Funny Matters: Humour Theory and Comic Fragments

This article argues that a cognitive approach to interpreting humour in Greek comedy can significantly enhance our understanding of comic fragments. Building on insights from multiple fields, I outline two aspects of humour comprehension that are especially fruitful for Classicists, namely memory and character. As I demonstrate, comedians manipulate audiences’ expectations by recruiting information from their memory and comic characters can re-enforce or challenge audience’s assumptions. As a test case I use Anaxippus fragment 3 to demonstrate how paying attention to character and audience knowledge allows us to understand comic fragments in a new light. The two subsequent sections elucidate two areas where a cognitive approach to humour permits us to understand these fragments afresh: comic references and running jokes. Analysing fragments of Greek comedy, I argue, reveals how humour functioned as a cultural force in antiquity.