The Anatomy of Laughter

193 Pages·2005·47.261 MB·English

by  Toby Garfitt

The A natomy of Laughter
LEGENDA
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EDITORIAL BOARD
Chairman
Professor Martin McLaughlin, Magdalen College, Oxford
Professor Malcolm Cook, University of Exeter (French)
Professor Colin Davis, Royal Holloway University of London
(Modern Literature, Film and Theory)
Professor Robin Fiddian, Wadham College, Oxford (Spanish)
Professor Paul Garner, University of Leeds (Spanish)
Professor Marian Hobson Jeanneret,
Queen Mary University of London (French)
Professor Catriona Kelly, New College, Oxford (Russian)
Professor Martin Maiden, Trinity College, Oxford (Linguistics)
Professor Peter Matthews, St John’s College, Cambridge (Linguistics)
Dr Stephen Parkinson, Linacre College, Oxford (Portuguese)
Professor Ritchie Robertson, St John’s College, Oxford (German)
Professor David Robey, University of Reading (Italian)
Professor Lesley Sharpe, University of Exeter (German)
Professor David Shepherd, University of Sheffield (Russian)
Professor Alison Sinclair, Clare College, Cambridge (Spanish)
Professor David Treece, King’s College London (Portuguese)
Professor Diego Zancani, Balliol College, Oxford (Italian)
Managing Editor
Dr Graham Nelson
41 Wellington Square, Oxford oxi 2JF, UK
[email protected]
www. legenda. mhra .org.uk
Edith M cM orran (1936-2003)
The Anatomy of Laughter
EDITED BY
ToBY GARFITT, EDITH McMoRRAN, AND JANE TAYLOR
D
LEG ENDA
Studies in Comparative Literature 8
Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge
2005
First published 2005
Published by the
Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
LEGENDA is an imprint of the
Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© Modern Humanities Research Association and Taylor & Francis 2005
ISBN 13: 978-1-900755-72-6 (hbk)
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, including
photocopying, recordings, fax or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the
copyright owner and the publisher.
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used
only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
'What~ So Funny? On Being Laughed at ... ' is reproduced from 'Equals' by Adam Phillips,
by kind permission of the author and Faber and Faber Ltd
Copy-Editor: Michael Wood
CONTENTS
Preface ix
Edith Franck McMorran X
List of Contributors xii
Introduction I
JANE TAYLOR
1 Anatomie et étymologie: ordre et désordre du rire selon Laurent Joubert II
DOMINIQUE BERTRAND
2 The Sound of Laughter: Recent Concepts and Findings in Research into
24
Laughter Vocalizations
SILKE KIPPER AND DIETMAR TODT
3 Why Can’t You Tickle Yourself? 34
SARAH-JAYNE BLAKEMORE
42
4 Belly Laughs
MICHAEL HOLLAND
5 Upping the Ante/i: Exaggeration in Céline and Vallès 50
WALTER REDFERN
6 Humour Styles and Class Cultures: Highbrow Humour and Lowbrow Humour
in the Netherlands 58
GISELINDE KUIPERS
7 Searching for Jokes: Language, Translation, and the Cross-Cultural
Comparison of Humour 70
CHRISTIE DAVIES
86
8 And What If They Don’t Laugh?
TED COHEN
9 Without the Rape the Talk-Show Would Not Be Laughable 93
IAIN GALBRAITH
10 Translating a Great Feast of Languages 100
JEAN-MICHEL DEPRATS
11 Traduire le rire 109
PAUL J. MEMMI
viii Contents
12 Rire et désir dans les comédies américaines de Lubitsch: l’exemple de
Ninotchka (1939) 115
NATACHA THIÉRY
13 What’s So Funny? On Being Laughed at ... 124
ADAM PHILLIPS
14 Laughing and Talking 131
SUKANTA CHAUDHURI
15 Le Rire comme accident en peinture 142
GEORGES ROQUE
16 La Couleur du rire: peinture et traduction 153
LAURENT BAZIN
17 Views on the Physics and Metaphysics of Laughter 161
GÉRARD TOULOUSE
Index 177
PREFACE
Il faut rire avant que d’être heureux,
de peur de mourir sans avoir ri.
la bruyère, ‘Du Cœur’
The present volume consists of a selection of the papers given at a major conference,
The Anatomy of Laughter/Traduire le Rire, organized by Edith Franck McMorran
at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, in September 2001, under the auspices of TRIO
(Translation Research in Oxford), the organization she had founded and nourished.
Until 2001 TRIO had concentrated very largely on approaches to translation; this
new venture was not only interdisciplinary, but highly ambitious, in that Edith wished
to incorporate not just the humanities, but also the sciences, into the proceedings.
So it was that physicists and psychoanalysts and philosophers and sociologists and
translators spent a long weekend together in Oxford, invited by Edith and entertained
by her, as ever, royally — and hilariously.
Edith did not live to see the publication of this volume, so very much the product
of her energy and drive. But she would, we know, have wished to thank those
who contributed to the success of the conference: Elizabeth Mansour who, as ever,
made sure that the administrative side ran smoothly; the Organizing Committee
— Jerome Fletcher (Dartington College of Arts), Anita Mehta (S. N. Bose National
Centre for Basic Sciences, Calcutta), Jean-Michel Déprats (Paris X, Nanterre),
Marie-Claire Pasquier (Paris X, Nanterre), and Aline Schulman (Paris III); Professor
Malcolm Bowie, who welcomed the delegates to Oxford on behalf of the European
Humanities Research Centre; the Maison Française in Oxford; the British Academy,
who offered a generous subsidy towards the running of the conference; the Faculty of
Medieval and Modern Languages in Oxford; the Crédit Agricole Indosuez, for their
generous financial support. She would also, we know, have wanted to thank all those
who attended the conference and who gave papers; we, as editors, would much have
wished to publish all of them, but publication constrained us to make heart-rending
choices.
The editors of the volume would also like to thank our delightfully prompt and
cooperative contributors; Martin McLaughlin, Kareni Bannister, Graham Nelson, and
Michael Wood, of Legenda, for all the work that has gone into the publication of this
volume; and Linda Gowans, for her usual careful work in copy-editing it. We hope
that the result is a volume that is worthy of Edith s own vision.
T.G.
J.H.M.T