Thesis (D. Min.)--Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, 2005. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 155-160).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 155-160).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, 2005. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 155-160).

This thesis examines the responses of several thinkers to the question of laughter according to a thematic division of critical concerns. A reflexive focus is adopted querying the diversity of such responses. Contextual assumptions are considered as crucially informing each individual interpretation. Laughter is here approached from three distinct perspectives each treated in three respective chapters. 1. ‘Laughter, Society and Play’ interrogates those border territories where laughter arises. Arthur Koestler here initiates an examination of laughter’s social or formal determinants which takes in alternative contributions from Henri Bergson and Wyndham Lewis. Helmuth Plessner’s work is then appropriated in order to situate this debate. It is proposed that the social role of laughter is best understood under the aspect of communal play. 2. In ‘Laughter and the Play of the Psyche’ Freud’s work traces a trajectory from the passivity of laughter to the agency of the instigator. The arousal of laughter is then read according to the grammatical persons as distinguished from discrete individuals. Freud recognises a latent infancy in laughter which is examined with respect to his ongoing thinking. Here a complex relationship between anticipation and imagination emerges from reading Freud’s early joke-book through his later considerations on play and phantasy. 3. ‘Laughter and Being in Play’ suggests that the adoption of a broadly comic or tragic paradigm will fundamentally inform laughter’s local reception. Charles Baudelaire’s thought is explored here as he proposes laughter to be symptomatic of both Original Sin and of prefigured redemption. In this context Hegel, Kierkegaard, Leopardi, de Man and Dante each provide individual perspectives on the intersection of laughter, guilt and redemption which is then treated in the light of Georges Bataille’s radical account of laughter as an encounter with the unknown.

This thesis will counter the argument that farce is a simplistic dramatic form low in the theatrical hierarchy and demonstrate that it is both complex and multifaceted. It will be shown to have a long history and to have influenced many different dramatic forms. The thesis is in two sections. The first will explore farce in general, and the second will use the sitcom Fawlty Towers as a case study in order to explore the televisual mode and its relevance to the contemporary context. The question “What is farce?” will be answered in detail, thus developing an unambiguous perception of the genre which will form a contextual basis for the rest of the thesis. Recurring themes will be used to link chapters together and certain issues raised in early chapters will be expanded upon in later ones. A key aspect to be taken into consideration is the importance the physical plays in farce. Thus, my focus will be specifically on performance texts, and not limit itself to the “literary” texts. The theatrical hierarchy will be addressed directly, exploring why and how the genre has been delegated to the lowest rung of the hierarchical ladder. Such a classification will be destabilised and shown to be unfounded because it is based on such assumptions as tragedy being the “best” genre because it is tragedy, and farce the worst because it is farce. The conclusions made in this section will then be demonstrated by approaching farce in a more oblique manner through an exploration of Commedia dell’Arte and Medieval Carnival. This will reveal the extent to which farce and/or its techniques have manifested themselves. Fawlty Towers will be introduced to determine how farce has translated to the televisual medium. Fawlty Towers is useful because, unlike the “literary texts” studied earlier, its recordings provide visual/aural examples which are more practical in exploring farce’s physical characteristics. The farcical aspects of Commedia and Carnival will be re-explored to show how they have evolved and manifested themselves in the sitcom form. Integral to the thesis is a study on laughter. Various laughter theories will be studied in relation to Fawlty Towers to establish that, like farce, laughter is also a complicated subject matter worthy of study. Through association, farce is shown to be even more complex. The thesis concludes with an analysis of the Fawlty Towers performance text to illustrate farce’s multifaceted nature, and that it can, and should, be taken “seriously”. The series’ “closed world” will be examined to discover how it ideally suits the farcical paradigm. Then, using Victorian beliefs and ethics as a contextual base, I explore how farce parodies this outdated value system as it is played out anachronistically through the character of Basil Fawlty. The thesis terminates with a brief conclusion summing up what was analysed, while affirming that the premise proposed in the introduction has been achieved.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Western Australia, 2004.

