What a sudden idea

Today's reading selections came form Hobbes. And as you may expect he speaks to the idea of humor based in superiority. He is very much like our Greeks, in that respect, very proper. But something that literally jumped out at me as I read was his frequent use of the word sudden. In his dissection of comedy he continually described as a sudden act or a sudden realization. Even when explaining that a person can laugh at himself after the fact, he called it a sudden realization of the humor that is no past. This is something that brought up in the earlier readings. In fact the others talked about planned, humor for a purpose. So although Hobbes's intent my not have been to speak about the unexpected nature of humor, this is a point that really stood out for me.

This idea also fits into the superiority angle very well. Sudden comic situations such as someone tripping, occur as a something out of the ordianary and relying on a person (the tripee?) who has fallen (literally) out of confining standards of everyday life. And the person laughing is doing so from a point of higher social standards. So it all fits, and it in this situation is the sudden-ness that really stands out.