Humor-of-the-Mind Analysis:  Theory and

Application

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Robin Jaeckle Grawe

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Institute for Travesty, Comedy, and Humor Studies

When George Meredith wrote his essay unfortunately entitled “An Essay on Comedy”  (he was talking about humor rather than a dramatic form (Comedy. Ed. Wylie Syhpher. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1956: 1-60)), he probably did not expect his discussion of Humor of the Mind to become the foundation for systematic analysis of dramatic works much less the basis of empirical research. Ah, intellectual progress.

Meredith, a literary critic, though not particularly systematic, was nevertheless insightful, recognizing implicitly that if there was Humor of the Mind, some humor appealing to our minds and our values, there were other forms of humor he was excluding from the discussion.  Philosophically he might be said to have begun in medias res, but then according to Aristotle, a lot of good work starts that way. The question becomes where do we go from there, and further, can we find anything worthwhile along the way? It turns out that Meredith’s sketchy start paved the way for at least one systematic theory and much fruitful insight.

Humor of the Mind as Meredith described it included at least three variations which can be labeled (and were so labeled when ITCHS personnel designed the Humor Quotient Test in the mid 1990’s) Word Play (a humorous juxtaposition of words, grammatical constructs, and the like), Incongruity (a humorous juxtaposition of things or ideas), and Gotcha (humorous just deserts imposed on someone who was too smart for his/her own good). To these three we at ITCHS have added a fourth, Sympathetic Pain, a form of humor quite absent in Moliere, Meredith’s paragon, but abundant in Shakespeare.  Sympathetic Pain humor invites us to laugh with undeserving victims of life’s vicissitudes.

All four types of Humor of the Mind are literary forms, seasoning literary, dramatic, and cinematic works for centuries.  If there is a fifth, we have not found it, and four make a very nice set, both for literary critical analysis and for empirical research. (A fuller discussion of the design and revelations of the Humor Quotient Test and its theoretical applications can be found in Chapter 3 of Comedic Tenor, Comic Vehicle:  Humor in American Film Comedy (http://www.itchs.org/CTCV/ctcv%20ch%203.htm.))

Key to the fruitful application of the Humor-of-the-Mind foursome is the fact that each of the types is based in deeply held values, values which we normally think of as “serious” and which are in no way denigrated by being the basis for humor.  Gotcha, for example, executing a poetic justice on the joke’s butt, is in fact dependent on the value of justice and its execution.  If we can not value the execution of deserved negative consequences, we can not appreciate a Gotcha joke. (Meredith and ITCHS both distinguish the Gotcha joke from mere attack humor.)  Sympathetic Pain humor, in contrast, asks us to in compassion recognize that we all suffer undeserved indignities (for example, getting older) and to laugh in solidarity with the victim.  Incongruity is based in the value of truth; if we don’t know what is true or real, we can not appreciate the humorously incongruous.  And Word Play is based in the value of fittingness, appropriateness, or logic. If we don’t know what is lexically appropriate, for example, we can’t appreciate a pun.

The fact that Humor of the Mind is based on serious values has critical implications for our understanding of the interaction between the literary work and the humor woven into it. Far from making the work frothy, light-weight, or non-serious, Humor of the Mind adds values dimensions to the work.

For example, the humor associated with Shakespeare’s Falstaff (much of it body humor) makes for some great belly laughs, lightness of spirit, release of endorphins, and the like.  Yet at the same time, it can be argued that the Gotcha humor surrounding Falstaff in 1 Henry IV heightens the questions of justice, usually at the expense of Falstaff who is adept at escaping justice.  And Word Play evokes a sense of fittingness, a counter to Falstaff’s unfitting appearance and behavior but more importantly groundwork for the question of Hal’s fitness to rule.

On the other hand, in Comedy of Errors Incongruity humor enriches the confusions of what is real and true and Sympathetic Pain humor demands that we think compassionately on unjustly beaten slaves, suspicious and suspected spouses, and magistrates between a rock and a hard place.

The humors of a work and their underlying values are woven into the work, creating a humor texture. Different humors create different textures—hard, for example, or warm, ambiguous, frivolous, chiseled, or perhaps reassuring. The humor texture of 1 Henry IV, can be argued to be harder, more chiseled than that of Comedy of Errors, the latter’s humor texture being softer, more pliant.

In the two Shakespearean examples discussed, the use of humor tends to reinforce values otherwise evoked by the works.  Yet the values implied by the humor of a literary work need not necessarily reinforce values evoked by the work through other means, such as imagery or statement. Humor values which jar with the works’ other values may create irony, ambiguity, murkiness, cheapness, or subversion.

