Product Description: Almost everyone tells and appreciates jokes. Yet the nature of jokes has proved elusive. When asked what they really mean, people tend to laugh off the question, dismissing jokes as meaningless or too obvious to require explanation...read more

Elliott Oring asks essential questions concerning humorous expression in contemporary society, examining how humor works, why it is employed, and what its messages might be. This provocative book is filled with examples of jokes and riddles that reveal humor to be a meaningful--even significant--form of expression. Oring provides alternate ways of thinking about humorous expressions by examining their contexts--not just their contents. Engaging Humor demonstrates that when analyzed contextually and comparatively, humorous expressions emerge as communications that are startling, intriguing, and profound.

Retells some of the jokes Freud used to make points about human psychology, and examines what these jokes suggest about Freud's own personality