Comedy: An Essay on Comedy

Rating:
Summary: Euphoria
Review: Bergson offers a taxonomy of laughter. The description is concise, realistic, and rife with examples. He begins with a broad definition of anything that is laughable and further narrows the definition where appropriate. Never have I encountered an example not explainable by this.

Rating:
Summary: The best theoretical study of comedy available
Review: Bergson's _Laughter_ has been out of print for too long. It's the best theoretical study of comedy available. A meditation by the great philosopher of "elan vital" about our natural response to humans acting mechanically, _Laughter_ is also about the nuts and bolts of comedy. Moliere is the main model, but it works for Shakespeare, Chaplin and Preston Sturges just as well.

Rating:
Summary: Henri Bergson is brilliant.
Review: Henri Bergson describes why we laugh, and subdivides this description further into three characteristics. Each of these characteristics is then divided further occassionally. Example: >We laugh at mechanical rigidity. The three types are repetition, inversion, and reciprocal interference of series. An example of repetition is a frozen facial expression (repetition) and is comical only if it's imitatable.< Then he proceeds to give examples of word play, character, actions, etc which illustrate his points.