moulds -- 'beautiful
soup, so rich and green' -- creates a comic effect of the same type
as the parody. The rolling dactyls of the first line of the limerick,
carrying, instead of Hector and Achilles, a young lady from Stockton as
their passenger, make her already appear ridiculous, regardless of the
calamities which are sure to befall her. In this atmosphere of malicious
expectation whatever witticism the text has to offer will have a much
enhanced effect.
Instead of an epic mould, a soft, lyrical one will equally do:
... And what could be moister
Than tears from an oyster?
Another variant is what one might call the pseudo-proverb: 'The rule is:
jam tomorrow and jam yesterday -- but never jam today.' Two logically
incompatible statements have been telescoped into a line whose rhythm and
syntax gives the impression of being a popular adage or golden rule of
life. Sometimes the trick is done by the substitution of a single word
in a familiar text: 'One should never work between meals.' The homely,
admonitory structure lulls the mind into bored acquiescence until the
preposterous subterfuge is discovered. Oscar Wilde was a master of this
form: 'In married life three is company and two none'; 'the only way to
get rid of a temptation is to yield to it', etc., etc. My own favourite
coinage is: 'One should not carry moderation to extremes.'
Nonsense humour -- as Max Eastman has pointed out -- is only effective
if it pretends to make sense: It's a fact the whole world knows /
That Pobbles are happier without their toes. Even with rhymed gibberish
the illusion of meaning is essential. 'The slithy toves' that 'gyre and
gimble in the wabe' evoke sound associations which suggest some kind of
action even though we are unable to say what exactly the action is --
perhaps some small creatures gyrating and gambolling on a brilliant day
in the web of some flowery bush. The meaning varies with the person as
the interpretation of the ink blots in a Rohrschach test; but without
this illusory meaning projected into the phonetic pattern, without
the simultaneous knowledge of being fooled, and of fooling oneself,
there would be no enjoyment of the jabberwock with eyes aflame' who
'came whiffling through the tulgey wood / And burbled as it came .
Tickling
The harmless game of tickling has resisted all attempts to find a unitary
formula for the causes of laughter; it has been the stumbling block which
made the theorists of the comic give up, or their theories break down.
It was at one time believed that the laughter caused by tickling is a
purely mechanical reflex in response to a purely physical stimulation. But
-- as Darwin has pointed out -- the response to tickling is squirming,
wriggling, and straining to withdraw the tickled part -- activities which
may or may not be accompanied by laughter. The squirming response was
interpreted by Darwin and Crile as an innate defence mechanism to escape
a hostile grip on vulnerable areas which are not normally exposed to
attack: the soles of the feet, the neck, arm-pits, belly, and flank. If
a fly settles on the belly of a horse, a kind of contractile wave may
pass over the skin -- the equivalent of the squirming of the tickled
child. But the horse does not laugh when tickled, and the child not
always. As Gregory has put it:
A child fingers the pepper-pot, waves pepper into its nose, and sneezes
violently. Touch it under the arm-pits, or finger its waist, and it
wriggles vigorously. It sneezes to dislodge the pepper from its nose,
and its wriggle suggests a sneeze to relieve its whole body. The violent
squirm of the tickled child so obviously tries to avoid the tickling
hand that, when the truth is perceived, it is difficult to understand
how tickling and laughter could ever be identified or confused.[3]
Thus tickling a child will call out a wriggling and squirming
response. But the child will laugh only -- and this is the crux of the
matter -- if an additional condition is fulfilled: it must
soup, so rich and green' -- creates a comic effect of the same type
as the parody. The rolling dactyls of the first line of the limerick,
carrying, instead of Hector and Achilles, a young lady from Stockton as
their passenger, make her already appear ridiculous, regardless of the
calamities which are sure to befall her. In this atmosphere of malicious
expectation whatever witticism the text has to offer will have a much
enhanced effect.
Instead of an epic mould, a soft, lyrical one will equally do:
... And what could be moister
Than tears from an oyster?
Another variant is what one might call the pseudo-proverb: 'The rule is:
jam tomorrow and jam yesterday -- but never jam today.' Two logically
incompatible statements have been telescoped into a line whose rhythm and
syntax gives the impression of being a popular adage or golden rule of
life. Sometimes the trick is done by the substitution of a single word
in a familiar text: 'One should never work between meals.' The homely,
admonitory structure lulls the mind into bored acquiescence until the
preposterous subterfuge is discovered. Oscar Wilde was a master of this
form: 'In married life three is company and two none'; 'the only way to
get rid of a temptation is to yield to it', etc., etc. My own favourite
coinage is: 'One should not carry moderation to extremes.'
Nonsense humour -- as Max Eastman has pointed out -- is only effective
if it pretends to make sense: It's a fact the whole world knows /
That Pobbles are happier without their toes. Even with rhymed gibberish
the illusion of meaning is essential. 'The slithy toves' that 'gyre and
gimble in the wabe' evoke sound associations which suggest some kind of
action even though we are unable to say what exactly the action is --
perhaps some small creatures gyrating and gambolling on a brilliant day
in the web of some flowery bush. The meaning varies with the person as
the interpretation of the ink blots in a Rohrschach test; but without
this illusory meaning projected into the phonetic pattern, without
the simultaneous knowledge of being fooled, and of fooling oneself,
there would be no enjoyment of the jabberwock with eyes aflame' who
'came whiffling through the tulgey wood / And burbled as it came .
Tickling
The harmless game of tickling has resisted all attempts to find a unitary
formula for the causes of laughter; it has been the stumbling block which
made the theorists of the comic give up, or their theories break down.
It was at one time believed that the laughter caused by tickling is a
purely mechanical reflex in response to a purely physical stimulation. But
-- as Darwin has pointed out -- the response to tickling is squirming,
wriggling, and straining to withdraw the tickled part -- activities which
may or may not be accompanied by laughter. The squirming response was
interpreted by Darwin and Crile as an innate defence mechanism to escape
a hostile grip on vulnerable areas which are not normally exposed to
attack: the soles of the feet, the neck, arm-pits, belly, and flank. If
a fly settles on the belly of a horse, a kind of contractile wave may
pass over the skin -- the equivalent of the squirming of the tickled
child. But the horse does not laugh when tickled, and the child not
always. As Gregory has put it:
A child fingers the pepper-pot, waves pepper into its nose, and sneezes
violently. Touch it under the arm-pits, or finger its waist, and it
wriggles vigorously. It sneezes to dislodge the pepper from its nose,
and its wriggle suggests a sneeze to relieve its whole body. The violent
squirm of the tickled child so obviously tries to avoid the tickling
hand that, when the truth is perceived, it is difficult to understand
how tickling and laughter could ever be identified or confused.[3]
Thus tickling a child will call out a wriggling and squirming
response. But the child will laugh only -- and this is the crux of the
matter -- if an additional condition is fulfilled: it must
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