Salvatore Attardo: Encyclopedia of Humor Studies

Humor 2015; 28(4): 641–646 Book Review Salvatore Attardo, ed. 2014. Encyclopedia of Humor Studies. 2 vols. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. 928 pp. ISBN: 781-412-9990-90. GBP 220.00 Reviewed by Władysław Chłopicki, Department of English, Jagiellonian University, Mickiewicza 9A, 31-120 Kraków, Poland, E-mail: chlopicki@gmail.com DOI 10.1515/humor-2015-0100 Well, I have never read an encyclopedia before but I have now found that one can, and I am none the worse for absorbing these two hardbound volumes of over 900 pages. In fact, it has been a great learning experience. Of course, you cannot read an encyclopedia as you might read a novel. I started with the Foreword by late William F. Fry and then read an informative Introduction where the Editor-in-Chief tells us that the Encyclopedia is “unabashedly an American (in the narrow sense of the United States) work,” but that it expanded as much as it could to Asia, including the Far East, and Africa. He also admits that, bulky as it is, it cannot be considered exhaustive: for example, separate entries on the majority of literary humorists have not been included. A typically American disclaimer follows: “readers should be aware that some humor is obscene, aggressive, and sexual in nature […] and may be offended or shocked” (1: xxix) – thank you, Mr. Editor, I duly looked forward to being shocked! The editor also admits that some entries were developed from scratch, as the fields in question were being “literally codified,” while other entries for similar reasons could only be partial. He rightly praises the value of synthesis. Since the encyclopedia is primarily intended for college students – and also for the media, where so much nonsense is said about humor studies – accessibility was an important aim. Reviewing the list of 220 contributors, I found the great majority originating from the United States, as well as Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, although a number of scholars are included from Japan, China, and Continental Europe. This pattern largely reflects the composition of the International Society for Humor Studies, where North Americans constitute about 50% of the members and the Anglo-Saxon group as a whole exceeds 80%. Nevertheless, the major sociologists of humor Christie Davies and Elliott Oring and the humor philosophers Lydia Amir and Sammy Basu do not figure among the authors, and although the work of the first two is discussed, I did not find a single reference to Amir in the huge and impressive aggregate index of almost one hundred pages (compared to 33 pages in Raskin’s 2007 Primer of Humor Research and 25 pages in Martin’s 2008 Psychology of Humor). Brought to you by | Universität Osnabrück Authenticated Download Date | 1/30/16 9:22 PM 642 Book Review Also missing from the index is an entry on disaster humor, as are names of other major European scholars such as Isabel Ermida, Dorota Brzozowska, and Jan Chovanec, reflecting a lack of discussion of Central and Eastern European scholarship. Fortunately, books such as Polish Humor (2012) and Hungarian Humor (2012) have recently appeared in English and a book on Czech Humor is forthcoming, so we can hope that this knowledge gap will be filled and such publications reach mainstream humor research. Following these initial forays, I went back to browse through the list of over 330 entries and also the Reader’s Guide, which lists the entries in terms of subjects of humor, types of humor and research disciplines. Here I paused to reflect: is this meant to be an encyclopedia of humor or of humor studies? Listed among the humor subject headings are culture, antiquity, history, the entertainment industry, literature and major literary figures, mathematics, computer science and the Internet, performing arts, politics, as well as the professions of business, education, and law. Types of humor include national, ethnic, regional, and visual, while research disciplines include anthropology, folklore and ethnicity, linguistics, literature, philosophy and religion, physiology and biology, the professions (some also appearing as subjects), psychology (a large discipline with ten subheadings) and sociology. Unsurprisingly perhaps, the evident overlap between types and subjects persists throughout the encyclopedia. The headings on humor theory, components of humor and sense of humor stand out as meta-entries, and it is here that the curious reader will probably look for answers to questions such as what humor actually is. In fact, there is no entry for humor as such, either in the encyclopedia itself or in the index, unless one looks under humor as an “umbrella term” covering all its synonyms and all phenomena of the funny, as appears in the entries on the etymology of humor and on positive psychology. The search for basic definitions is thus frustrating (e.g., “[t]here is disagreement on how to define sense of humor”, 2: 682). These ought to be available if the field is to reach a final stage of maturity. In fact this is the starting point for all my own students’ theses: “[i]n spite of thousands of years of research, scholars have not been able to define humor.” Is this true or not? The encyclopedia does offer attempts such as: “humor invites us to abandon the usual (serious) ways of thinking” (1: 361), “humor is a subset of creativity” (1: 181) or “humor is a psychological state characterized by the positive emotion of amusement and the tendency to laugh” (1:75). Here, I am reminded of Rod Martin’s complex though apt definition, which again I have not