An essay on the meaning of the comic.

Abstract

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What is a "Sebastian"?: A nonsensical look at the poetry of Yona Wallach

“…use of several possible meanings for the same word (Albeck-Gidron 2016). 23 As Henri Bergson explains in his Laughter, feelings of identification are laughter's great enemies, because if we identify with the source of mockery, it is reasonable we would not laugh but rather pity him (Bergson 1921(Bergson [1911). …”

Humorous nonsense and multimodality in British and American children's poetry

“…It owes its entire being to the structure of the sentence or to the choice of the words [...] In this case, it is language itself that becomes comic. (Bergson 2008(Bergson [1900 Despite those qualms two Polish translations of "A long tale" are briefly mentioned below.…”

“…In order to provide a summary of various theoretical strains raised in this article, I would like to refer to a well-known and influential short treatise on laughter and its source, the comical, by Henri Bergson (2008[1900). Although over a century old, Bergson's theory of humour appears to me attractive for a number of reasons.…”

“…That is, it is as if children's nonsense poetry takes the effect of hilariousness for granted. Indeed, Bergson (2008Bergson ( [1900: 56) even ventured the following general assumption: "A comic meaning is invariably obtained when an absurd idea is fitted into a well-established phrase form". Bergson refers here to the purely linguistic humour, but our analysis demonstrates that verbal and visual humour in children's nonsense literature work in tandem.…”

Something funny happened to reward

“…But especially when it comes to reward, incongruity detection appears to be a function at which the mesolimbic dopamine system excels [11,12], and the Stanford study lends credence to this idea. Of course there are other theories of humour, ranging from the expression of superiority [13] to the relief of suppressed internal conflict [14] to the correction of social injustices [15]. No imaging study has explored these very complex but undeniable aspects of humour.…”