Sources: Encyclopedia of Humor Studies
Encyclopedia of Humor Studies. Ed. by Salvatore Attardo. Los Angeles: Sage Reference, 2014. 2 vols. $315 (ISBN 978-1-4129-9909-0).
Search online for information about any sitcom and you are likely to find a fan-authored site that provides minute details about every character and episode. Yet such web sources seldom offer intellectual linkages from popular shows like The Office to an identification of the first “mockumentary” (This is Spinal Tap) to an academic explanation that this particular genre involves “the appropriation of codes and conventions from the full continuum of nonfiction and fact-fiction forms” (515). Sage’s Encyclopedia of Humor Studies does precisely this, and thus is an invaluable aid to students exploring this highly fascinating discipline.
Humor studies is an interdisciplinary and international field. Fortunately, the encyclopedia’s contents reflect this diversity. The editor, Salvatore Attardo, is the author of Linguistic Theories of Humor (de Gruyter, 1994), Humorous Texts: A Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis (de Gruyter, 2001), and many other highly-cited publications in the fields of humor and linguistics. From 2001 to 2011, he was also the editor of HUMOR, the official journal of the International Society for Humor Studies. For compiling his encyclopedia, Attardo recruited a board drawn from most of the related fields, including communication (Owen Hanley Lynch), cross-cultural studies (Jessica Milner Davis), folklore (Moira Marsh), linguistics (Victor Raskin), media studies (Sharon Lockyer), religious studies (John Morreall), and social psychology (Thomas E. Ford). This team vetted topics and entries. The final product reflects the efforts of more than two hundred contributors, approximately one-third of whom are employed at institutions outside of the United States.
Containing approximately three hundred entries, the encyclopedia allows students to take various approaches to studying humor, including the components of humor, such as “punch line”; humor in various cultures, such as “Jewish humor”; and artifacts such as “comic strips.” Most, if not all, entries include cross-references and bibliographies to enable further study. Within the appendices, one helpful feature is a fifteen-page “Chronology,” citing important events in the history of humor from ancient times through the present day. Another is a five-page list of “Human Associations and Publications.”
Editor Attardo rightfully claims that there is no comparable title. Although many libraries own Alleen Pace Nilsen’s and Don Lee Free Nilsen’s Encyclopedia of 20th-Century American Humor (Oryx Press, 2000), Maurice Horn and Richard Marschall’s World Encyclopedia of Cartoons (Gale, 1980), or other reference works, these are very limited in scope and do not present the theoretical and research approaches present in the current encyclopedia. Thus the Encyclopedia of Humor Studies is a welcome addition for campuses supporting interdisciplinary scholars.—Bernadette A. Lear, Behavioral Sciences and Education Librarian, Penn State Harrisburg Library, Middletown, Pennsylvania