Bergson's Comedy Theory Research

With the development of social turbulence,non-rationalist philosophy had its rise,and it had a profound effect in Europe in the nineteenth century.As the representatives of non-rationalistic philosophy,Henri Bergson put forward his theory about the philosophy of life,he thought that life is durable and the world is in constant changing.Bergson published his aesthetic study called <Laughter> in 1900,and the study was based on his philosophical theory and aesthetic theory.In this book,he proposed his concept of comedy,and analysed the concept of words such as funny and laughter from the perspectives of the aesthetic of comedy.His theory of comedy occupied an important place through out the theories of whole Western comedy.The paper includes the following five aspects:The introduction mainly explains the reasons for writing this study,and analyses the present situations of Bergson’s theory and his theory of comedy at home and abroad,And this study introduces the research significance and research method of this paper.The first chapter mainly introduces Bergson’s philosophical theory and aesthetic theory,and these theories are the basis of Bergson’s theory of comedy.There are many central contents in Bergson’s philosophical theories and aesthetic theories such as "the impulse of life","duration","intuition","memory" and "the will of freedom".These concepts and ideas in these concepts are the preconditions of his theory of comedy.The second chapter mainly explains Bergson’s views on "funny" and "laughter".He thought that funny objects were made up of funny faces,funny body shapes and funny portraits,and the types of funny can be divided into surface funny and internal funny.He also cited some examples in drama and daily life,to show that laughter occurs when people can control their emotions and can use their intelligence to deal with funny things that were characterized by mechanical rigidity.And it shows that the function of laughter is to correct people’s bad habits.The third chapter explains Bergson’s understanding of the creations of comedy.First of all,from the Bergson’s creation of comic scenes,the paper analyzes distinguishing features about making the funny scenes.Then it analyzes the connotations of make funny language.Finally,it combs out the frequent way about making funny.The paper combines specific works in the history of Western comedy,to expound the richness of Bergson’s thought on creating of comedy.The fourth chapter analyses Bergson’s view of comedy from a comparative and overall perspective.First,it compares Bergson’s comic theory with Kant’s comic theory in a horizontal way,which provides a special way to study the uniqueness of Bergson’s comic theory.Then,it analyzes the relationship between Bergson’s theory of comedy and his aesthetics theory and philosophy theory,and specially it was related to the core of philosophy such as "duration" and "intuition".Finally,it discusses the connotation of Bergson’s theory of comedy in general,and analyzes the difference of the Bergson’s theory of tragedy.