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Analysis ofLaughter. 17
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No. 127.—I. C
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Analysis Of Laughter
unites it with the ludicrous of idea . We have seen , in treating * of surprise , that on the sudden
interruption of one sensation b y another unusual sensation ( which neither by proper similarity , nor by effect of frequent previous combination , is harmoniously successive ) , a peculiarly lively emotion is developed . The
contrast gives an excitement , which wifliin certain limits may be highly pleasurable . The sensations which cause laughter are a succession of such contrasts or surprises . The peculiarities of the human nervous
system , by which the muscular contractions , in the easy spasmodic convulsions , which constitute that phenomenon , ensue , this is not the place to discuss ;—
it is enough to remark , that the friskings and gambols of the young of all animals are analogous phenomena , —their laughter , as it were , performed by other muscles . —the
demonstrations of high animal spirits , which , but for the rigidity of their facial muscles , might produce an appropriate expression of countenance . Man is not therefore so strictly alone , as a " laughing animal , " as he has been supposed .
Laughter is also produced , and the pleasurable excitement of which it is the effect and sign , by the ideas of the sensations which cause it . A child is convulsed with laughter when threatened with tickling , before the quick menacing finger
Analysis Of Laughter
touches it ;—it laughs by sympathy ( that is , by association ) when it sees others tickled , though they endure it firmly ; every one has experienced how laughter provokes laughter , and has found himself in the
somewhat foolish-looking scrape of having to enquire the joke , after being carried away involuntarily by the roar which met it . But there is a vast class of ludicrous circumstances , of
which the source of power is not so obvious . The principle by which trains of thought , complicated sets of ideas , possess the power of exciting this very peculiar enjoyment , is a matter of far more difficult _analysis .
The explanation , ordinarily offered and accepted , is , —that " the essence of the ludicrous is incongruity "—or that the ridiculousness of a proposition depends upon the excitement of a
feeling of incongruity ;—and from the prevalence of this explanation ' ludicrous' and * incongruous' have become almost synonymous terms ; though in truth they are but to a very limited extent convertible .
There are serious as well as laughable incongruities , incongruities of word and thought , of promise and _performance
desert and reward , occasion and disposition , " the passion and the power / ' which are surely no examples of the ludicrous . Required—then—the denning characteristic of the ludicrous
incongruities , or contrasts , by which this class is cut out of the diversified multitude ?
Analysis Oflaughter. 17
Analysis ofLaughter . 17
No. 127.—I. C
No . 127 . —I . C
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 1, 1837, page 17, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/mrp_01071837/page/15/
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