Redeeming Laughter the Comic Dimension of Human Experience by Peter Berger Term Paper

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Redeeming Laughter: The Comic Dimension of Human Experience

In his book, Redeeming Laughter: The Comic Dimension of Human Experience, the author Peter Berger's Chapter 9: "The Comic as Game of Intellect: Wit "and Chapter 10: "The Comic as Weapon: Satire" takes on two of the most frequently derided yet feared forms of inspiring humor and catalogues examples of comics who make use of these two forms of humor which he alleges are essentially linked, but also possess certain crucial distinct differences between the two of them. At first glance, the similarities between wit and satire may seem to be obvious -- however, although the title of Berger's book is Redeeming Laughter, neither wit nor satire is often thought of as potentially redeeming. Both tend to be thought of as deflating, harsh methods of inflicting humor upon others. However, Berger makes the case that highly crated witty forms of wit such as epigram can deliver what Berger calls "a highly economical kernel of alleged insight" through its use by such verbally gifted authors Oscar Wilde and H.L. Mencken.

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Berger believes that wit can redeem a reader through truth, and by making truth bracing and refreshing, and also by turning conventional expectations on its head. "There is a great deal of good in Lord Augustus. Fortunately it is all on the surface. Just where good qualities should be," says one of the character's of Wilde's play "Lady Windermere's Fan." By affirming surface rather than depth, Wilde uses wit to flip the listener's expectations of what is considered 'good.'

The following definitions by Mencken make use of wit to similarly turn a reader's expectations of morality on its head by writing that conscience "is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking," suggesting again the surface and society validating nature of morality, and by affirming that alimony is "the ransom that the happy pay to the devil," that marriage is well, maybe not all that it's cracked up to be.….....

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