Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic

by Henri Bergson

Laughter, which Henri Bergson first published as three magazine articles in 1900, asks what it is that we laugh at. His answer is that the comic appears wherever the living is covered over by the mechanical: a man who stumbles because his body goes on moving while his mind is elsewhere, a character trapped in a fixed idea, a phrase repeated until it runs by itself. From this principle he analyzes the comedy of forms, gestures, situations and words, the techniques of repetition, inversion and interference, and the comedy of character, and he argues that laughter is society's way of correcting rigidity. The translation by Cloudesley Brereton and Fred Rothwell was authorized and revised by Bergson himself. The full text is available to read online in your browser on Vinteuil, and the first chapter is free.