A Different Kind Of Laughter

Discovering joy from the most difficult moments of Jesus' life, this study points readers to a solid life replete with a different kind of laughter—the kind that survives life's deepest trials.

Do men and women laugh at the same things? Is laughter contagious? Has anyone ever really died laughing? Is laughing good for your health? Drawing upon ten years of research into this most common-yet complex and often puzzling-human phenomenon, Dr. Robert Provine, the world's leading scientific expert on laughter, investigates such aspects of his subject as its evolution, its role in social relationships, its contagiousness, its neural mechanisms, and its health benefits. This is an erudite, wide-ranging, witty, and long-overdue exploration of a frequently surprising subject.

First Published in 1999. This is Volume X of thirty-eight in the General Psychology series. Written in 1924, this book looks at the aspects such as wit and the ludicrous, varieties, causes, function and aesthetics of laughter and its place in civilisation.

From Thomas Hobbes' fear of the power of laughter to the compulsory, packaged "fun" of the contemporary mass media, Billig takes the reader on a stimulating tour of the strange world of humour. Both a significant work of scholarship and a novel contribution to the understanding of the humourous, this is a seriously engaging book' - David Inglis, University of Aberdeen This delightful book tackles the prevailing assumption that laughter and humour are inherently good. In developing a critique of humour the author proposes a social theory that places humour - in the form of ridicule - as central to social life. Billig argues that all cultures use ridicule as a disciplinary means to uphold norms of conduct and conventions of meaning. Historically, theories of humour reflect wider visions of politics, morality and aesthetics. For example, Bergson argued that humour contains an element of cruelty while Freud suggested that we deceive ourselves about the true nature of our laughter. Billig discusses these and other theories, while using the topic of humour to throw light on the perennial social problems of regulation, control and emancipation.

"An absolutely dazzling entertainment. . . . Arousing on every level—political, erotic, intellectual, and above all, humorous." —Newsweek "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting calls itself a novel, although it is part fairy tale, part literary criticism, part political tract, part musicology, and part autobiography. It can call itself whatever it wants to, because the whole is genius." —New York Times Rich in its stories, characters, and imaginative range, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is the novel that brought Milan Kundera his first big international success in the late 1970s. Like all his work, it is valuable for far more than its historical implications. In seven wonderfully integrated parts, different aspects of human existence are magnified and reduced, reordered and emphasized, newly examined, analyzed, and experienced.

Uncovering an archive of laughter, from the forbidden giggle to the explosive guffaw. Most of our theories of laughter are not concerned with laughter. Rather, their focus is the laughable object, whether conceived of as the comic, the humorous, jokes, the grotesque, the ridiculous, or the ludicrous. In Laughter, Anca Parvulescu proposes a return to the materiality of the burst of laughter itself. She sets out to uncover an archive of laughter, inviting us to follow its rhythms and listen to its tones. Historically, laughter—especially the passionate burst of laughter—has often been a faux pas. Manuals for conduct, abetted by philosophical treatises and literary and visual texts, warned against it, offering special injunctions to ladies to avoid jollity that was too boisterous. Returning laughter to the history of the passions, Parvulescu anchors it at the point where the history of the grimacing face meets the history of noise. In the civilizing process that leads to laughter's “falling into disrepute,” as Nietzsche famously put it, we can see the formless, contorted face in laughter being slowly corrected into a calm, social smile. How did the twentieth century laugh? Parvulescu points to a gallery of twentieth-century laughers and friends of laughter, arguing that it is through Georges Bataille that the century laughed its most distinct laugh. In Bataille's wake, laughter becomes the passion at the heart of poststructuralism. Looking back at the century from this vantage point, Parvulescu revisits four of its most challenging projects: modernism, the philosophical avant-gardes, feminism, and cinema. The result is an overview of the twentieth century as seen through the laughs that burst at some of its most convoluted junctures.

Humor and laughter play a vital part in our everyday social encounters. This book is concerned with the exploration of the psychology of humor and laughter by the foremost professional researchers in these areas. It examines the major theoretical perspectives underlying current approaches and it draws together for the first time the main empirical work done over the course of this century. Peter Berks brings this story up to the moment.The two major parts of the book deal with perception of and responses to humor, and its uses in society at large. The chapters themselves range from cognitive aspects of humor development, through the functions of humor and laughter in social interaction, to the use of humor by comedians and by the mass media. One of the general features of the volume is the concern with the variety of techniques and research methods which are used in studies aimed at understanding our responsiveness to humor and the contexts in which we create it.Humor and Laughter contains chapters by psychologists with longstanding research interests in humor and laughter, including Thomas R. Shultz, Mary K. Rothbart, Goran Nerhardt, Michael Godkewitsch, Walter E. O'Connell, and Harvey Mindess. Humor and Laughter presents wide-ranging theoretical, methodological, and empirical perspectives on an important area of human behavior and social interaction. This book should interest many behavioral scientists and practitioners, particularly those in social and clinical psychology, psychiatry, child psychology and education, sociology, and related disciplines.

Preface Part One: Laughter 1. Can There Be a Theory of Laughter? 2. The Superiority Theory 3. The Incongruity Theory 4. The Relief Theory 5. A New Theory Part Two: Humor 6. The Variety of Humor 7. Humor as Aesthetic Experience 8. Humor and Freedom 9. The Social Value of Humor 10. Humor and Life Notes Works Cited Index