Journal of Literary Semantics

Olivier Couder*

Problem solved? Absurdist humour

and incongruity-resolution

https://doi.org/10.1515/jls-2019-2005

Abstract: This article explores the role absurdist humour fulfils in the narrative

structure of novels as well as its impact on the process of literary interpretation.

Tracing the historical and philosophical roots of absurdist humour, the article

emphasises the importance of the concept of incongruity. It then critically

evaluates current and influential cognitive and linguistic theories of humour,

specifically incongruity-resolution theories and their purported suitability for

literary analysis. Drawing on schema-theory, the article examines a passage

from Douglas Adams’s The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (1980; hence-

forth The Restaurant) and illustrates why literary humour cannot be analysed in

the same manner as short, often specifically designed, joke texts as is common

practice in most humour research. Subsequently, the traditional classification of

absurdist humour as a type of humour where resolution cannot be achieved is

also challenged as the analysis reveals how absurdist humour is part and parcel

of the narrative structure of The Restaurant and how the incongruity is resolved

at the moment of literary interpretation.

Keywords: absurdist humour, incongruity, schemata, joke texts

1 Introduction

In Douglas Adams’s 1979 novel The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Agrajag is

a hapless creature whose many reincarnations continually end up being killed,

most of the time unintentionally, by the main protagonist of the story, Arthur

Dent. The first time Agrajag is introduced to the reader, it has taken on the form

of a bowl of petunias

Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it

fell was Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the

*Corresponding author: Olivier Couder, Department of Literary Studies, Ghent University,

Ghent, Belgium, E-mail: [email protected]

1 This connection between Agrajag, the bowl of petunias, and Arthur Dent is only revealed in

the sequel (Adams 1995a).

Journal of Literary Semantics 2019; 48(1): 1–21

bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the

Universe than we do now. (Adams 1995b: 100)

The odd twists in this quotation are indicative of a specific type of humour

permeating the novel, which I call absurdist humour. Humour and the absurd

share a close connection as both are generally defined in terms of incongruity

which implicates a cognitive response. Dominant in cognitive approaches to

humour is the incongruity-resolution theory which states that “a joke text (T) is

funny if T contains one or more incongruous elements any of which may or may

not be fully or in part (playfully or not) resolved by the occurrence of the punch

line, which may or may not introduce new incongruities” (Attardo et al. 2002:

27).

As an example of instances of humour where resolution is only partially

realised or entirely absent, Attardo points to absurdist humour which “lacks

resolution” (Attardo et al. 2002: 25).

Oring, however, doubts that such a dis-

tinction “can be maintained” as all types of jokes are to some degree absurd and

therefore no joke is ever truly resolved (Oring 2003: 14). What differentiates

absurdist humour from other forms, says Oring, is the disparity between “the

joke world” and “the world as we know it” which cannot be resolved (Oring

2003: 25).

Oring correctly identifies the discrepancy between “joke” world and

real world as a distinguishing feature of the absurd. I believe, however, that this

incongruity is in fact resolved at the moment of (literary) interpretation as

absurdist humour can only be understood in the context of the entire text, yet

at the same time, absurdist humour is also instrumental in defining that context,

something which I will return to later in the article.

Humour theorists like Attardo are predominantly interested in what makes

humorous discourse stand out from “serious discourse”. They are not so much

interested in the interpretation of humour as in the description of humorous

“mechanisms that exist prior to any text and that make the interpretation of a

text possible” (Attardo 2006: 351). Consequently, traditional (linguistically

oriented) humour research has the tendency to focus on short jokes rather

2 Theories of humour generally fall into three categories. Next to cognitive theories of humour,

there are psychoanalytical theories of humour, such as release/relief theory, which holds that

“laughter provides relief to various tensions and allows repressed desires to be satisfied”

(Ermida 2008: 22); and sociological theories of humour, particularly superiority theory, which

situates the “roots of laughter in triumph over other people (or circumstances) […]. Elation is

engendered when we compare ourselves favorably to others as being less stupid, less ugly, less

unfortunate, or less weak” (Keith-Spiegel 1972: 6). For a more detailed survey see Martin (2007).

3 A view shared by, for instance, Gavins (2013: 50), Ermida (2008: 74) and Hamilton (2013: 26).

4 Attardo, later, seems to come round to Oring’s point of view stating that nonsensical jokes are

only partially resolved but that “truly nonsensical jokes” contain “an element of incongruity

that isn’t even addressed” (Hempelmann and Attardo 2011: 143).

2 Olivier Couder

than on longer and more complex narrative texts. But when reading a novel like

Adams’s Sci-Fi classic, humorous passages as the one cited above are never read

nor understood in isolation. They are firmly embedded in the narrative context

and all that this entails, and thus have significant bearing on both the reading

process and the interpretative process. Yet this is something that is all too often

glossed over in the field of humour studies.

This article intends to address this oversight and explores how absurdist

humour impacts (literary) interpretation, challenging the generally espoused

belief that absurdist humour’s incongruity remains unresolved. Following a

synthesis of influential and contemporary cognitive theories of humour dealing

with incongruity and its resolution, the article posits that resolution is in fact

achieved, not at the linguistic level of the humorous utterance but at the level of

a reader’s interpretation. To this end, the article combines insights from incon-

gruity-resolution theories with those drawn from schema theory. Schema theory

has successfully been used in literary studies to describe how readers process

and understand narrative text. It can also be used to describe how readers

reconcile the disparity between the storyworld (in lieu of Oring’s “joke world”)

and the “real world”. Additionally, schema theory proves fruitful for the study of

humour, particularly absurdist humour, because, as Norrick says, “schema

conflicts on a single level suggests (the possibility of) conflict resolution on

some other level” which in turn generates humour (Norrick 1986: 230).

