
ety—in this case powerfully reinforced by Lemmon’s need to maintain his
disguise—and (B) the erotic energy that this intimate situation is generating.
In this scene, I think, for many perceivers, the humor could clearly be clas-
sified as sexual humor, not merely in subject matter but in payoff: the [a] is
sexual restriction and the [b] is sexual desire.

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3.3. Nonsense Humor

In Freud’s view, the pleasure we take in nonsense jokes “derives from our
success in liberating nonsense in spite of suppression.”22 Considered in this
way, nonsense humor would neatly parallel aggressive humor and sexual
humor, setting something that gratifies a need against the restrictions that
govern it. The [a] in this case would seem to be the internalized norms of
sensible, rational thought and expression—that mental straitjacket that we
put on as we move away from infancy. If an opposing [b] exists, this would
indicate that something is sacrificed in that maturation process, that a need
persists in us that goes counter to the [a] in question, causing us to take
pleasure in subverting these restrictions that have been imposed on the pro-
cess of thinking itself.23 Nonsense humor, then, suggests a need for free-
dom and autonomy of thought at the deepest level. And it may even be that
such a need will be strongest in those who are still early in the process of
­surrendering that freedom.
What complicates this fairly simple account of nonsense humor is the rec-
ognition that, because the framework of sensible thought has its own weak-
nesses and limitations (particularly since it is always to some extent built on
convention), nonsense may amount to more than mere regression; it may
stand as an implicit criticism of that framework, as an invitation to venture
outside it, and even as a suggestion of what may be found there. This might
help to explain the appeal that nonsense humor can have not only for chil-
dren but for two groups of adults in particular: artists, on the one hand, and
philosophers, scientists, and theorists of all kinds on the other.
With nonsense humor as with aggressive humor, we need to look care-
fully at what it is that separates humorous situations from similar nonhu-
morous ones. Nonsense, after all, is easy to achieve. Why are some instances
of it amusing while others are not?
When nonsense merely gets in our way, it’s not funny; it’s just so much
intellectual trash. What is our instinctive reaction to an argument, a propos-
al, a speech, or a theory where the logical connections are absent or faulty?
“That’s nonsense!” And if we’re getting frustrated because we’re trying to
retrieve a computer file and coming up with nothing but unreadable gar-
bage, are we likely to relish this moment of freedom from the rational?
Clearly not. So what is it then that brings humor into the picture? We can
use the theoretical framework at hand to answer this question. Nonsense
moves in the direction of humor insofar as (1) it sets a nonsensical B in in-
congruous juxtaposition with an A that is either supplied with it or is con-
tributed by the context and by our expectations, and that represents a more
rational everyday norm; and (2) this B supports the [b] in the perceiver more
than the [a]. In the absence of an A, or if we see the nonsense as irritating or

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 Framework for the Study of Humor   83

as an impediment of some sort that merely strengthens our adherence to the

rational norm, then it won’t be funny. Finally, the humorous effect will be
heightened in proportion as (3) the A and the B are linked in some way.
Style and context, along with individual psychology, may have much
to do with determining how gratifying the B is. A child-oriented pictorial
style, in the context of a children’s picture book, can encourage even “no
nonsense” adults to let down their guard, to move more fully into a play
mode, and therefore to be less impatient with language and visual images
that are “weird” and “off the wall.” And, of course, some individuals are
far more ready than others to take pleasure in the subversion of rational
norms.24
There is an enjoyable nonsense that flourishes in the arts—that, in partic-
ular, found a home in children’s literature and illustration in the nineteenth
century and even earlier (in some nursery rhymes and folktales, for exam-
ple), and that found a home later in dada, surrealism, and absurdist theater.
How do we distinguish all of this from nonsense humor? With great care,
I would say, because, in fact, quite a bit of it is funny. Not everything that
falls within these aesthetic categories works as humor, of course. Much of
surrealist painting, in particular, even though such painting tends in general
to be built around stunning incongruities, isn’t all that funny. In Magritte’s
The House of Glass, to take one example, we’re given a rear view of the head
and shoulders of a man standing on a balcony with the sea before him. But,
through a somewhat jagged open space in the hair on the back of his head,
we see most of his face staring out into the distance behind us. What one
might identify as the B here is, in its immediate effect, less likely to gratify
my need [b] to be free of rational norms than to strengthen my need for
them. I find myself, as it were, off balance, clutching for them. As is so often
the case with Magritte’s paintings, what we sense is not so much a playful
up-ending of the rational as the revelation of something profoundly unset-
tling beyond the rational, a revelation that has the power to stop us in our
tracks. And though the painting itself may be very gratifying in aesthetic
terms, just as the painting of a tragic subject may be gratifying aesthetically,
this is not the same thing as “funny.”
Lewis Carroll’s Alice books, on the other hand, though profound in their
own way, are a festival of nonsense humor. The Duchess’s “moral” in Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland—playing a brilliantly loony sentence off against
an implied, more rational A, which it caricatures—provides an excellent
example: “Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might
appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise
than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.”25
As is often the case with nonsense humor, this “moral”—particularly in the
immediate context that Carroll creates for it—provides a secondary payoff;

