Between Laughter and Satire

This book is an exploration of closely related aspects of the historically problematic notion of humour. As the study of humour has been dominated by work in psychology, linguistics, sociology and politics, this may be seen as a ground-clearing exercise to encourage more sustained historical analysis, and provide a fresh perspective on humour and its study.In Part 1, the authorexamine the claim that humour is universal with a genealogy of study reaching back to classical antiquity. Chapter 1 provides an alternative history for the formation of a concept of humour and its derivative, a sense of humour. Chapter 2 surveys the alterations in meaning involved in humour becoming a loan word in other languages. It analyses what might be meant by claiming that humour is universal; and it examines the falsifications involved in the standard genealogical approach to the history of humour theory. In the light of its conclusions, the second essay provides a wide-ranging assessment of the difficulties of treating humour with more historical care. The main topics are contextualisation and intentionality, translation and reception. Within this context, the third essay explores satire and its definition over its long history, dealing with dictionary definition, definition by origin and conceptual implication. In Chapter 5 the author discusses definition by forms of semantic relationship and satire as a definable genre. It ends with attention to satiric definition. In the final essay, the author provides a case study of humour in recent history, an analysis of the important and influential Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister BBC television satires. It illustrates how satiric humour can carry modulated theories of politics into popular culture and get taken as reflections of political reality; and how the actual practice of language use in politics is subject to satire in the programs. Throughout the work humour is used to cast light on wider issues that are frequently discussed independently of its potentially complicating presence.