Integrating incongruity-resolution theory and schema theory enhances our

understanding of absurdist humour in literature, elucidates how it can generate

meaning, and thus expands on the role it plays in the interpretative process. The

study of literary humour necessitates such an integrated approach as humour

constitutes an inextricable part of the narrative structure. Humour, for instance,

impacts characterization, influences plot development, interacts with the narra-

tive setting, and thus significantly affects how we interpret a literary text.

2 Incongruity and absurdist humour

If there is one thing cognitive humour theorists (generally) agree on, it is the

belief that humour is caused by incongruity, even if they do not necessarily

agree as to what incongruity means exactly (Ritchie 2009: 313–314). McGhee

indicates that “[the terms] congruity and incongruity refer to the relationship

between components of an object, event, idea, social expectation, and so forth”

(1979: 6), going on to specify that when “the arrangement of the constituent

elements of an event is incompatible with the normal or expected pattern, the

Problem solved? 3

event is perceived as incongruous” (1979: 6–7). Simply put, incongruity

describes an experience where certain objects, events, or actions do not conform

to our expectations of them. McGhee considers incongruity a vital and “neces-

sary condition for humour, but not a sufficient one” (1979: 10).

The relationship between incongruity and humour has been widely

explored in philosophy as well. And while each philosopher broaches the

topic in t he context of their specific philosophical project many share t he

belief that incongruity is of p ivotal importance to the humorous experience.

And to this day some of these ideas still resonate with contemporary humour

theories and have a bearing o n the conceptualisation of absurdist humour

specifically.

One of the earliest thinkers to have addressed humour and its causes was

Aristotle who believed that one way to get an audience to laugh was to engender

a certain set of expectations only to subsequently “violate” them (Morreall 2013:

4).

The idea that jokes or humorous experiences first create certain expectations

which are then not realised is also expressed by Kant in a passage where he,

interestingly, also links laughter and the absurd: “Whatever is to arouse lively,

convulsive laughter must contain something absurd (hence something that the

understanding cannot like for its own sake)” (Kant et al. 1987: 203). A joke, then,

according to Kant provides a kind of mental exercise, which may not lead to

tangible results, but nevertheless has a pleasurable effect on the human body

(Kant et al. 1987: 203–205).

To Schopenhauer, humour and laughter arise “from nothing but the sud-

denly perceived incongruity between a concept and the real objects that had

been thought through it in some relation” (1966: 59).

When abstract concep-

tion does not match concrete perception, humour ensues, says Schopenhauer.

Defining humour in those terms, again, hints at a relationship between

humour and the absurd, especially when considering that the latter expresses

“a relationship of nonconformity between the individual and the world”

(Cruickshank 1970: 51). Whereas Schopenhauer situates the incongruity that

5 This belief is shared by many humour theorists, like Morreall (2009: 13) but is certainly not

uncontested. See, among others, Gruner 2000 and Latta 1999.

6 Aristotle’s views on humour and wit are also frequently considered to be a “precursor” of

sorts of superiority theory, just as they are of incongruity theory. This already points to the often

arbitrary nature of these specific labels (Keith-Spiegel 1972: 4).

7 Schopenhauer combines later elements from incongruity and superiority theory. Mockery

hurts, he says, because it highlights the discrepancy between our own conception and percep-

tion of reality and that of others, revealing what we believed to be true to be false or inaccurate.

We find humour enjoyable because it is testament to the triumph of our powers of perception

over conscious thought (Morreall 2013: 4).

4 Olivier Couder

causes laughter between “our sense perceptions of things and our abstract

rational knowledge of those same things” (Morreall 2013: 4), Kierkegaard, like

Kant before him, feels humour, or the “comical” to be exact, is caused by a

contradiction between expectation and experience (Kierkegaard and Hannay

2009: 49).

And our awareness of the comic is particularly informed by

“incongruity, especially when the incongruity is unexpected or accidental”

(Oden 2004: 10).

Such a brief account of how philosophy entwines incongruity and humour

does not do justice to the complexity and richness of the philosophers discussed

above, but it does bring to the fore certain recurring ideas that have significant

bearing both on the study of humour in general and on the study of humour in

literature specifically. A first idea is that there seems to exist some innate

relationship between the concept of humour and the absurd. The exact nature

of that relationship, however, is less clear. Evidently, not all jokes are absurd

and not all absurd situations or events are humorous. That many seemingly

intuitively pick up on a connection between these two concepts owes to the

notion of incongruity as a defining feature. If and how that incongruity is

ultimately resolved will be explored in greater detail in the following section

of the article.

A second idea that emerges from this brief overview is the idea that

incongruity is presented as indispensable to the humorous experience which

follows from the interplay between expectation and experience. And while it is

certainly hard to deny that the conflict between expectation and experience

can indeed generate humour, it is also true that there exist other cognitive

responses that are characterised by such a conflict, such as horror, or surprise

which can but need not elicit humour. In the context of literature, specifically,

incongruity is often caused by a comparison of textual information with a

reader’s schemata, which essentially amount to structured representations of

events, objects or actions gained through (personal) experience (Emmott and

Alexander 2011: 2).

