Laughter
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~42,500 words · 202 passages
Cite this work
- APAHenri Bergson. (n.d.). Laughter. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/henri-bergson/laughter
- MLAHenri Bergson. "Laughter." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/henri-bergson/laughter.
- ChicagoHenri Bergson. Laughter. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/henri-bergson/laughter.
What it is about
Laughter (1900): what makes something funny.
Context and history
Bergson's answer: we laugh when a person behaves like a machine — rigid, repetitive, unable to adapt. Laughter is society's punishment for inflexibility. **Warning: the catalogue also holds 'Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic', which is the SAME work**; whether they are the same translation has not been checked. The case is open.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
already in the field. He none the less indicates, when discussing sundry example" 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 con¬ trast, 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,← Back to Henri Bergson