Laughter

People laugh at the biggest variety of things. Ranging from puppies, to a funny interview seen on YouTube, to a montage of people hurting themselves for laughter, we can laugh due to almost anything. Lately in pop culture, there has been a lot of backlash towards the source of laughter. In movies, we see girls laughing when they make fun of another person, we see boys laughing when they pull a harmful prank on another guy, and people are generally laughing at other (s) misfortunes. Laughter as an entire concept has been blamed on this, but it seems more plausible that the source of laughter comes from the person laughing and what makes them the person they are, not from the theory of laughter itself. Back home in Juneau, AK I have a group…

Laughter is incredibly powerful. Eugene P. Bertin once said "There is a purifying power in laughter. It is truth in palatable form. It is instant vacation. Seeing the comical side of many situations makes life a great deal easier. It 's like riding through life on sensitive springs that ease every jolt.". There is so much truth in this quote and it can easily be broken into three main points. Those points would have to be laugher is a purifying power, laughter makes even the toughest situations…

of people in one place, and the notion of carnival reduced laughter begin shaping literary work through its mode of narration, structure and characters. I would like to focus on the way laughter is incorporated into the narration of The Idiot and on what functionality it is aimed to serve. In his work on Rabelais and the history of laughter, Bakhtin presents a transition that laughter underwent in literary tradition from Renaissance period towards XVIII and XIX centuries. Notably, having…

I had planned on starting this paper with a joke that would have hopefully made you laugh. Then, I would have explained how laughter can make us feel better and all the work your body does when we laugh. After a full class period of scouring the internet for the perfect joke that could make anyone laugh, I realized a few things. First, reading a joke to yourself from a piece of paper or screen does not convey the same effect that occurs when someone else tells the joke. The tone of the…

“But hardly had he succeeded in regaining a straight face than he glanced again, as if involuntarily, at Razumikhin, and broke down once more: the smothered laughter burst out all the more uncontrollably for the powerful restraint he had put on it before” (Dostoevsky 210). In an attempt to maintain his facade of an innocent man, Raskolnikov intentionally laughs at Razumikhin as they approach Porfiry’s door. Fearful that Porfiry will deceive him, Raskolnikov presents himself as a carefree man to…

Have you ever made someone laugh so hard they start crying? For me that is one of the most incomparable feelings you can feel, because not only are you experiencing your joy, you’re feeling that other person's joy too. Laughter can make you feel captivated even in the darkest of times. People can use laughter as a way to tell their story or get things off their chest in a different way. Humor can be a different way of telling a story or giving voice to something. Humor, for me allows me to share…

Value of Laughter in Medicine”, it can. Evidence in both articles indicates that laughter can be used to improve health. In the article “Carry on Laughing”, Roger Dobson relates how recent studies performed by various colleges and hospitals proved that laughter can be beneficial to health (2008). One study was performed on a group of mothers with babies diagnosed with eczema. The research involved showing them a funny film. The mothers that laughed had higher levels of melatonin in their…

In “Laughing at Mr. Darcy: Wit & Sexuality in Pride & Prejudice”, Elvira Casal celebrates Elizabeth Bennet’s laughter. Casal justly describes how Elizabeth’s laughter in the novel equates to flirtation and eroticism. However, if flirtation and eroticism were the only significance for the role of laughter in the novel, the status of Elizabeth Bennet would then be reduced from being Austen’s heroine of Pride and Prejudice to being a sex object. Elizabeth’s laughter is different: it creates a sense…

Everyone loves a good laugh every now and again….. There are three main humor theories written by Freud, Hobbes, and Bergson covering everything from we laugh as a release mechanism to we laugh out of superiority. Sigmund Freud’s theory over humor serves the purpose to explain why we laugh at the times we do. In Freud’s theory he explains laughter as a release mechanism to let go of tension you may have. In his theory he describes how when a joke is being told tension builds up behind a…

According to the Oxford Dictionary, a laugh is the making the spontaneous sounds and movements of the face and body that are the instinctive expressions of lively amusement and sometimes also of derision. On a fundamental level, this is what makes laughter art. It is an universal form of expression, its meaning understood worldwide. You do not have to speak the same language as someone, to understand the emotions conveyed in a laugh. The definition of laughter can manifest in a myriad of ways.…