Take for instance the following passage from Adams’s The Restaurant

(1980), when Arthur and Ford Prefect meet with a group of Golgafrinchans to

discuss “fiscal policy”. The lazy Golgafrinchans have decided to “adopt the leaf

as legal tender” in order to increase their wealth (Adams 1995b: 298). This

brilliant plan, however, does not entirely work out as intended, but they soon

arrive at a solution:

8 Kierkegaard’s treatment of humour is firmly rooted in his discussion of religion (Christianity),

and consequently also the absurd, situated as humour is at the “confinium between the ethical

and the religious” (Kierkegaard, qtd. in Oden 2004: 23).

Problem solved? 5

‘But we have also,’ continued the management consultant, ‘run into a small inflation

problem on account of the high level of leaf availability, which means that, I gather, the

current going rate has something like three deciduous forests buying one ship’s peanut.’

Murmurs of alarm came from the crowd. The management consultant waved them down.

‘So in order to obviate this problem,’ he continued, ‘and effectively revalue the leaf, we are

about to embark on a massive defoliation campaign, and …er, burn down all the forests. I

think you’ll all agree that’s a sensible move under the circumstances.’ The crowd seemed a

little uncertain about this for a second or two until someone pointed out how much this

would increase the value of the leaves in their pockets whereupon they let out whoops of

delight and gave the management consultant a standing ovation. The accountants among

them looked forward to a profitable autumn. (Adams 1995b: 298–299)

This passage is interesting for multiple reasons. It engenders expectations in its

readers, only to subsequently frustrate them. These expectations are prompted by

the initial similarity between fictional world and real world. Although this passage

takes place approximately two million years ago, it is set on Earth, features

physically recognizable characters (humanity’s supposed ancestors) and uses

concepts familiar to modern readers, such as the economic system. Choosing

leaves as legal tender, however, does not conform to our schematic expectations

and rather strikes us as absurd. So too does the manner in which the

Golgafrinchans intend to deal with the problem of inflation, without considering

the possible consequences of their actions. The incongruity of the joke, then, is

mirrored in the incongruity between storyworld and the world as we know it, to

use Oring’s words. And it is exactly readers’ inability to resolve that incongruity,

according to Oring, that makes this excerpt an example of absurdist humour.

A case can be made then that absurdist humour, certainly in literary texts,

can exacerbate the incongruity between abstract concepts and the actual per-

ception of these concepts, as posited by Schopenhauer. Interestingly, though, it

can do this by emphasising the gap between fictional world and real world, but

also by illustrating that the reality of the storyworld is not always as far removed

from our own, no matter how absurd it may seem. Both strategies are often used

concurrently. In the example above, a great many similarities are established

between fictional world and readers’ experiential world. Yet, changing one vital

parameter of the schema “economic system” sets in motion a series of events

which all serve to highlight the incongruity between fictional world and reality.

This dual aspect of similarity and difference means that absurdist humour is

ideally suited to help us better understand the relationship between incongruity

and its resolution, since absurdist humour operates in much the same way. Yet

at the same time, the example above also makes clear that there is more to

absurdist humour than just incongruity (leaves vs. money). There are a host of

other contextual parameters at play that determine our humorous response

6 Olivier Couder

(such as the characteristics of the Golgafrinchans as a race, Arthur and Ford

Prefect’s response, the parodic style, etc.), which I will return to after first

exploring the interplay between incongruity and its resolution.

3 Incongruity and resolution

Suls explains humour appreciation as a two-stage process: in a first stage a

listener/reader’s expectations are shown to be inaccurate. In a second stage the

reader must try to resolve this issue and reconcile the incongruity by aligning

set-up and punch line (Suls 1972: 82). He also emphasises that the incongruity

must be sudden and surprising, necessary features which distinguish jokes from

riddles, for instance. Riddles can also be surprising but they are not incongruous

as the resolution follows logically and coherently from its original premise,

something which is lacking in jokes (Suls 1972: 84).

Suls’s insistence on the surprising nature of incongruity echoes, among

others, Kierkegaard. It might also explain why many humour theorists remark

on the (close) relationship between humour and the absurd. Something which is

considered as absurd is generally something which is far removed from our

everyday experiences, often surprising us. Such an explanation, however, fails

to account for the fact that repetition can still elicit humorous responses. This is

especially true for literary humour where a recurring type of humour or joke can

engender “text-specific” schemata that mitigate surprise yet still generate humour.

Suls’s distinction between riddle and joke also proves somewhat unconvincing as

people can sometimes perfectly predict the punchline of a joke and still be

amused, suggesting that there exists at least some form of logical continuity

between set-up and pay-off. One of the problems with much of the research on

incongruity is that the concepts of incongruity and resolution are rarely “clearly

defined” and the terms can mean different things to different authors (Ritchie

1999: 78). This lack of operational efficiency is something that linguistic scholars

explicitly wish to address by developing more formal theories of humour.

Much of the groundwork for contemporary linguistic theories of humour was

laid by Raskin’s (1985) Semantic Script Theory of Humour (SSTH). The SSTH is

strictly geared toward the analysis of “verbal humor”,to“joke carrying text[s]”

(Raskin 1985: 44). It postulates that a text is humorous if:

(i) The text is compatible, fully or in part, with two different scripts.

(ii) The two scripts with which the text is compatible are opposite […]. The two

scripts with which some text is compatible are said to overlap fully or in

part on this text (Raskin 1985: 99 his emphasis).