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 84   Farber

that is, it also works as a derisive caricature, aimed at moralizing, bla bla‑ing

parents, teachers, and so on.
Nonsense humor is, arguably, achievable in absolute music, when, in-
stead of an A based on the rules of rational thought and expression, it is the
formal conventions of music that are incongruously violated. Haydn, in par-
ticular, had an inclination toward this type of musical humor, to the point
that Philip G. Downs is led to characterize Haydn’s Op. 33 string quartets
with such terms as “silliness” and “tomfoolery.”26 The conclusion of Op.
33, No. 2, in particular, teases the listener’s expectations, in what Charles
Rosen describes as “the famous joke . . . which pretends to be finished before
the end.”27 Is the gratification that this kind of musical humor provides es-
sentially the same sort of thing as the payoff in verbal or visual nonsense
humor? Perhaps. The possibility is at least worth considering.
Finally, how is it that humor, which is by definition “not serious” and
which can so easily be seen as a cheap and short-lived gratification made
possible by the temporary suspension of realistic assessment that a play
mode provides—how is it that this stolen sweet, this dubious indulgence,
comes to attain profundity in the work of a novelist such as Austen or a
playwright such as Shaw?
The answer, of course, is that humor, which by its nature tends to seek
out and reveal incongruities, is a divided way of seeing that can be as shal-
low or as deep as the vision of the artist who employs it. Its tendency to split
what purports to be solid and whole into separate and in fact conflicting
realities makes it a preeminent mode of social criticism. But humor is hardly
limited to this role. Candide is rich in social comedy, but Voltaire’s humor in
this work turns inward as well, exploring ways in which the human psyche
is at odds with itself and therefore in a permanent state of disequilibrium.
Humor, furthermore, has the potential to reveal fissures within the notions
through which we understand the world, and therefore even in reality it-
self as we comprehend it. Some readers have found this kind of critique
in Carroll’s Alice books; and certainly it would be hard to miss in some of
Ionesco’s plays or in Buñuel’s surrealist films.
But we should, I think, be wary of using the more intellectual manifesta-
tions of humor in the arts as a way to “legitimize” it and to offset its more
low-life manifestations. Aristophanes, who, along with Molière, is arguably
one of the two greatest comic playwrights, was, like Molière, clearly not
averse to low-life humor. And Bakhtin, whether or not his historical as-
sumptions are quite right, does make a compelling case for the deep signifi-
cance of the crude, the earthy, and the grotesque in humor.28 The structural
and psychological characteristics that high and low humor share constitute
an anti-totalizing force that can give even a pratfall a certain philosophical
depth.

