Introduction to humour

Students always require a 400 word article for a 500 word essay.

Some ancient history

• Latin
• Formulated by Hippocrates
• c.460-370B.C.
• Further developed by Galen
• 129-199 AD
• Based on four elements
• Four humors or fluids
• Earth, fire, water, wind
• Related to colours
• Disease resulted from imbalance

Yellow bile

• Choleric
• Element: fire
• Attributes: warm, dry
• Too much:
• Hot-tempered, easily upset

Black bile

• Melancholy
• Element: earth
• Attributes: cold, dry
• Too much:
• Gloomy, depressed, dejected

Blood

• Sanguine
• Person who always has rosy natural cheeks
• Element: air
• Attributes: warm, moist
• Too much
• Cheerful, over-confident

Mucus

• Phlegmatic
• Element: water
• Attributes: cold, moist
• Too much
• Apathetic, sluggish

Implications

• Fluids determined
• Disposition, character, morality
• Humour = mood/state of mind
• Correct balance = good humour
• Imbalance = out of humour
• Humorists
• Possessed too much of one humour
• Became objects of ridicule
• Extended to anyone
• Skilled at producing ideas, stories
• Make others laugh

If you have a system that's working you must be doing something wrong. 

What happens when you cross a librarian and a lawyer? 

You can get all the information you want, but you can’t understand it.

How humour works 

• Are there any new jokes?
• Structure remains the same
• But content varies
• Element of surprise
• Compare
• What you expect with what you actually encounter
• Freud
• Part of pleasure: result of exercising intellect to understand a joke
• o “higher” level thinking
• E.g. puns

Functions of humour

• Coping
• Deal with problems/conflicts
• Step back from seriousness of situation
• “look on the light side”
• Release pent-up emotions/tensions
• Eases social situations
• Outlet for (otherwise) repressed behaviour
• Freud:
• Unconscious level
• Strong impulses
• Not allowed direct expression
• But can “joke” about it
• Helps control/regulate those feelings
• Revert to childhood feelings of play
• Freud
• Adults tire of society’s demands for rigorous, logical thinking and rational thinking
• Need an escape mechanism
• Bond to others in our social group
• Reinforces group identity
• Laugh with others
• Not laughing?
• Control “straying” members
• Enhances teaching and learning
• Has strong recuperative powers
• Anatomy of an illness by Norman Cousins

Conditions necessary for joke appreciation

• Adequate intelligence
• Adequate/appropriate language skills
• Verbal humour
• Sufficient life experience to know what is “normal”

Lightbulb jokes!

How many library system managers does it take to change a light bulb?

All of them as the manual was lost in the last move (or flood).

How many reference librarians does it take to change a light bulb? 

(With a perky smile) “Well, I don’t know right off-hand, but I know where we can look it up!”

Techniques used in literature

• Humorous characterizations
• Elements of surprise
• Language
• Dialect
• Puns
• Understatement
• Departure from logic
• Compare and contrast
• Satire
• Incongruity

Stephen Leacock Award
Leacock medal for humour http://www.leacock.ca/

More humour
Warrior librarian http://www.warriorlibrarian.com/
The Lipstick librarian! http://www.lipsticklibrarian.com/