Problem solved? 7

Raskin illustrates his theory with the following joke:

‘Is the doctor at home?’ the patient asked in his bronchial whisper. ‘No,’ the doctor’s young

and pretty wife whispered in reply. ‘Come right in’. (Raskin 1985: 100)

This joke text reveals an incongruity between the patient’s question and the

doctor’s wife’s answer. A patient visiting a doctor activates a specific script

(which Raskin terms “DOCTOR”), which initially is reinforced by the patient’s

“bronchial whisper” intimating illness. But the doctor’s wife’s behaviour is

incongruent with the world information attached to this script. She might invite

the patient in, but he would not be able to achieve his presumed goal of

receiving treatment. The combinatorial rules no longer make sense, says

Raskin, and we start looking for a new script to interpret the interaction between

the doctor’s wife and the patient. A second script (“LOVER”) is activated and we

infer that the pair are engaged in an illicit affair.

Raskin’s insistence on the two scripts overlapping constitutes a marked

difference between the SSTH and Suls’s two-stage incongruity-resolution

model. The former posits that humour is derived from the simultaneous activa-

tion of opposite scripts whereas the latter states that humour is only realised

when the incongruity has been removed (resolved) and consequently one script

has been replaced by another. The SSTH’s suitability for the analysis of humour

is limited to very basic jokes that centre on the incongruity created by only two

overlapping and opposed scripts (Raskin 1985: 46).

Raskin does, however,

indicate that the SSTH should also be equipped to handle more complex and

longer joke texts, while at the same time allowing for the possibility that his

theory might have to be amended to better deal with more complex forms of

humour (Raskin 1985: 46).

Attardo (1994) had already remarked that the SSTH seemed to be excluding

different types of text by exclusively focussing on a specific “joke format” (1994:

208).

He conceived of the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH) which he

felt better suited to account for a larger variety of texts as it includes more areas

of linguistic theory in the form of Knowledge Resources (Attardo 1994: 222–223).

The GTVH, then, expands on the SSTH by including six hierarchically organized

(top-to-bottom) knowledge resources. The first one is the “script opposition”,

9 An extended analysis of this joke in terms of Raskin’s model can be found in Raskin 1985,

pages 117 to 127.

10 That the focus on short and specifically designed jokes could be problematic is also high-

lighted by Morreall (2004).

11 Raskin himself has stated that the “ purview” of the SSTH is “textual humor” and is “most

easily applicable to short canned jokes” (Raskin et al. 2009: 288 his emphasis).

8 Olivier Couder

which essentially amounts to the incongruity of the two opposing and (partially)

overlapping scripts of the SSTH.

A second knowledge resource is the logical

mechanism, allowing recipients to resolve the initial script opposition or incon-

gruity (Attardo 2001: 25). An example of a logical mechanism would be role-

reversal. A script opposition can be resolved when we realise that the roles

attached to a particular script have been reversed. A third knowledge resource,

the situation, refers to “the objects, participants, instruments, activities, etc.” of

the joke (Attardo 2001: 24). The next knowledge resource is the target of a joke,

who or what we laugh at. Unlike script oppositions, the target is not a manda-

tory knowledge resource but rather functions as an “optional parameter”, simply

because not all jokes are aggressive (Attardo 2001: 23–24). The fifth knowledge

resource is the “narrative strategy” and describes how the joke is presented, how

it is organized (not to be confused with literary genre, stresses Attardo). The final

one is “language”, which “is responsible for the exact wording of the text and

for the placement of the functional elements that constitute it”. Jokes, says

Attardo, can be easily paraphrased and, as long as the meaning remains intact,

retain their humorous quality (2001: 22–23). Every joke, then, can be analysed by

simply filling in these parameters.

The GTVH is not only suited to analyse short jokes but can also be used to

study humour in literature, according to Attardo, by identifying individual jokes

in the text. All humorous elements are then mapped along a vector and assigned

to progressively overarching structures.

While the GTVH proves fruitful for the

analysis of short jokes, it is less suited to the analysis of literary texts of greater

length as it treats these texts as a “simple succession of humorous moments”

(Ermida 2008: 109). Such a view, however, does little to further our under-

standing of the role humour fulfils in a literary text and its impact on the

interpretation of that text. This is perhaps unsurprising as the objective of the

GTVH is to elucidate why a particular text is funny and it is not particularly

interested in the reaction to or interpretation of the humour in a text (Attardo

2001: 30).

The focus on individual jokes essentially mimics the goal of the SSTH to try

and understand how a “joke works” and to try “understanding it the way people

12 A concept later refined in Hempelmann and Attardo (2011).

13 These individual humorous elements are called lines and include “punch lines” and “jab

lines”, the difference between the two being that punch lines only occur in text final position

whereas jab lines can occur in any other position in the text. Three or more lines can be “formally

or thematically linked” by means of textual or intertextual references to form a “strand” thus

allowing readers to spot emerging patterns within the text (Attardo 2001: 79–89; Attardo 2008:

110–111).

Problem solved? 9

do” (Raskin et al. 2009: 289 his emphasis). But such an approach ultimately

proves insufficient as it fails to relate these humorous sequences to the narrative

context. It is precisely for this reason that Hamilton feels the need to supplement

the GTVH with Cooke’s concept of the “comic climax”, which “adds a global

perspective on the narrative and the interaction of narratological elements”

(Hamilton 2013: 8). A similar sentiment is expressed by Triezenberg when she

explains that the “GTVH and its extensions are not sufficient to successfully

describe the workings of humorous literature” (Triezenberg 2004: 412). Like

Triezenberg, I do not doubt the importance of the notion of a script opposition

as a prerequisite for humorous utterances (2004: 412), but, unlike Hamilton

(2013: 72, 83), I do doubt the overall suitability of the GTVH and its knowledge

resources for literary analysis.

