COMEDY

130 LAUGHTERof mutual relation from the peculiar manner in which the mindtakes notice of them.(Beattie, 1776:347)While Beattie was not the first to use the words ‘incongruous’ or‘incongruity’ in relation to humour (that honour belongs to MarkAkenside’s Pleasures of Imagination (1744)), his definition oflaughter’s trigger is entirely representative of the shift in dominancefrom superiority to incongruity theories in the eighteenth century, and isthe key to humour upheld by philosophers such as Kant andSchopenhauer. The new focus on incongruity appears to be historicallyappropriate to the eighteenth century where aleatory wit and linguisticinvention were culturally privileged skills. Addison, who whiledisapproving of laughter celebrated wit, gives an account of the latter asfollows,That every resemblance of Ideas is not that which we call Wit,unless it be such an one that gives Delight and Surprize to theReader: These two Properties seem essential to Wit, moreparticularly the last of them. In order therefore that theResemblance in the Ideas be Wit, it is necessary that the Ideasshould not lie too near one another in the Nature of things; forwhere the Likeness is obvious, it gives no Surprize.(Addison and Steele, 1979, vol. 1:189)What is apparent in this description is the similarity between Addison’sdefinition and Hutcheson’s and Beattie’s discussions of laughter’striggers. Wit, according to Addison, resides in the inventive drawingtogether of apparently distant ideas for the amusement and intellectualthrill of the listener. Again, we see the importance of crossing ideationalboundaries and the bringing of one thing into a taxonomy to which it isnot considered to belong. As incongruity plays with taxonomies andhierarchies it suggests that these hierarchies are permeable and fluidrather than rigid and permanent. The collision or juxtaposition of thegreat with the low, or the humble adopting the airs of the elite, taketheir humour from a displacement of order that simultaneouslyacknowledges order and reveals its absurdity. Pleasure in wit also doesthis, as it recognizes the role of chance in the production of meaning,and the ability of language to make meanings outside the realm ofpractical sense. However, critics of incongruity theory point out that itover-privileges structural aspects in the production of laughter as if the