LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 25:6 June 2025
ISSN 1930-2940

Editors:
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         T. Deivasigamani, Ph.D.
         Pammi Pavan Kumar, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.

Managing Co-Editors & Publishers: Selvi M. Bunce, M.A., Ph.D. Candidate and Nathan Mulder Bunce, M.A., Ph.D. Candidate
Published monthly in honor of M.S. Thirumalai, Ph.D. (1940-2025)

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Study of Black Humor and Psychological Aspects in English Literature

Neha Vatsal, Research Scholar and
Dr. Saurabh Kumar

Abstract

Dark humor is designed to show critical subjects like casualty, disorders, dreadful cases, and taboos with unexpected comedic elements. The main purpose is to create comedy through harsh conditions, making black comedy popular among audiences. Individuals are helpless victims of circumstances and time; farce and substandard comedy are used as aspects of black humor. Black humorists try to impose a repetition on the radical stream of measures via jokes. Swift's undisputable uniqueness, the perfect unity of his production viewed from the angle of the very special and almost unprecedented emotion it elicits, the unsurpassable character, from this same viewpoint, of his many varied successes historically justify his being presented as the first black humorist (Breton, 16). Black humor looks like the fictitious bitterness-free phase of critical arguments and attacks. Gallows humor is also designed to strengthen the self-pride of anxious people and weaken the confidence of the tormenters. The paper aims to present the contemporary approaches of black humor and psychological relief theory in literature and media studies.

Keywords:humor, culture studies, media studies, psychological, relief theory

Introduction

Black humor is the haziest type of humor, which comically portrays horrific events. Renowned surrealist theorist, Andre Breton, explored the works of Jonathan Swift in his research. Breton noticed that Swift's writings of comedy and satire contained sarcasm and skepticism even on topics like death. He wrote a book on Jonathan Swift's works and called him an authentic designer of black humor. The book, Anthology of Black Humor, became popular among readers and critics because it portrayed a new concept of black humor.

Gallows humor became more popular with the publication of Bruce Jay Friedman's edited work Black Humor (Bloom, 80). Many prominent authors like Thomas Pynchon, J. P. Donleavy, Edward Albee, John Barth, Joseph Heller, Vladimir Nabokov, Louis-Ferdinand Celine, and Bruce Jay Friedman used dark humor in the form of novels, poems, tales, theatre, and compositions which juxtapose the conditions with morbid twists and create a humorous effect. After knowing the real purpose behind black humor, it become a popular literary genre and influenced the development of American literature in the 1960s. Dark humor gave a vision of a biased view of life reflecting brutality, violence, and viewpoint-crushing scenes of World War II (Alice, 18).

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Neha Vatsal, Research Scholar
Career Point University Hamirpur
neha_vatsal@rediffmail.com
& Dr. Saurabh Kumar
Associate Professor Career Point University Hamirpur saurabh.eng@cpuh.in

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