Some of Attardo’s operational parameters are only loosely defined, a pro-

blem he himself is cognizant of (Attardo 2001: 207–208) and which he later

addresses, at least as far as logical mechanisms are concerned (Hempelmann

and Attardo 2011). Additionally, one might call into question the added value of

some of the knowledge resources to literary analysis, as currently conceptua-

lised. In his own analysis of Oscar Wilde’s short story ‘Lord Arthur Savile’s

Crime’ (1887), the knowledge resources of logic mechanism, narrative strategy

and language are frequently left open or simply considered irrelevant (Attardo

2001: 163–199). The way in which value is assigned to language is indicative of

this issue. As indicated earlier, language merely points to the direct “wording”

of the joke and any joke can be freely rephrased “without changes in its

semantic content” (Attardo 2001: 22). Attardo illustrates this as follows:

(1) ‘How many Poles does it take to screw in a light bulb? Five, one to hold the

light bulb and four to turn the table’ (2001: 22).

(2) ‘The number of Pollacks [sic] needed to screw in a light bulb? Five – one to

hold the bulb and four to turn the table’ (2001: 22).

To Attardo, the meaning of the joke has remained “intact”, specifically because

the punch line has remained unchanged (2001: 22). From the linguistic point of

view substituting the neutral term Poles for the disparaging Polack need not

impact the meaning of the joke, but both within the context of everyday social

interaction and the literary text, however, such a change impacts our interpreta-

tion of the joke.

A similar argument can be made for the other knowledge resources.

Vandaele for instance, remarks that the GTVH “finds story-world participants a

relatively unimportant ‘prop,’ and even less central as potential ‘targets’ of

humor” (Vandaele 2012: 97). In literary texts, however, humour is predominantly

10 Olivier Couder

generated by characters, their actions, and how these actions are received and

perceived by both characters and readers (Vandaele 2010: 736–737).

Some of the criticism levelled at cognitive theories of humour in general

seems to apply to the GTVH and its suitability for literary analysis as well. Billig,

for instance, feels that cognitive theories evince a tendency to reduce “humour

to the bloodless structure of the joke” which removes them from the socio-

cultural context in which they circulate (Billig 2005: 66). But to understand

how humour works we need to understand the “relationship between joke and

experience” (Driessen 1997: 223). The GTVH, particularly, fails to adequately

account for the importance of the socio-cultural context for humour (Hamilton

2013: 24). A similar argument can be made for literature, where the “function(s)

of a joke” (Lewis 2006: 41) or any other expression of humour can only be

understood in the context of the literary text as a whole. The insistence on the

importance of (the social and cultural) context stems from the belief, as

expressed by Critchley, that humour, ultimately and undeniably, is a shared

experience (2002: 80). And while Critchley refers to the interaction between live

human beings, literary humour is no less a shared experience, whether that be

between reader and character, between characters, character and setting, or any

other possible constellation. In order to understand the role of (absurdist)

humour in literary texts, we need to not only consider incongruity at a linguistic

level, but also at the conceptual level by focussing on the interaction between

readers, the literary text and the context. Schema theory offers a mean to do just

that.

4 Schema theory and absurdist humour

Schema theory has a long lineage dating back to the early twentieth century and

has featured prominently in the fields of psychology and artificial intelligence.

Schema theory has left its mark on cognitive theories of humour,

most

notably in the SSTH where scripts are defined as “ a large chunk of semantic

information surrounding the word or evoked by it” (Raskin 1985: 81). By

14 I will use schema and schemata as general terms that include scripts and frames. A frame,

as conceived by Marvin Minsky is a “data-structure for representing a stereotyped situation, like

being in a certain kind of living room, or going to a child’s birthday party” (Minsky 1975, 212).

Minsky’s frame is largely similar to Schank and Abelson’s script. One difference is that scripts

are generally thought of as dynamic (dealing with sequences of events) and frames as contain-

ing information on static objects and entities (Herman 1997, 1047).

15 See for instance Norrick (1986) or Wyer and Collins (1992).

Problem solved? 11

integrating scripts into the SSTH, Raskin aimed to remediate a perceived short-

coming of semantics of the Katz-Fodor kind, which only looked at text “in

isolation” and to account for different aspects important in text processing,

such as the “knowledge of the world, of language, […], the situation in which

the text occurs,” and “the participants in the situation” (Raskin et al. 2009: 290).

This might hold true when analysing short jokes, but, as seen earlier, it is less so

the case for humour in longer and more complex narrative texts. Although

Raskin remains convinced of the explanatory power of the SSTH, the GTVH,

and its latest evolution in the form of the Ontological Semantic Theory of

Humour (OSTH),

he does single out absurd jokes as instances of humour

that require additional “skill” to “analyze” as they are generally more difficult

“to understand” for most people (Raskin et al. 2009: 306). The distinction Raskin

makes here between absurd jokes and other jokes is similar to the one cited in

the introduction, namely that absurdist humour is a specific type of humour that

lacks resolution. That absurdist humour is awarded special status by linguistic

theories of humour is interesting, especially in light of the many humour

theories that tend to consider the absurd and humour as inextricably linked

(Kant, Schopenhauer, Chafe (2007), Brodwin (1972)). It should be pointed out,

however, that the absurd is not always understood the same way by different

theoreticians, undoubtedly owing to the exigencies of their respective fields of

research. For intellectuals like Kant, Schopenhauer or Kierkegaard, the absurd is

obviously conceptualised in relation to their overarching philosophical project

(as in Kierkegaard’s absurd leap of faith, for instance). Conversely, in cognitive

humour research the absurd is generally described in terms of mental and

cognitive acuity (specifically the (in)ability to reconcile certain incongruities).

