The Morality of Laughter

Bibliography

Bibliography Many of the best recent books on laughter, such Barry Sanders, Sudden Glory: Laughter as Subversive History (Boston: Beacon, 1995), are by literary scholars. Useful studies of satire include Alvin Kernan’s The Cankered Muse: Satire of the English Renaissance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959) and The Plot of Satire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), as well as Dustin Grif‹n’s Satire: A Critical Reintroduction (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1994). Wayne C. Booth’s A Rhetoric of Irony (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974) and Morton Gurewitch’s The Ironic Temper and the Comic Imagination (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994) are the best studies of the dominant genre of our day. Other books that deserve mention are Harry Levin, Playboys and Killjoys: An Essay on the Theory and Practice of Comedy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987) and Peter L. Berger, Redeeming Laughter: The Comic Dimension of Human Experience (New York: De Gruyter, 1997). Recent philosophical treatments of laughter include Ted Cohen’s rambling and unfunny Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999) and John Portmann’s scholarly When Bad Things Happen to Other People (New York: Routledge, 2000) (an analysis of schadenfreude). While not a study of laughter, Judith Shklar’s Ordinary Vices (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984) are often comic vices too. See also John Morreall, Taking Laughter Seriously (Albany: SUNY Press, 1983). While laughter has generally escaped their attention, philosophers, economists , and evolutionary theorists have written extensively on the emotions. Philosophic studies include Derek Par‹t, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986); Richard Wollheim, On the Emotions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999); Simon Blackburn, Ruling Passions: A Theory of Practical Reasoning (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); and Ronald de Sousa, The Rationality of Emotion (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997). For an analysis of emotions from an economic perspective, see Gary S. Becker, Accounting for Tastes (Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 1996); Robert Frank, Passions Within Reason (New York: Norton, 1988); and Thomas C. Schelling, Choice and Consequence (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984). Psychologist Paul Ekman’s studies of facial signaling buttress economic explanations of laughter as a signaling device. See Paul Ekman, ed., Darwin and Facial Expression: A Century of Research in Review (New York: Academic, 1973). One of the most in›uential students of the emotions is Jon Elster, whose work is strongly interdisciplinary. See Ulysses Unbound (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Strong Feelings: Emotion , Addiction, and Human Behavior (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999); Alchemies of the Mind: Rationality and the Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Sour Grapes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). Sociological and psychological examinations of laughter may be found in Humor: International Journal of Humor Research. 219 Adams, Henry. Mont Saint Michel and Chartres. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986. Adorno, Theodor W. The Jargon of Authenticity. Kurt Tarnowski and Frederic Will, trans. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Re›ections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983. Annas, Julia. The Morality of Happiness. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Apte, Mahadev L. 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