A compelling instruction to the fundamental place of humor and comedy within Western culture-by one of its ideal exponents.

Compiled by an recognized get better at of comedy, this study reflects on the type of humor and the functions it serves. Why perform we laugh? What exactly are we to make of the pure variety of laughter, from braying and cackling to sniggering and chortling? Is definitely laughter subversive, or did it defuse dissent? Can we define wit?

Filled with illuminating ideas and a good many excellent jokes, the book critically examines various well-known theories of humor, like the idea that it springs from incongruity as well as the view it shows a mildly sadistic form of superiority to others. Drawing on an array of literary and philosophical sources, Terry Eagleton techniques from Aristotle and Aquinas to Hobbes, Freud, and Bakhtin, searching in particular at the psychoanalytical systems underlying humor and its social and politics evolution over the centuries.