Both of our Shakespearean examples are to some extent characterized by their Humor-of-the-Mind forms. The Humor Quotient Test, based on four types of Humor of the Mind, is premised on the idea that literary works—much like people—can be to some extent characterized by their dominant preferred humor. Going further, dramatic/literary works employing Humor of the Mind, even sparingly or subtly, frequently are dominated by not one but two forms of humor.  As mathematics would have it, four types of Humor of the Mind create six pairings, combinations which can be thought of as humor-derived “personalities.” People can be said to have humor personalities, based on their two highest preferences of Humor of the Mind. But more to the point of this discussion, works of literature can have a humor personality based on six pairs of four types of Humor of the Mind.

To better consider the implications of humor preference, both in individuals and in works of literature, we at ITCHS assigned rubrics to describe the humor personalities suggested by each of the six pairings:

Crusader = Gotcha + Incongruity: a knight, someone who sees what the problems are and tries to right the wrongs

Advocate = Gotcha + Word Play: an activist wordsmith, someone who uses verbal flair to rectify problems

Bridgebuilder = Gotcha + Sympathetic Pain: a people person, someone who   sympathizes but also rectifies wrongs

Consoler = Sympathetic Pain + Word Play: a comforter, someone who sympathizes and soothes pain with the right words

Reconciler = Sympathetic Pain + Incongruity: someone who recognizes the problems and empathizes with others

Intellectual = Incongruity + Word Play: a facts and ideas person, someone who likes to deal perceptively with reality, facts, words, and ideas.

It should be noted that these six rubrics were established entirely on the basis of the underlying values of the humor forms prior to any application of humor analysis to literature.

Thus returning to Shakespeare’s 1 Henry IV, the predominance of Gotcha and Word Play give the play an Advocate humor personality.  The play, of course, is full of advocacy. Falstaff is constantly advocating—for himself, for a place in court, for his life style, and for his lovability. The prince and Shakespeare advocate to the king and to all of England that Hal is indeed qualified to ascend to the throne and that his carousing with low life is excusable and perhaps even commendable. The argument is twice rehearsed between Hal and Falstaff, then delivered in a third form before the throne, and then acted out on the battlefield by Hal’s slaying of Hotspur, who himself has been advocating that Hal is not fit to be dogcatcher, let alone king.

So we should be easily comfortable with the conclusion that the play has an Advocate humor personality.  But the latter conclusion is based entirely on humor analysis without regard to plot elements.

On the other hand, Comedy of Errors, which is dominated by opposite humors, Incongruity and Sympathetic Pain, has a Reconciler personality. Now, it can be argued that all or almost all comedy has some sort of reconciliation. But not all comedy presents us with as many rendings, alienations, misunderstandings, and miscarriages of justice so badly in need of reconciliation as does Comedy of Errors.

The purpose of this essay is not to insist on a particular humor analysis of Shakespeare (for a more  developed discussion, see  “The Irrepressibly Complex Falstaff: A Humor Structure Analysis of Falstaff in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part I” (http://www.itchs.org/December%20Comedy/DC%20ch%2012%20.htm)), but rather  to illustrate that it is possible to identify dominant types of Humor of the Mind in a dramatic work and thereby to assign a humor personality to the work and  to propose that humor analysis can be further useful in considering the implications of that assignment for our understanding of the play as well as of the roll of humor as one of the elements that makes up the whole of the work.

Humor analysis is not always cut-and dried, and in fact frequently cases can be made for more than one humor personality, depending on the reading of the work.  Rather than casting doubts on the validity of humor analysis, such contentions raise awareness of the complexity of the work.

For example, in an analysis of Don Quixote, Paul and Elizabeth Grawe argued that the dominant Humor-of-the-Mind form was Incongruity—consistent with critical acclaim—but that arguments could be made for both Gotcha and Sympathetic Pain as the second most prevalent humor form (http://www.itchs.org/HQN%205.1.htm).  Gotcha would evoke a sense of justice, Sympathetic pain a sense of compassion. In terms of humor personality, Incongruity combined with Gotcha would give the work a Crusader personality while Incongruity combined with Sympathetic Pain would give the work a Reconciler personality. The elucidation of this split humor personality allows us to reconsider the centuries-old critical divisions over Don Quixote in a new light.

While many respected works can be analyzed as having two dominant types of Humor of the Mind, this type of analysis can also be a jump-off point.  What if all four types seem equally represented?  Or if only one type can be argued to be dominant?  What if the dominant forms of humor are not Humor of the Mind but something else, for example humor of the body or vitalist humor á là Henri Bergson or Suzanne Langer or irony or satire or wit? From the foundation of Humor-of-the-Mind analysis, we are positioned to investigate the workings of any number of humor forms and the textures they create.

Recognizing that humor comes in many distinct forms and sub-forms allows us to move beyond a superficial notion of humor’s role in literature as providing comic relief, a light tone, frivolity, or the “hilarity” so oft-claimed on film jacket blurbs toward a penetrating, insightful, sensitive analysis of how any number of distinct humor forms may weave their way into a work, evoking different values and creating a wide variety of textures.

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