Humorism, the Culture of Laughter

Authors

  • Luis Beltrán Almería Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15359/rl.2-68.1

Keywords:

laughter, humor, grotesque, traditional symbolism, Mikhail Bakhtin, Wolfgang Kayser

Abstract

Aesthetic categories are usually imprecise, but much more so are those revolving around the concept of laughter or humor. This imprecision has several causes: The first is the failure to consider types of communication previous to that of oral language. The second is to impose a unique — joyful and liberating — meaning on humorous phenomena. And a third error is to suppose that laughter is an exception in a context of seriousness. Seriousness would be natural and laughter exceptional. These problems entail the need for a unitary and primordial categorization, which accounts for the great evolution of cultural phenomena and the split between popular culture and wise culture. From the concept of grotesque, this article addresses the scope of the phenomena of laughter in the context of the great cultural evolution of humanity.

References

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Bajtín, Mijail. Teoría y estética de la novela. Madrid: Taurus, 1989.

Estébanez Calderón, Demetrio. Diccionario de términos literarios. Madrid: Alianza, 2000.

Kayser, Wolfgang. Lo grotesco: su realización en literatura y pintura. Madrid: Antonio Machado, 2010.

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Ortíz-Osés, Andrés, ed., Diccionario de hermenéutica. Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, 2004.

Souriau, Étienne, Diccionario de estética. Trad. I. Grassa y otros. Madrid: Akal, 2010.

Published

2020-07-06

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Section

Literary Studies (Estudios literarios )

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