University of Tübingen

Mechanisms of the comic effect in Oscar Wilde′s
"The Impor-tance of Being Earnest": An analysis
according to Henry Bergson and Arthur Koestler

by

Andreas Glombitza

Contents

1. Introduction .2

2. Mechanisms of the comic effect

2.1 An overview of Henry Bergson′s theory of laughter  3
2.2 Bergsonian patterns of humour in Wilde′s play 7
2.3 The basic ideas of Koestler′s bisociative approach to the comic effect 10
2.4 Bisociative patterns in Wilde′s text 13

3. Conclusion  15

4. Works Cited  16

1. Introduction

Oscar Wilde′s "The Importance of Being Earnest" was on stage for the first time in 1895. Since then, it seems to have lost nothing of its wit. People still consider it funny, when Algernon and Jack, both alias Ernest, bend the truth to jazz up their lives, ending up with seri-ous problems. But what is it actually that made, that still makes Wilde′s play funny? What is the connection between a certain reply from Algernon or Lady Bracknell and the audience or reader trem-bling with laughter (or at least smiling)? This paper will be concerned with the question whether it is possible to trace all of Wilde′s comical devices, perhaps even all possible forms of humour, back to one basic "recipe of laughter".

People tried to do this, although the matter seems to be extremely complicated. Who has not yet experienced the embarrassment, while trying to explain a pun or joke to somebody who did not get it on the first time: the comical element slips through your fingers like water and soon seems to have never existed, although it has caused audible and visible effect, namely laughter, a moment before. We will start from what the philosopher Henry Bergson found out about mechanisms of the comic effect and see if his theory accounts for Wilde′s play being comical. Later I want to outline the theory of bisociation, which Arthur Koestler brought up, and finally analyze the play along the lines of the theoretical apparatus he developed. Throughout the second chapter I will show that both theories will break down if confronted with certain forms of the comic element.

2. Mechanisms of the comic effect

2.1 An overview of Henry Bergson′s theory of laughter

The French philosopher Henri Bergson developed a very lively theory of laughter in his work (originally called) Le Rire in 1901. (All quotes in this chapter are from the translated English version called “Laughter”) 

Bergson makes some preliminary observations about the comic effect in general. The first thing he claims is that “the comic does not exist outside the pale of what is strictly human” (Bergson 10): Something will only be laughable if it touches the human sphere in one or the other way. You will only laugh about an animal “because you have detected in it some human attitude or expression” (Bergson 10). A hat or any material thing will never be comical by itself, you will only laugh about an imaginary resemblance of its form for example to a part of the human body or about “the shape that men have given it” (Bergson 10).

His second point is that laughter is usually accompanied by an “absence of feeling” (Be rgson 10). “Indifference is its natural environment, for laughter has no greater foe than emotion” (Bergson 10). When we see for instance someone stumble and fall, we can only laugh about him if we temporarily forget about pity. Bergson argues further that humour appeals exclusively to intelligence and requires what he calls a “momentary anaesthesia of the heart” (Bergson 11). Then he comes to the point that laughter always occurs within a group, even when there is no one else present to laugh with us. He claims that laughter is characterized by some “kind of secret freemasonry, or even complicity, with other laughers, real or imaginary” (Bergson 11): even when we would think we are laughing alone, for example at a play on words in a paper, we subconsciously imagine our group, the people that, had they been present, would have laughed with us.

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