With a clearer understanding of the way humor works, we might be better able to give it the attention it deserves when we study and teach the arts. But where do we turn to find a theoretical framework for the study of hu mor? one that will help to clarify the role that humor plays in the arts and that will help us as well to understand differences in the way individual perceivers respond to humor in art?

A superiority theory of humor emerged in classical times and more or less held the stage through the seventeenth century; now, however, though an occasional attempt to revive it is still made, superiority theory is usually regarded as far too narrow in scope to be useful as a general account of hu mor. What are commonly referred to as" release"(or, occasionally," relief") theories? and associated with Spencer and Freud? were for a time very in fluential, but are somewhat narrow too in their own way, and furthermore, as Noel Carroll puts it," have the liability of presupposing hydraulic views of the mind that are highly dubious." Incongruity theory, which has been around in one form or another since at least the eighteenth century, domi nates contemporary humor theory but is still widely regarded as not quite there yet. And so humor remains somewhat mysterious and elusive. Or not even that. It may be that most people, even teachers in the arts, bypass theory entirely and simply accept humor as a given: an unanalyzable fact of human life. I've sometimes wondered if it may be that we don't want to understand humor, either because we're afraid that this understanding will spoil the game or, just possibly, because we sense that, as a consequence of it, we may discover things about ourselves that we would prefer not to