The basic theory of literary aesthetic humor

The basic theory of literary aesthetic humor

It refers to a unique comedy effect produced by the aesthetic subject's aesthetic grasp of funny things with humorous and meaningful wisdom as the main aesthetic way. It is an aesthetic category with meaningful comic features.

Humor is a transliteration of English humor, which was used as a medical term in ancient Greece. Its physiological significance refers to human body fluid, so it also refers to people's temper, character and temperament. In life and art, it is slightly more meaningful than satire; More elegant and literary than humor.

In various forms of comedy, the comic effect of humor is different from humor and ridicule. Although they all belong to the art of laughter, humorous laughter is different from knowing laughter produced by funny things and ironic laughter produced by irony. It is a relaxed and subtle smile full of human wisdom. If the funny comedy features are mainly manifested in uncoordinated ugly forms, and the satirical comedy features are mainly manifested in the ethical concepts of good and evil, then the humorous comedy features are mainly concentrated on rational observation. The calm and alert rational structure of aesthetic subject is the psychological factor with core significance in sense of humor. Laughter is the product of human wisdom, and it is precisely because of the infiltration of wisdom factors that laughter can become a comedy effect in the aesthetic sense. Without wisdom, laughter becomes a general physiological function, and humor is the most intelligent smile. Humor is the smile of human wisdom in the face of those ridiculous things. Chernyshevski said: "People with humorous tendencies must have a gentle, sensitive, observant and impartial nature, and all trivial, pitiful, humble and despicable things cannot escape their eyes. They even found many such problems in themselves. " Therefore, it can also be said that humor is an aesthetic way to deny ugly things through intelligent laughter.

Humor observes and examines trivial, ugly and humble things from a highly rational perspective. Therefore, the aesthetic significance of humor lies in using wisdom to express the irrationality and absurdity of ugly things. The aesthetic significance of satirical works has a strong ethical tendency, and the ugly and funny things are directly exposed by means of exaggeration and deformation. Humor focuses on appealing to people's reason, which makes people clearly realize the ugliness, stupidity and obsolescence of things, so its aesthetic characteristics are more relaxed, euphemistic, humorous and meaningful. Lessing said in the Hamburg Drama Review: "Comedy is to improve everything with laughter rather than ridicule; What comedy needs to improve is not the bad lines it laughs at, not just those who have such ridiculous bad lines. The real universal function of comedy lies in beauty itself and in training our ability to find interesting things. " Lessing's ability to find interesting things can be said to refer to the sense of humor with the most intelligent characteristics.

Humor is a unique style in various arts. It often uses metaphor, exaggeration, suggestion, pun, symbol, homophonic and other techniques to give people a humorous aesthetic feeling. Humor also often refers to the unique personality characteristics of people's speech and behavior.