Interestingly enough, these seemingly contrastive positions are both particularly

relevant to understanding and interpreting absurdist humour.

Noonan suggests that there exist “two main strands” of absurdist humour:

one that mirrors the existential absurd and gives expression to the “apparent

meaninglessness of human existence” through “darker humor” and a strand

that centres around the “breakdown of logic” and which leans towards nonsense

(Noonan 2014: 1). This second strand and nonsense humour are often equated

(Hamilton 2013: 26; Ermida 2008: 74; Ruch 2008: 49; Moura 2010: 13), unsur-

prising perhaps as they are both generally defined as consisting of “logical non

sequiturs” (Davis 1993: 100) and thus are characterised by an absence of logic.

There are, however, some significant differences between nonsense and absur-

dist humour. According to Tigges, literary nonsense creates “an unresolved

tension between presence and absence of meaning” and it does this by

16 See Raskin et al. (2009).

12 Olivier Couder

emphasising “its verbal nature” (1988: 55). This emphasis on the verbal nature

also constitutes the most important difference, says Tigges, as in “nonsense,

language creates a reality, in the absurd, language represents a senseless rea-

lity” (1988: 128 his emphasis). In other words, nonsense seems to primarily

operate on a linguistic level highlighting the creative power of language,

whereas the absurd operates on the conceptual level. Absurdist humour reveals

a world that is familiar and yet at the same time unfamiliar.

The interplay between familiarity and unfamiliarity also lies at the basis of

what Palmer calls the “logic of the absurd” (1994: 96). Much like Suls before

him, Palmer believes that most jokes in a first stage create an incongruity which

is then followed by a “bifurcated logical process, which leads the listener to

judge that the state of affairs portrayed is simultaneously highly implausible and

just a little plausible”, as opposed to nonsense which is entirely implausible

(Palmer 1994: 96–97). That readers frequently find themselves vacillating

between high implausibility and low plausibility is exacerbated by the way in

which the events causing absurdist humour are received in the storyworld. In an

article exploring the “odd talk” that is characteristic of many absurdist texts,

Simpson explains that it is not so much the breakdown of the “structural level”

of discourse that causes incongruity, but rather the “mismatch between context

and utterance”, between “communicative strategy and discourse context”

(Simpson 1998: 39–40). He goes on to say that the incongruity that readers

experience when reading absurdist literature is not only caused by the strange

actions or the aberrant behaviour of literary characters themselves but also by

the fact that these are almost always received without any surprise and con-

sidered to be normal within that fictional context (Simpson 1998: 42, 47).

Absurdist humour challenges readers’ inability to swiftly and easily recon-

cile literary text and experience (Safer 1989: 94). It is caused by an incongruity

that defies the expectation of (logical) causality. The incongruity is not so much

situated at the linguistic level, but owes its existence to the way in which readers

engage with the literary text. Let us return to the Golgafrinchans and their new,

leaf-based economy. At a purely grammatical or semantic level there is nothing

odd about this passage. We know what leaves are and are familiar with the basic

economic principles described here. What does stand out, however, is that the

former have been integrated into the schematic structure of the latter. The

incongruity here, then, is one of a conceptual nature. Readers possess a schema

of how the (Western) economic system functions. Money, recognised as legal

tender, can be exchanged for goods and services. Highly simplified, inflation

occurs when money decreases in value, when it gets you less bang for your

buck, so to speak. This can be caused by a disturbed relationship between the

market mechanisms of supply and demand (for example, when supply is unable

Problem solved? 13

to meet demand, or when production costs rise significantly) or through the

creation of a surplus of money. A legitimate strategy to counter inflation,

assuming that consumption and population remained ‘steady state’, would be

to halt the production of new money or reduce the amount of money in

circulation.

In the Golgafrinchan society, money has (seemingly) arbitrarily been

replaced by leaves, which strikes readers as absurd (even though the paper

money we use has no more intrinsic value than leaves). But seeing as leaves are

so readily available, they are suddenly faced with a “small inflation problem”,a

problem which in itself is not all that surprising and in keeping with our

schematic knowledge. Their proposed solution of controlling the amount of

leaves in circulation is, once again, seemingly congruent with our schematic

expectation. That the solution is taken to such an extreme, however, is some-

what more unexpected. The impromptu decision to “…er, burn down all the

forests” is not only stupid but also very short-sighted, as the leaves will decay

and they will have burned their best means of generating new money. The

crowd, primarily motivated by greed, go along with the plan after only the

briefest moment of contemplation.

The text, then, offers a set of, at first glance, logical responses to a particular

problem analogous to what readers can expect on the basis of acquired knowl-

edge of how the real world works: the Golgafrinchans decide on a new currency,

an overabundance of money causes inflation, and a plan to combat said infla-

tion is formulated by removing excess money. Adopting leaves as a means of

currency, however, is far removed from readers’ everyday experiences and

expectations, especially as it culminates in a plan to burn down the forests, a

response well beyond all proportion. It is precisely by simultaneously creating a

certain amount of overlap as well as a few striking differences between fictional

world and real world, that the scene described above generates absurdist

humour. What makes it even more absurd is that there was no need to create

a new source of money in the first place. Prior to the Golgafrinchans debating

the finer points of fiscal policy, Ford Prefect asks them why they would need

money “if none of you [the Golgafrinchans] actually produces anything?”, and

naively (and ironically) points out that money “doesn’t grow on trees you know”

(Adams 1995b: 298), adding yet another layer of humour through its reference to

readers’ proverbial knowledge.

