Abstract

"The structural patterns of the comic … deny the sovereignty of the individual."The question of the nature of humor is not new. Many have applied themselves to understanding it in both general and specific ways, and because of the widespread interest in the subject, humor research is not limited to any one discipline or theory, although many available humor theories conform to the concerns of particular paradigms. Given the inevitable and pervasive pluralism around humor, there is no dominant perspective on how it can best be understood. Each theory that sheds light on the phenomenon may be valuable in its own way, although clearly some theories are better than others.1Thomas Veach is a recent thinker who has...