Postmodern laughter as an anti-foundational agent

Abstract

Laughter has been viewed as an ironical tool in the postmodern world of subversion, playfulness, and parody. The contemporary age of postmodernism has a great comic spirit in its trends which challenges the established foundations. The present study is an attempt to demonstrate the function of laughter as an anti-foundational agent from a postmodernist perspective in the two novels, The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco and The Joke by Milan Kundera. The essence of anti-foundational laughter has been explored through the lens of three theories of laughter; The Incongruity Theory by Arthur Schopenhauer, The Anti-Mechanical Theory by Henri Bergson, The Super-Laughter Theory by Friedrich Nietzsche. The selected novels have been analysed to highlight the function of laughter as a powerful source of challenge, distortion, and change which help challenge the religious, political and social foundations. It has shown a new perspective of laughter and has opened new facades of postmodernism in traditional theories of laughter as well as in the selected novels.

Keywords:

• Laughter
• theories of laughter
• anti-foundational
• function of laughter
• postmodernism
• comic spirit
• challenging foundations

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Roha Rafique

Roha Rafique is an Associate Lecturer at the Department of English, University of Gujrat, Pakistan. She has received her M.Phil. and BS Honours degrees in English Language and Literature from the University of Gujrat. She has published her papers on Postcolonial identities and feminism. Her research interest includes Literary Theory and Criticism, particularly in Postmodernism, Post-colonialism, Feminism, and Queer Studies.