“Humor,” E. B. White tells us, “can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.” We’ll test White’s tongue-in-cheek observation, as we track the development of comic theory (or theories, really) in the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Schopenhauer, Santayana, and Freud. We’ll then apply these theories to the works of Lewis Carroll, Kurt Vonnegut, Dorothy Parker, Wendy Cope, William McGonogall, and others. In the spirit of John Morreall’s study of the field, we’ll take laughter seriously. And we’ll aim to keep the frog on life support.

Texts:

• John Morreall. Taking Laughter Seriously. State University of New York Press. [0873956435]
• John Morreall. The Philosophy of Laughter and Humor. State University of New York Press. [0887063276]
• Lewis Carroll (Martin Gardner, ed.). The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition. W. W. Norton. [ 0393048470]
• Kurt Vonnegut. Slaughterhouse-Five. Dial Press. [0385333846]
• Peter Washington (ed.). Comic Poems. Everyman’s Library. [0375413545]
• D. B. Wyndham Lewis and Charles Lee (eds.). The Stuffed Owl: An Anthology of Bad Verse. NYRB Classics. [1590170385]