LIT 345 Laughter, Literature, and Culture
This course considers why we laugh and what we laugh at. In many ways, it is easier to explain tragedy than it is to understand comedy and, indeed, laughter is often neglected in literary criticism that concentrates on so-called "high" culture. Moreover, if we examine humor too closely then we risk ruining, or at least losing sight of, the joke. Nonetheless, the course offers an investigation into the literary and cultural functions of laughter. Laughter is sometimes warm, but can also be dark, aggressive, or even cruel. Socrates even argued that comedy and tragedy are in fact two versions of the same thing. Laughter is culturally, ethnically, and gender specific, and jokes are notoriously hard to translate or explain across such borders. Throughout this course, students will explore different subgenres of comedy, from wit and satire, to slapstick and farce; they will read a broad range of texts from novels and poems to cartoons, films, and stand-up comedy. Primary readings will be complemented by a range of critical material, including work by Freud, Bergson, and Bakhtin. By the end of the course, students will gain a fuller understanding of the psychological and cultural complexity of laughter as well as the diverse representations of comedy in literature without, hopefully, losing their own senses of humor.
Prerequisite
LC 100 and LC 110