The Catharsis of Comedy

Comedy criticism has lacked a theoretical underpinning both to facilitate the work of interpretation and to generate a satisfactory mode of discourse. In The Catharsis of Comedy, Dana F. Sutton takes the initial steps toward the creation of a comprehensive theory that embraces a number of theoretical constructs and analytical techniques. Sutton begins with an examination of the ideas of such thinkers as Aristotle, Herbert Spencer, Sigmund Freud, and Krishna Menon. Once the workings of comic catharsis are described, Sutton relates his new theory to other theories of comedy and humor, including the ideas of festival comedy set forth by Barber and Bakhtin, Lionel Abel's metatheater, and Konrad Lorenz's suggestion that humor originated in primate expressions of hostility. The result is a theory of enormous potential for the analysis of specific comedies, coupled with the creation of a vocabulary with which analytical discoveries can be discussed.