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NOTES

1. See F. H. Buckley, The Morality of Laughter (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan

Press, 2003); Charles R. Gruner, The Game of Humor: A Comprehensive Theory of
Why We Laugh (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1997).
2. Noël Carroll, “Humour,” in The Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics, ed. Jerrold Levin-
son (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 352.
3. Ibid., 351.
4. Arthur Koestler, to his credit, did attempt to bring both incongruity and affect
into his theory, but relied on a Spencerian “release” model of emotion to achieve
this; thus the function of laughter is “the disposal of excitations which have be-
come redundant, which cannot be consummated in any purposeful manner.”
(Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation [New York: Macmillan, 1964], 51).
5. See Jerry M. Suls, “A Two-Stage Model for the Appreciation of Jokes and Car-
toons,” in The Psychology of Humor, ed. Jeffrey H. Goldstein and Paul E. McGhee
(New York: Academic Press, 1972), 81-99; see also Suls, “Cognitive Processes in
Humor Appreciation,” in Handbook of Humor Research, vol. 1, ed. Paul E. McGhee
and Jeffrey H. Goldstein (New York: Springer, 1983), 39-57.
6. Koestler, The Act of Creation, 64.
7. Note that it is not merely the king’s appearance that is being mocked here; poire
in French has the secondary meaning of “simpleton.”
8. See especially John Morreall, who centers his theory in Taking Laughter Seriously
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983) on the notion of a “pleasant
psychological shift.”
9. Two recent studies, both drawing on the work of the Dutch primatologist Jan
van Hooff, examine the relationship between humor and play in an evolution-
ary context: Brian Boyd, “Laughter and Literature: A Play Theory of Humor,”
Philosophy and Literature 28, no. 1 (2004): 1-22; and James E. Caron, “From Etholo-
gy to Aesthetics: Evolution as a Theoretical Paradigm for Research on Laughter,
Humor, and Other Comic Phenomena,” Humor: International Journal of Humor
Research 15, no. 3 (2003): 245-81. Earlier examples of a play theory of humor are
Max Eastman, The Enjoyment of Laughter (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1936);
and William F. Fry Jr., Sweet Madness: A Study of Humor (Palo Alto, CA: Pacific
Books, 1963).
10. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), 211.
11. “Clown” figures, like Harpo himself, may sometimes appear to provide the B in
the absence of any A. Unlike Chico and Groucho, Harpo “gets to” walk up and
cut your tie off or knock the bag of peanuts out of your hand without so much as
a nod toward the A. I would suggest that this “clown’s license” actually implies
the A. We recognize the clown—a sort of walking carnival—not as an abroga-
tion of the statute but as the escape clause within it.
12. For an overview of such research through 2001, see William F. Fry, “Humor and
the Brain: A Selective Review,” Humor: International Journal of Humor Research
15, no. 3 (2002): 305-33. More recently, an MRI study has concluded that humor
engages a subcortical reward system in the brain, including an area that has
also been implicated in “self-reported happiness . . . and cocaine/amphetamine-
induced euphoria.” Dean Mobbs et al., “Humor Modulates the Mesolimbic Re-
ward Centers,” Neuron 40, no. 5 (2003): 1045.
13. One category that lies just outside the scope of this essay is based not on the
A/B payoff but on the link that bridges these two elements. Puns and similar
wordplay, along with ingenious situational links in the narrative and dramatic
arts, and occasionally even “visual puns” such as those Arcimboldo achieves in
his composite portraits—all of these provide what could be termed the “high-
resolution effect,” where the link itself is foregrounded and offers the cogni-
tive satisfaction of coherence imposed upon incongruity. Not a form of humor
solely in itself, and comparable in its effect to palindromes, anagrams, and such,
this perfect fit imposed suddenly on otherwise incongruous elements typically

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 86   Farber

e­ nhances, and is enhanced by, one or more of the types of humorous payoff
discussed in this essay.
14. Cicero, De Oratore, vol. 1, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
­University Press, 1959), 372.
15. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 43.
16. I am using “scenario” here in a broad sense. The term is more precisely em-
ployed by the linguist Victor Raskin in his Semantic Mechanisms of Humor (Dor-
drecht, Netherlands: D. Reidel, 1985) to refer to a temporal script. “Script” itself
he defines as “a large chunk of semantic information surrounding the word or
evoked by it” (81). His analysis of jokes yields a rigorously worked out semantic
version of incongruity theory, in which the joke text is compatible, at least to
some extent, with two different scripts that are opposed in some way but that
overlap on the text.
17. Isaac Bashevis Singer, When Shlemiel Went to Warsaw and Other Stories, trans.
Isaac Bashevis Singer and Elizabeth Shuh (New York: Dell, 1968), 46.
18 Hobbes makes a similar point, going so far as to call laughter at the defects of
others “a signe of Pusillanimity” (Leviathan, 43).
19. Albert Rapp, The Origins of Wit and Humor (New York: Dutton, 1951), 57.
20. Erich Segal, The Death of Comedy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
2001), 453.
21. Sigmund Freud, The Joke and Its Relation to the Unconscious, trans. Joyce Crick
(New York: Penguin, 2003), 92-97.
22. Ibid., 134.
23. Freud refers to “a rebellion against the compulsions of logic and reality” (ibid.,
121).
24. For a summary of research by Willibald Ruch and others on the relationship
between personality type and the appreciation of nonsense humor, see Elliott
Oring, Engaging Humor (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 24-25.
25. Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (New York: Dover, 1993), 61.
26. Philip G. Downs, Classical Music: The Era of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven (New
York: W. W. Norton, 1992), 433.
27. Charles Rosen, The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, expanded ed. (New
York: W. W. Norton, 1997), 139.
28. Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Hélène Iswolsky (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1984).

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