Thèse complémentaire--Université de Paris. / "Bibliographie": p. 169-170.

This thesis labors to unpack Georges Bataille’s enigmatic statement, “to laugh is to think”, treating this “impossible thought” as a paradigmatic expression of Bataille’s self-characterized “philosophy of laughter.” Overall, this thesis interrogates Bataille’s “philosophy of laughter” as an attempt to stimulate an “awakening” of consciousness to the dissolution of consciousness. En route, this thesis argues that such an “awakening” evokes a privileged expression of the movement of “communication” around which Bataille’s theoretical writing is structured, positing the “philosophy of laughter” as an effort to solder the movement of “communication” through the domain of epistemology itself.

This thesis explores the relationship between theology and laughter. It adopts the Superiority theory, confirmed through biblical and theological analyses. Chapter 1 discusses recent theologies of humor and outlines the occasion for the present one. Chapter 2 begins with an historical review of the church's attitude towards laughter and discusses humor's relationship to major areas of theology. Chapter 3 traces the development of the Superiority Theory and contends that much of our laughter is the ridiculing of a butt. Laughter performs a didactic function when it enforces a moral perspective by mocking deviants. Chapter 4 combs Scripture to confirm the theory. Chapter 5 observes that because of competing perspectives, laughter must have an eschatological dimension. It concludes that Heaven will contain the sounds of joy and triumph, defeat and derision. Chapter 6 discusses the implications for a postmodern context and makes application by affirming the role of humor in preaching. / This item is only available to students and faculty of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. If you are not associated with SBTS, this dissertation may be purchased from <a href="http://disexpress.umi.com/dxweb">http://disexpress.umi.com/dxweb</a> or downloaded through ProQuest's Dissertation and Theses database if your institution subscribes to that service.

Laughter is a socioemotional cue that is characteristically positive and historically served to facilitate social bonding. Like other communicative gestures (e.g., facial expressions, groans, sighs), however, the interpretation of laughter is no longer bound to a particular affective state. Thus, an important question is how basic psychological mechanisms, such as early sensory arousal, emotion evaluation, and meaning representation, contribute to the interpretation of laughter in different contexts. A related question is how brain dynamic processes reflect these different aspects of laughter comprehension. The present study addressed these questions using event-related potentials (ERP) to examine laughter comprehension within a cross-modal priming paradigm. Target stimuli were visually presented words, which were preceded by either laughs or environmental sounds (500 ms versions of the International Affective Digitized Sounds, IADS). The study addressed four questions: (1) Does emotion priming lead to N400 effects? (2) Do positive and negative sounds elicit different neurocognitive responses? (3) Are there laughter-specific ERPs? (4) Can laughter priming of good and bad concepts be reversed under social anxiety? Four experiments were conducted. In all four experiments, participants were asked to make speeded judgments about the valence of the target words. Experiments 1-3 examined behavioral effects of emotion priming using variations on this paradigm. In Experiment 4, participants performed the task while their electroencephalographic (EEG) data were recorded. After six experimental blocks, a mood manipulation was administered to activate negative responses to laughter. The task was then repeated. Accuracy and reaction time showed a small but significant priming effect across studies. Surprisingly, N400 effects of emotion priming were absent. Instead, there was a later (~400–600 ms) effect over orbitofrontal electrodes (orbitofrontal priming effect, OPE). Valence-specific effects were observed in the early posterior negativity (EPN, ~275 ms) and in the late positive potential (LPP, ~600 ms). Laughter-specific effects were observed over orbitofrontal sites beginning approximately 200 ms after target onset. Finally, the OPE was observed for laughs before and after the mood manipulation. The direction of priming did not reverse, contrary to hypothesis. Interestingly, the OPE was observed for IADS only prior to the mood manipulation, providing some evidence for laughter-specific effects in emotion priming. These findings question the N400 as a marker of emotion priming and contribute to the understanding of neurocognitive stages of laughter perception. More generally, they add to the growing literature on the neurophysiology of emotion and emotion representation.