The Stability of Laughter in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, or Quis est in malo humore … ego aut vos?

Taking its cue from recent work on the social and psychological dimensions of laughter, this article argues that a true understanding of the comic element in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man requires that we consider laughter from a real-world perspective, in effect, as a social signal evolved to communicate positive affect. Fluctuations of Stephen’s understanding of laughter as a social signal mirror the fluctuations of the novel’s structure. This parallel loses coherence, however, if laughter is considered independently of laughter’s universal association with joyous emotions. This is not to say that joy is always the dominant message every time a laugh appears on the face of Stephen and his classmates. The conflict that arises between the understanding that laughter always relates to joy, and the reality that joy is not always the dominant signified in contexts inspiring laughter, underlies much of Stephen’s characterization.