Humour by Terry Eagleton (review)

Abstract

Humour, Terry Eagleton (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2019), 178 + xi pages. The editors of Dublin Opinion, the foremost humorous magazine of twentiethcentury Ireland, claimed that ‘humour is the safety valve of a nation’. This is a metaphor that the distinguished literary critic, Terry Eagleton, also uses in this study of humour. He writes that humour ‘provides a safety valve for ... subversive energies. In this sense, its closest parallel today is professional sport, the abolition of which would no doubt be the shortest route to bloody revolution’. Humour, however, can take many forms. Eagleton remarks that ‘it would be a foolhardy theorist who would seek to cram [it] ... into a single formula’. Nevertheless, he feels it is possible ‘to say something relatively cogent and coherent about why we laugh’ – and that is the task he sets himself in this book. It is a rigorous analysis of the nature of humour, written in an engaging but somewhat discursive style – indicating perhaps that it is based on lectures that Eagleton has given (and he is a gifted lecturer). Broadly speaking, Eagleton follows the classical theoretical model which divides humour into three categories. The first is superiority theory – humour as derision or mockery, with a victim as the butt of humour. The second is incongruity theory – humour as a response to the illogical or unexpected; as Eagleton writes, ‘humour happens for the most part when some fleeting disruption of a well-ordered world of meaning loosens the grip of the reality principle’. The final category is relief theory, which posits that humour serves to release tensions – in other words, a ‘safety valve’ which dissolves ‘social conflicts in an explosion of mirth’. Eagleton suggests that none of these theories is sufficient in itself. The first two tells us ‘what we laugh at, but not why we do so’. Relief theory, on the other hand, is explanatory – but it is first necessary to have a suitable subject for humour. Humour tends, therefore, to combine elements of the three categories. Looking at them separately, however, provides a satisfactory framework for any analysis – and this is the approach Eagleton takes. He leavens his careful – indeed, meticulous – discussion of the literary and philosophical antecedents of the three theories with some pertinent examples of humour. One such, in his chapter on incongruities, was actually a reallife situation. An American friend of his was stopped by a policeman in the west of Ireland for driving too fast. The policeman remonstrated with the Studies • volume 108 • number 432 Winter 2019/20: Book Reviews 503 driver and asked him, ‘What would you do if you were to run into Mr Fog?’ Eagleton’s friend thought ‘he had stumbled upon a lost tribe in Connemara which personified the weather, speaking of Master Sunshine, Mrs Hailstone, Brother Thunder and so on’. Quickly dismissing this idea, he decided that the policeman was simply being patronising towards a visiting Yank and answered the question with heavy sarcasm: ‘Well, I guess I’d put Mr Foot on Mr Brake’. The policeman replied: ‘I said mist or fog’. I don’t suppose he was amused, but the rest of us are. Another real-life occurrence instanced by Eagleton as an occasion of humour is the famously incongruous assertion by the Skibbereen Eagle in 1898 that it would be keeping an eye on the Tsar of Russia. Eagleton states, however, that the journal – lampooned by James Joyce as ‘our watchful friend’ – had promised to keep its eye on the Treaty of Versailles. Not so. An interesting feature of humour is that it is often associated with outsiders, ‘sufficiently estranged’ from the society in which they operate to savour the foibles and follies of the society. Eagleton points in this context to Wilde, Shaw and other Anglo-Irish writers renowned for the humour in their work; arguably, they were outsiders in both Britain and Ireland. Our most talented cartoonist in Ireland today, Martyn Turner of the Irish Times, is an Englishman – and his outsider status surely facilitates the pursuit of his quirky craft. The political cartoon is one aspect of humour not considered by Eagleton. At times when politics becomes surreal – and they are by no means rare...