An Essay on Laughter Book Reviews

An Essay on Laughter by James Sully Book Summary

James Sully (3 March 1842 – 1 November 1923)[1] was an English psychologist.

His main written works includes Studies of Childhood, Fear: Psychological Study of the Causes and Effects, etc.

The book discusses about an interesting topic of Laughter, on ITS FORMS, ITS CAUSES, ITS DEVELOPMENT AND ITS VALUE.

A writer who undertakes to discourse on laughter has to encounter more than one variety of irritating objection. He finds to his dismay that a considerable part of his species, which has been flatteringly described as the laughing animal, has never exercised its high and distinguishing capacity. Nay, more, he soon learns that a good many oppose themselves to the practice and are laughter-haters. This kind of person (ὁ μισόγελως) is so possessed with the spirit of seriousness that the opposite temper of jocosity appears to him to be something shockingly wrong. All audible laughter is for him an ill-bred display, at once unsightly as a bodily contortion, and, as a lapse from the gravity of reason, a kind of mental degradation. This estimate of laughter as something unseemly is well represented in Lord Chesterfield’s Letters, in which the writer congratulates himself on the fact that since he has had the full use of his reason nobody has ever heard him laugh. In some cases this feeling of repugnance towards mirth and fun takes on more of an ethical aspect. The laugher is identified with the scoffer at all things worthy and condemned as morally bad—a view illustrated in the saying of Pascal: “Diseur de bons mots, mauvais caractère”.

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An Essay on Laughter (James Sully) Book Reviews 2024

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