His “Last Jest”: On Edgar Allan Poe, “Hop-Frog,” and Laughter

Abstract

This essay conceives of Poe’s late tale “Hop-Frog” as an allegory of laughter. In the tale, the eponymous jester’s “last jest” consists of burning his master the king and the king’s ministers alive. The story, in this sense, represents a peculiar (and very Poesque) mixture of genres—of horror and comedy. As such, it can be read as an allegory on superiority theories of laughter by Hobbes, Hegel, Baudelaire, Bergson, and others. Indeed, the story’s imagery often seems directly connected to that of Hobbes and Hegel. This essay investigates the applications and implications of such “superiority” theories of laughter in relation to “Hop-Frog,” as well as the complex ways in which these theories are upheld and also crucially interrogated, modified, and subverted within Poe’s “story world.”