Introduction. Jokes of Repression
Introduction. Jokes of Repression

Summary/Abstract: In his Poetics, Aristotle famously defined comedy as “an imitation of inferior people.” However, as the philosopher specified, not every defect is an object of the comic ridicule: “The laughable is an error or disgrace that does not involve pain or destruction: for example, a comic mask is ugly and distorted, but it does not involve pain.” Aristotle’s equation of the laughable with painless mockery usefully points to several important aspects of laughter discussed in this cluster. The comic genre provides symbolic mechanisms for simultaneous description of and distancing from the disgraceful. [...]

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