Skip to main content
Log in

Anxious laughter: Mauron’s Renversement and Gogol’s Overcoat

  • Article
  • Published:
The American Journal of Psychoanalysis Aims and scope

Abstract

Inside and outside of psychoanalysis, laughter has often been thought of as relating to anxiety, with the usual line being that laughter can be a response to anxiety or a way of dealing with it. This article argues that laughter cannot be said to eradicate or ‘deal with’ anxiety and that laughter is always unsettling precisely because it contains anxiety and indicates its continuing threat. The article discusses Freud and Lacan on anxiety, as well as Charles Mauron, an understudied writer whose Psychocritique du Genre Comique was the only sustained study of psychoanalysis and comedy until very recently. I argue here that Mauron’s idea of renversement holds a key to understanding the relationship between laughter and anxiety. Rather than using a collection of isolated examples to illustrate individual points, in the second half of the article I provide a more sustained discussion of these ideas in relation to Nicolai Gogol’s short story “The Overcoat.”

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Bergson, H. (1907). Creative evolution. A. Mitchell, Trans. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications. 1998.

  • Bergson, H. (1911). Laughter: An essay on the meaning of the comic, C. Brereton and F. Rothwell, (Trans.). N.Y.: Macmillan.

  • Billig, M. (2005). Laughter and ridicule: Towards a social critique of humour. London: SAGE.

    Google Scholar 

  • Billington, J. H. (1970). The icon and the axe. An interpretive history of Russian Culture. N.Y.: Vintage Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bown, A. (2015). Enjoying it: Candy crush and capitalism. Winchester and Washington: Zero Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bown, A. (2017). The playstation dreamworld. London: Polity (forthcoming).

  • Bown, A. (forthcoming). In the event of laughter. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

  • Derrida, J. (1987). The postcard: From Socrates to Freud and beyond. London: University of Chicago Press. [originally published in French: La carte postale: De Socrate à Freud et au-delà Paris: Group Flammarion, 1980].

  • Freud, S. (1895). First steps towards a theory of anxiety neurosis. SE., Vol 3, pp. 106–111. London: Hogarth.

  • Freud, S. (1897). Letter 75 to Wilhelm Fliess, S.E. Vol 1, pp. 268–271. London: Hogarth.

  • Freud, S. (1900). The interpretation of dreams. SE., Vol 4–5, pp. 1–626, London: Hogarth.

  • Freud, S. (1905a). Three essays on the theory of sexuality. S.E. Vol 7, pp. 135–243.

  • Freud, S. (1905b). Jokes and their relation to the unconscious. SE, Vol 7, pp. 1–247. London: Hogarth.

  • Freud, S. (1926). Inhibitions, symptoms, and anxiety. S.E. Vol 20, pp. 77–174. London: Hogarth.

  • Frye, N. (1957). Anatomy of criticism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gogol, N. (1842). The overcoat. In The collected tales of Nikolai Gogol. R. Pevear & L. Volokhonsky, (Trans.) pp. 394–424. New York, NY: Vintage Classic. 1999.

  • Hegel, G. W. F. (1975). Aesthetics, Vol II, trans. T.M. Knox. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

  • Hobbes, T. (1994). Leviathan. Indiana: Hackett Publishing.

  • Kazantzakis, N. (1952). Zorba the Greek. N.Y.: Simon and Schuster.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kierkegaard, S. (1980). The concept of anxiety: A simply psychologically orienting deliberation on the dogmatic issue of the heredity of sin. R. Thomte, (Ed., and Trans., in collaboration with A. Anderson). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

  • Lacan, J. (1989). Ecrits: A selection, A. Sheridan (Trans.) London: Routledge. [Originally published in French: 1966, Paris: Éditions du Seuil; In English: 1977, London: Tavistock].

  • Lacan, J. (1998). The four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis, J. Alain-Miller, (Ed.), A.Sheridan (Trans.). London: Norton. Originally published in French: 1973, Paris: Éditions du Seuil; In English: 1978].

  • Lacan, J. (2001). Le Séminaire, livre VIII: Le transfert. Paris: Éditions du Seuil.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lacan, J. (2014). In: J. Alain-Miller (Ed.). Anxiety. Polity Press: Cambridge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mauron, C. (1964). Psychocritque du genre comique. Paris: Libraire Jose Corti.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moussaieff Masson, J. (Ed.). (1986). The complete letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fleiss. Cambridge: Belknap Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Norwood, G. (1931). Greek comedy. London: Methuen.

    Google Scholar 

  • Salingar, L. (1974). Shakespeare and the traditions of comedy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Stott, A. (2005). Comedy. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zupančič, A. (2008). The odd one in, London: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zupančič, A. (2011). Ethics of the real: Kant and Lacan. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alfie Bown.

Additional information

Address correspondence to Dr. Alfie Bown, Assistant Professor, Department of English, HSMC, Hang Shin Link, Siu Lek Yuen, Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong. E-mail: alfredbown@hsmc.edu.hk.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Bown, A. Anxious laughter: Mauron’s Renversement and Gogol’s Overcoat. Am J Psychoanal 77, 163–176 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1057/s11231-017-9085-6

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s11231-017-9085-6

Keywords

Navigation