found in the encyclopedia: “[h]umor is a broad term that refers to anything people say or do that is perceived as funny and tends to make others laugh, as well as the mental processes that go into both creating and perceiving such an amusing stimulus, and also the affective response involved in the enjoyment of it” (The Psychology of Humor, 2007: 5). Brought to you by | Universität Osnabrück Authenticated Download Date | 1/30/16 9:22 PM Book Review 643 There is a revealing central entry on comedy, although it begins by giving a cold shower to the uninitiated reader hoping for easy answers, by stating – rightly it seems – that “any literary or artistic genre involving character portrayal may take comic shape” (1: 140) and then providing a long list which emphasizes the discovery of comic patterns in unsuspected places such as Kafka, Hardy or the Bible. This is followed by a robust and satisfying overview of major Western playwrights and trends in comedy, although I must raise my hand for the missing nineteenth-century Aleksander Fredro of Poland (cf. Brzozowska and Chłopicki, eds, Polish Humor, 2012: 57–78). What in my view the encyclopedia lacks is a glossary of major terms giving pithy definitions, but since neither Raskin nor Martin nor Attardo have so far attempted this, maybe it has not been feasible. The cross-references which follow the entries do help compensate, although a young scholar might feel frustrated at encountering thirty “See also” references after the five-page long entry on History of Humor: Modern and Contemporary Europe. A reviewer must also note the lack of a collected bibliography for all the entries, since currently it is not easy to discover if a particular study is cited or not. The extra features of the work do include the “first-ever” Chronology of Humor Events and Publications, from which I learned that the earliest political joke was recorded in Egypt in 2600 BCE. Does this abbreviation mean before the Christian era; and what about 0 CE (sic) given as the “traditional date of the birth of Christ”? Was there ever such a year? There are a few doubtful entries, seemingly added for the sake of general readership, such as the founding of Rome, the discovery of America (no Declaration of Independence, though), World War I (no entry for World War II) and the “traditional span of the romantic movement in Europe”, along with life spans for various individual authors who are not necessarily associated with many humorous works (e.g., the Russian author Pushkin). Cutting such entries or placing a general timeline separately would both have been viable options. But perhaps such quirks are inevitable in a discipline such as humor studies and the difficult decisions are always the editor’s. Having reviewed the organization of the encyclopedia, I delved into its actual contents and became completely absorbed. There are many memorable and well-structured items among both the longer and shorter ones, including some surprisingly lengthy and detailed entries on visual humor, plus a solid section on the history of humor (almost fifty consecutive pages) and many scattered although no less informative contributions on ancient humor and on humor in religion, plus a very short entry entitled Jokes. Particularly noteworthy are the articles on linguistics, including a lucid piece entitled Linguistics, where the allegedly imperialistic discipline deploys all its powerful tools to claim importantly that contemporary humor research “depends heavily” (2: 459) on Brought to you by | Universität Osnabrück Authenticated Download Date | 1/30/16 9:22 PM 644 Book Review linguistics, particularly in its semantic and pragmatic subfields. It also argues that “humor offers a window to the mind, with or without language” (2: 458); in other words that humor is conceptual. The matching major article on Sociology emphasizes humor’s “fundamental ambiguity that makes its ‘real’ meaning impossible to establish” (2: 714). Perhaps this is why, although humor plays “an important role in everyday interaction”, it is “not central to big social structures and processes” (2: 712). Just like the enlightening article on the Psychology of humor (2: 604–607), this one emphasizes its own preferred methods and perspectives for future research and briefly describes the important sub-disciplines of the field. Let me also reassure the reader that there is a fine entry on the Philosophy of Humor discussing the three major theories and claiming towards the end that “there is no version of the incongruity theory that satisfies everyone” (2: 568). Among the several exceptional entries is one on Greek Visual Humor, which is captivating owing to its apt illustrations of ancient vases and succinct analysis of their still-comprehensible humor – although I would challenge its claim that satyrs are “comic figures per se” (1: 272). The satyr, described elsewhere as an “amoral hedonist … boastful but cowardly”, needs by no means be comic – consider Putin as a contemporary example. This insight into humor’s essential ambiguity correlates with the entry on speech-play that locates play in language, in discourse forms and in sociolinguistic situations, which renders it sometimes humorous and sometimes “deeply serious and significant” (2: 728). Another article underscores the value of the comic attitude in the twenty-first century as more beneficial and flexible than the tragic (1: 160), which accords with Pirandello’s view that “modern writers cannot be anything but humorous [as] they must dismantle humanity’s illusory constructions” and thus brings out the incongruities (2: 