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Laughter : an Essay on the Meaning of the Comic By: Henri Bergson (1859-1941) |
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AN ESSAY ON THE MEANING OF THE COMIC
BY HENRI BERGSON
MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE PROFESSOR AT THE COLLEGE DE FRANCE AUTHORISED TRANSLATION BY CLOUDESLEY BRERETON L. ES L. (PARIS), M.A. (CANTAB) AND FRED
ROTHWELL B.A. (LONDON)
TRANSLATORS' PREFACE
This work, by Professor Bergson, has been revised in detail by the
author himself, and the present translation is the only authorised one.
For this ungrudging labour of revision, for the thoroughness with which
it has been carried out, and for personal sympathy in many a difficulty
of word and phrase, we desire to offer our grateful acknowledgment to
Professor Bergson. It may be pointed out that the essay on Laughter
originally appeared in a series of three articles in one of the leading
magazines in France, the Revue de Paris. This will account for the
relatively simple form of the work and the comparative absence of
technical terms. It will also explain why the author has confined
himself to exposing and illustrating his novel theory of the comic
without entering into a detailed discussion of other explanations
already in the field. He none the less indicates, when discussing
sundry examples, why the principal theories, to which they have given
rise, appear to him inadequate. To quote only a few, one may mention
those based on contrast, exaggeration, and degradation. The book has been highly successful in France, where it is in its
seventh edition. It has been translated into Russian, Polish, and
Swedish. German and Hungarian translations are under preparation. Its
success is due partly to the novelty of the explanation offered of the
comic, and partly also to the fact that the author incidentally
discusses questions of still greater interest and importance. Thus, one
of the best known and most frequently quoted passages of the book is
that portion of the last chapter in which the author outlines a general
theory of art. C. B. F. R. CONTENTS
CHAPTER I THE COMIC IN GENERAL THE COMIC ELEMENT IN FORMS AND
MOVEMENTS EXPANSIVE FORCE OF THE COMIC
CHAPTER II THE COMIC ELEMENT IN SITUATIONS AND THE COMIC ELEMENT IN WORDS
CHAPTER III THE COMIC IN CHARACTER
CHAPTER I THE COMIC IN GENERAL THE COMIC ELEMENT IN FORMS AND
MOVEMENTS EXPANSIVE FORCE OF THE COMIC.
What does laughter mean? What is the basal element in the laughable?
What common ground can we find between the grimace of a merry andrew, a
play upon words, an equivocal situation in a burlesque and a scene of
high comedy? What method of distillation will yield us invariably the
same essence from which so many different products borrow either their
obtrusive odour or their delicate perfume? The greatest of thinkers,
from Aristotle downwards, have tackled this little problem, which has a
knack of baffling every effort, of slipping away and escaping only to
bob up again, a pert challenge flung at philosophic speculation. Our
excuse for attacking the problem in our turn must lie in the fact that
we shall not aim at imprisoning the comic spirit within a definition.
We regard it, above all, as a living thing. However trivial it may be,
we shall treat it with the respect due to life. We shall confine
ourselves to watching it grow and expand. Passing by imperceptible
gradations from one form to another, it will be seen to achieve the
strangest metamorphoses. We shall disdain nothing we have seen. Maybe
we may gain from this prolonged contact, for the matter of that,
something more flexible than an abstract definition, a practical,
intimate acquaintance, such as springs from a long companionship. And
maybe we may also find that, unintentionally, we have made an
acquaintance that is useful. For the comic spirit has a logic of its
own, even in its wildest eccentricities. It has a method in its
madness. It dreams, I admit, but it conjures up, in its dreams, visions
that are at once accepted and understood by the whole of a social
group. Can it then fail to throw light for us on the way that human
imagination works, and more particularly social, collective, and
popular imagination? Begotten of real life and akin to art, should it
not also have something of its own to tell us about art and life? At the outset we shall put forward three observations which we look
upon as fundamental... Continue reading book >>
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Genres for this book |
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Comedy |
Literature |
Philosophy |
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