The senses of humor
Subtitle: self and laughter in modern America
By: Daniel Wickberg.
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Ithaca
Language: eng
Number of pages: 267
Subjects: American wit and humor -- 20th century -- History and criticism.; Laughter -- Social aspects -- United States.; Self in literature.; United States -- Social life and customs -- 20th century.
Description: The expression "sense of humor" was first coined in the 1840s, and the idea that such a sense was a personality trait to be valued developed only in the 1870s. What is the relationship between medieval humoral medicine and this distinctively modern idea of the sense of humor? What has it meant in the past 125 years to declare that someone lacks a sense of humor? Why do modern Americans say it is a good thing not to take oneself seriously?

How is the joke, as a twentieth-century quasi-literary form, different from the traditional folktale? Wickberg addresses these questions among others and in the process uses the history of ideas to throw new light on the way contemporary Americans think and speak about humor and laughter.

The context of Wickberg's analysis is Anglo-American; the specifically British meanings of humor and laughter from the sixteenth century forward provide the framework for understanding American cultural values in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The genealogy of the sense of humor is, like the study of keywords, an avenue into a significant aspect of the cultural history of modernity.

Drawing on a wide range of sources and disciplinary perspectives, Wickberg's analysis challenges many of the prevailing views of modern American culture and suggests a new model for cultural historians.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 223-257) and index.