572). Another remarkable article is that on Humor in Music, which gives a sound overview (no pun intended) of types of musical incongruity, including an actual example from a Haydn score (2: 532); while the entry on mathematics as an analytical tool for humor boggles the mind of a naïve reader with its account of the totally unrepeatable Van der Pol oscillator equation (2: 490). Among definite surprises is the article on national and ethnic differences. It manages to combine many divergent insights into a two-page article, emphasizing “an inherent incomprehension” connected with the problem of conveying a purportedly universal humor to different audiences. Also of interest is the choice of groups or nations that are “popularly recognized [by whom?] as possessing a particular sense of humor” including African Americans, the British, Chinese, Jews and Russians (2: 542). This entry concludes by pointing out both the process whereby cultural differences can be blurred, and the reverse process of growing misunderstanding that results in audiences taking grave offence. Brought to you by | Universität Osnabrück Authenticated Download Date | 1/30/16 9:22 PM Book Review 645 Disappointments include the entry on Christianity, where the author makes strange connections between alleged (maybe actual) Biblical examples of humor and humor theories. Thus, “[t]he discrepancy between Jesus’ nickname for Peter and Peter’s later betrayal of Jesus (denying him three times) provides an obvious example of the incongruity theory of humor” (1: 128): incongruity there is to be sure, but it is misguided to link the theory with this as an example of humor. It is followed by the vacuous statement that “Christianity thus shares a conceptual kinship with the incongruity theory of humor, especially considering the centrality of paradoxes in the New Testament” (1: 128) – now what could that mean? There is surprisingly no cross-reference to Paradox under that entry, but paradox itself is treated in terms of both its linguistic and its philosophical definitions, as well as in connections made with knock-knock jokes and puns. However, one notes a baffling neglect of Fry’s Sweet Madness (1963) and an equally mystifying reduction of Irony to just three cross-references, with no links to the entries on children’s humor, for example, which are however easy to find and highly informative. Paradox is considered in a useful entry on Koestler’s concept of bisociation; an excellent article on nonsense, which includes discussion of Lewis Carroll’s Alice (though there is no cross-reference to Paradox there either); a rather untheoretical reference on Carnival (“priest plus sex magazine and scripture plus the devil, added together, produce two sets of paradox”, 1: 107); an informative entry on Aesthetics, where I learned about the paradox of tragedy and that “there is no paradox of comedy”, and found a reference to “play signals” in apes (1: 15) but again no cross-references to either Paradox or Incongruity. I tried to follow up Incongruity in the index, and among the many instances I was drawn to incongruity theory as informal theory, which rewarded me with a fine apology for the linguistic script theory as a formal theory, with references to Karl Popper and the important claim that “the evolution of loose formal theories of humor to full-fledged formal ones is, thus, clear evidence of progress in the field” (1: 370–371). Despite the disappointing under-representation of Fry’s foundational research, one can find a wealth of insight into the overall complexity and interrelatedness of the issues involved: for example, an eye-opening although still somewhat cryptic article on humor as basically a heuristic strategy in design (1: 196–197); an item on Creativity (unlinked to the former) where I was struck by the remark that “sexual selection will remain an important theoretical framework informing the study of various aspects of humor as well as creativity more generally” (1: 185); a puzzling article on Metaphor that supports the notion of an inherently funny referent (“a hog on ice”: is this inherently funny?); an entry on cognitive aspects of humor where the notion of cognitive mastery is advanced and tested against the following joke: “One. How many psychics does it take to change Brought to you by | Universität Osnabrück Authenticated Download Date | 1/30/16 9:22 PM 646 Book Review a light bulb?” (1: 136); a section on the Complexity of Humor which argues that the notion is essentially subjective; and several pieces on the logical mechanisms of humor, one of which concludes in a somewhat defeatist way that “because these mechanisms of humor are intended to be barely detectable in their faultiness – which makes them hard to pin down and unpack – their overall nature and even their existence continue to be debated” (2: 494). So, having compiled and assembled your encyclopedia, where to now, humor scholars? Well, intercultural research is one obvious avenue, as is indicated at the outset, while an attempt to reduce the overproduction of terminology in humor research would be another. Various disciplines proliferate terms – perhaps an inevitable result of the varying methodological needs of each discipline; but one might aim for a measure of standardization within the field. Just as with the federalizing drive that causes national resistance in the move towards European unity, at the end of the day we must ask ourselves, is there any alternative, if progress is to be made? And we all want progress, don’t we? Brought to you by | Universität Osnabrück Authenticated Download Date | 1/30/16 9:22 PM