In a similar way, absurdist humour is also created by playing with readers’

expectations based on genre schemata, particularly those pertaining to science

fiction. Science fiction in general, says Peter Stockwell, has the advantage that

its fictional worlds can “encompass all the events and inventory of our own

actual world plus all the imaginary features of non-actual worlds” (Stockwell

14 Olivier Couder

2003: 195). The Hitch Hiker makes clever use of this stratagem by grounding the

extraordinary in the ordinary, the mundane even. Recall the unfortunate Agrajag

who was reincarnated as a bowl of petunias, a rabbit or a fly. The novel

incorporates many elements characteristic of science fiction such as teleporta-

tion, interstellar flight, or supercomputers. But in most cases there exists no

direct correlation between technological advancement on the one hand and

intelligence and resourcefulness on the other hand. No race in The Hitch

Hiker’s fictional universe epitomises this discrepancy more than the

Golgafrinchans. Their space ship was deliberately set to crash on Earth, in

order to strand the less desirable third of Golgafrinchan society on this planet,

(those remaining at home being later “wiped out by a virulent disease contracted

from a dirty telephone” (Adams 1995b: 274, emphasis in original)). Genre sche-

mata are inverted here as the Golgafrinchan are utterly helpless despite the

technology that brought them there. They cannot even make fire, or decide on

what colour the wheel should be if they ever get round to inventing it in the first

place. Their overall stupidity does not match readers’ expectations based on the

level of technology they possess and their antics are a continuous source of

absurdist humour.

I have only focussed on one rather short passage, but many more such

examples can be found in the novel. As a consequence readers might start to

expect the unexpected, providing them with a set of intratextual schemata

possibly mitigating the incongruous experience. The manner in which these

abstract incongruities are concretised, however, remains striking enough to

generate absurdist humour. The analysis of the fragment above also illustrates

why an analysis strictly in terms of the SSTH/GTVH does not do justice to the

richness of the text. Literary humour cannot be broken down into small and

isolated packets, nor is it a strictly linear process, as evinced by Ford Prefect’s

comment about money growing on trees which causes humour only when

reinterpreted in light of subsequent events. So too does the absurdist humour

in this passage not stem from a single script opposition. Rather it is realised by

activating in its readers a specific schema. The text then substitutes a vital

parameter of the schema (leaves for money) that generates a new set of absurdist

incongruities “blended in the same assemblage”, to quote Beattie (1776: 349),

which work in concert to create the humorous effect. This is only exacerbated by

the Golgafrinchans’ handling of the situation, highlighted stylistically, which

stands in stark contrast to the disbelief of focaliser Ford Prefect, who is happily

ignored by the Golgafrinchans.

The opposing positions held by these two narrative entities are reflected in

the reader having to simultaneously entertain a scenario which is highly improb-

able when considered from the point of view of Ford Prefect, but nevertheless

Problem solved? 15

plausible within the broader context created by the fictional world. The humor-

ous effect also hinges on the characterisation of the Golgafrinchans and their

society as rather vapid and superficial. The group of Golgafrinchans we meet on

Earth were forced to relocate there approximately two million years ago. This

actually makes them humanity’s ancestors and adds yet another (contextual)

layer of meaning which, again, enhances the humorous experience. Particularly

when we consider that we already know how their story ends (with their

inevitable downfall as Earth is destroyed two million years later to make way

for an intergalactic bypass). While on earth they also manage to negatively

influence the supercomputer Deep Thought’s search for the “Ultimate Question

to the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything”. The text here invokes a

storyworld very similar to our own but with some jarring differences, supporting

Oring’s assessment that absurdist humour exposes a disparity between story-

world and our own experiential world (2003: 25). The question, however,

remains whether or not that disparity/incongruity can or indeed has to be

resolved?

Much like incongruity, resolution is rarely defined unambiguously and

varies according to the different incongruity-resolution models. According to

Attardo, there exists a difference between “the enabling mechanism”, inherent

to the joke text, and “resolution itself (which is a dynamic process)” (Ritchie

2009: 320). The means through which we move from static text element to

dynamic resolution, however, remain unclear. The issue at stake across varying

incongruity-resolution models is whether or not the initial incongruity is fully

(Suls), partially (Attardo, Oring), or simply not eliminated. But that is perhaps

asking the wrong question.

People have a propensity to strive for logical coherence, to make sense of

their surroundings. We do this by looking for familiar patterns, by engaging with

the world (fictional or not) based on what we know, what we are “used to”

(Davies 2014: 122). This knowledge and these experiences are made accessible in

the form of schemata. But absurdist humour disrupts this process by challenging

the confines of everyday logic (Zijderveld 1971: 28). We do, however, “dislike

failing to understand” (Schank 1995: 60). Resolution then might be conceived of

as not only dealing with how humour works but also with why. To that end we

need to try and ascertain the function of absurdist humour, which in the context

of the reading process is inextricably linked to the literary interpretation.

