Event

This paper examines current trends in the scientific study of laughter and humour—including evolutionary, cognitive and psychological theorizing and empirical research—and considers how such research may help us understand Greek literary humor. I will argue that analogues of laughter and play in primates, and inferences drawn from them about the evolutionary history of hominids, can help us address a variety of difficult questions often raised by the formalized literature of Greek comic genres. Since laughter is always the telos of such literature, I will show how our growing scientific understanding of why humans laugh can be useful for addressing several particularly perplexing literary questions, such as the role of genre in affective cueing, or the problem of ‘seriousness’ and ‘non-seriousness’. I will focus especially on the problem of satirical literature, and the tensions that arise when it thematizes antisocial relationships between satirist and targets, while at the same time striving to promote in an audience the biologically prosocial benefits of laughter.