The passage discussed above contains a “joke text” that hinges on an

incongruity (leaves vs. money as legal tender) which most conventional humour

theories, such as the GTVH, would catalogue as absurdist humour as there is no

logical mechanism that satisfyingly explains why leaves would serve as a sub-

stitute for money. This at first glance innocuous joke provides the impetus for

16 Olivier Couder

the creation of multiple new and equally absurd incongruities. But rather than

being treated as a localised phenomenon, this joke text and its absurdist

humour must be understood and can only be fully appreciated in relation to

the narrative context created by the novel. In order to make sense of the events

and characters’ responses to them readers rely on their schemata, which incor-

porate both general and text-specific knowledge (such as genre conventions).

Absurdist humour is a product of that interaction and here serves to enhance

and emphasise the discrepancy between the storyworld and the real world. The

choice of using leaves as currency now makes sense and the incongruity is

resolved at the moment of interpretation.

This type of resolution, which is of a hermeneutic nature, should also be

understood as a neurocognitive process. Armstrong (2013) describes the herme-

neutic circle as a corollary of a human’s brain structure. The “recursive, circular

interdependence of part and whole in interpretation”, he states, simply follows

from the way in which we perceive and comprehend the world surrounding us

(2013: 55). In order to successfully navigate our world people constantly for-

mulate expectations about what will happen next on the basis of (relatively)

stable patterns and categories, i.e. schemata. Armstrong, however, remarks that

the “brain’s quest for constancy is inherently contradictory” as the brain must

maintain a constant equilibrium between “stability” on the one hand and

“flexibility” on the other hand so that it can satisfactorily assimilate new or

diverging information (Armstrong 2013: 74). Consequently, “one can only under-

stand the unfamiliar by grafting it onto what is already familiar, even if this

causes the unfamiliar to transform the familiar”. Similarly, when readers are

presented with new or anomalous information they do not delete existing

schemata but rather readjust or expand on them them so that they are better

equipped to deal with new and unconventional information (Armstrong 2013:

73). The structure of the brain, then, says Armstrong, is designed to handle

“conflicting readings”. He further specifies that “comprehension” is a “config-

urative construction in which the overarching pattern guides the construal of its

parts” and thus mirrors the hermeneutic circle (2013: 78–79).

As I have illustrated, absurdist humour operates along much the same lines.

By playing with similarity and difference (or implausibility and probability),

absurdist humour challenges “the expectations readers bring to texts based on

their habitual patterns of consistency building”, which take the form of sche-

mata (Armstrong 2013: 86). At the moment of interpretation, then, we recognise

absurdist humour as a narrative strategy that forces us to relinquish the sche-

mata that organise and structure everyday life. As a consequence we are com-

pelled to more closely consider and ultimately reinterpret the text. The absurdist

episode describing the Golgafrinchans and their economic system cleverly

Problem solved? 17

combines the two strands of absurdist humour by alerting readers to the dangers

of human greed and short-sightedness (which humanity seems doomed to

repeat) through the breakdown of logic processes allowing readers to resolve

the initially perceived disparity between fictional world and referential world.

The incongruity of absurdist humour can thus be resolved when considered

within the context of the literary text. Yet at the same time it is also instrumental

in creating that same context, as it forms an integral part of the narrative

structure in terms of characterisation, setting, and plot development.

5 Conclusion

This article concerns itself with a specific type of literary humour, namely

absurdist humour. It started by tracing the roots of the concept of incongruity

in Western philosophy which revealed three recurring considerations which also

proved relevant for later studies of humour as well as for the study of absurdist

humour in particular. The first hinted at the close connection between humour

and absurdity. The second indicates that the incongruity giving rise to humour

defies or violates expectations, and thirdly, that it generally does so in a

surprising manner. The fascination with incongruity and its subsequent resolu-

tion carried over to more recent research in a wide variety of scientific disci-

plines such as psychology, sociology, and linguistics.

Traditional humour research has a tendency to focus on short, often speci-

fically designed, jokes. Linguistic theories of humour such as the SSTH and the

GTVH nevertheless claim that they are equally well equipped to analyse humour

in longer and more complex narrative texts. Whilst this might be true in theory,

it proves less obvious in practice, mostly because these linguistic models and

the field of literary studies are at cross-purposes. The SSTH and the GTVH are

predominantly interested in providing a formal theory describing the mechan-

isms underlying humour, eschewing the hermeneutic inclination associated with

literary analysis. Consequently, they do not sufficiently account for the specifi-

city of the narrative context.

Exploring the role and function of absurdist humour in literature, the article

posits that absurdist humour (or humour in general for that matter) cannot be

understood by reducing the text to a linear succession of individual jokes. Literary

humour can only be understood in terms of the reading process, of how readers

engage with literary texts, a process facilitated by schemata. In a first step,

absurdist humour was delineated from nonsense humour by defining its specific

features. Absurdist humour is caused by a conceptual incongruity between the

18 Olivier Couder

fictional world and the experiential world of the reader causing him or her to

simultaneously juggle contrasting interpretations of the fictional world as highly

implausible and barely plausible. This is only exacerbated by the way in which

events are received and acted on by fictional characters, which further defies or

violates readers’ expectations. Finally, the traditional view of absurdist humour as

a type of humour that remains unresolved was challenged by suggesting that

resolution be equated with (literary) interpretation and removing it from the single

level of the text to the higher ontological level of the reader interpretation. The

case of absurdist humour also illustrates why literary humour cannot be studied

in isolation, entwined as it is with the narrative structure of literary texts in terms

of plot development, characterisation, and setting.

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